March 12th-March 18th // Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. (A)I drink your milkshake!

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Top Story 👁️ 

Scope3 to take on brand-safety companies with new AI tech
Source: Marketing Brew
March 13th, 2025

Summary: Sustainability startup Scope3 is expanding beyond carbon emissions tracking to tackle brand safety with AI. Last week, it launched Brand Standards, an AI-powered brand safety and suitability product, which will live within the Scope3 Agentic Media Platform, a hub for AI-driven advertising tools and agents. Like “Context Agents”!

Brand Standards is an AI model that customizes brand safety to a company’s unique specifications. Instead of relying on outdated keyword block lists, it scans website text and images in real time to offer more precise brand safety controls. Scope3 built this tool following its acquisition of verification company Adloox, and it's already integrated with The Trade Desk, Google, Dotdash Meredith, and Index Exchange.

Meanwhile, the Agentic Media Platform allows publishers, ad tech platforms, curators, and agencies to create and sell AI-enabled media products. Scope3 claims its AI agents can improve media quality, reduce carbon-heavy ad inventory, and eliminate fraudulent “made-for-advertising” content. Amazon DSP is the first to integrate, with Index Exchange, Equativ, MiQ, Elcano, and Azerion lined up for testing next month.

The launch comes at a time when traditional brand safety players like DoubleVerify (DV) and Integral Ad Science (IAS) are under fire from advertisers and regulators over their effectiveness. Meanwhile, platforms like Meta and X are scaling back content moderation, putting more responsibility on advertisers to control brand safety

Opinion: O'Kelley couldn't have picked a better moment to disrupt the brand safety sector. The timing is 🤌 for three key reasons:

1. The incumbents are under fire: The DoubleVerify-IAS duopoly is taking heat from researchers, regulators, and advertisers. The House Judiciary Committee report and X lawsuit literally led to GARM disbanding. Whatever they’re doing—it ain’t working. Yet, they’re still charging the entire industry a “tax” for their tech.

2. Brand safety still matters: According to Forrester, 59% of marketing executives believe consumers care less about brand safety than before. Yet the stakes for getting it wrong (Congressional hearings & PR nightmares, anyone?) have never been higher.

3. The tech is ripe for reinvention: Legacy brand safety relies on static keyword lists and category blocking. But the internet is dynamic. Content changes constantly, and context is everything. AI—if done right—offers a more adaptive, real-time solution.

Scope3’s early integrations with Google, The Trade Desk, and Index Exchange give Brand Standards immediate credibility. And having Dotdash Meredith on board suggests that publishers see the value in more nuanced brand safety solutions that don’t just nuke their revenue.

Brand safety is an obvious first use case for this tech, but it's easy to see how agentic AI capabilities will extend to creative, planning, targeting, optimization, and measurement. That’s the premise of Scope3’s Agentic Media Platform, as O'Kelley explained in his blog post and during a Q&A at Marketecture LIVE in NYC on Monday (which will be aired as Friday’s Marketecture Podcast). Brand safety is just a way for Scope3 to start getting traction.

O'Kelley is generally considered the “Godfather of ad tech”🔒and has a knack for spotting industry inflection points. The explosion of AI is obviously an inflection point, and an upstart like Scope3 has the flexibility and opportunity to disrupt the entire industry. Whether it succeeds depends on if it can deliver meaningfully better outcomes than existing solutions and navigate the increasingly treacherous political waters around brand safety and content moderation, especially with not-always-reliable AI tech.

That said, we trust “the Godfather” knows what he’s doing. Scope3 just went from being a kind of interesting sustainability company to a do-everything-advertising-related-using-AI company. This is big.

Other Notable Headlines ✍️

Sonos has canceled its streaming video player - Pinewood, we barely knew you. Sonos has aborted plans for its streaming video player called Pinewood, which was to run on The Trade Desk's new TV operating system (OS) dubbed Ventura. Sonos has been struggling to recover from last year's release of a redesigned app that was widely panned for bugs, terrible performance, and missing features, which hurt its reputation and cost the CEO his job. Sonos is pressing pause on entering the already-crowded streaming TV hardware market and will focus on improving the performance and reputation of its software. Pinewood, unfortunately, was already pretty far along in development and beta testing. Now, Sonos won't have a shiny new product to ship in the second half of the year, and The Trade Desk—which has also been having a tough time recently—won't have a first taker for its TV OS. “We don’t comment on our roadmap, but as has been previously announced we have a long-standing relationship with The Trade Desk and that relationship continues,” said a Sonos spokesperson. Not quite sure what that means. And not quite sure where The Trade Desk’s Ventura goes from here.

Google Acquires Wiz for $32 Billion: Cloud Security Deal Biggest Ever - Google tried to buy cloud security platform Wiz last year for $23B, but Wiz's CEO rejected the deal in favor of an IPO and concerns that it wouldn't pass regulatory scrutiny. Now with a new administration and friendlier US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Google is making another run at Wiz with a much higher price tag. Google says the deal—its largest ever—would help fast-track the company in two major areas related to AI: cloud security and use of multiple clouds. Wiz will join Google Cloud but still be available across other cloud platforms from Amazon, Microsoft, and Oracle. Founded in 2020, Wiz has raised $1.9B and had a $12B valuation in May 2024. The deal would close in 2026 if it gets the greenlight from regulators.

Meet The Netflix Ads Suite, Introduced by Ads VP Nicolle Pangis - The Netflix Ads Suite will launch April 1st, VP of Advertising Nicolle Pangis revealed during the recent Cynopsis and AdExchanger CTV Connect event. Netflix first launched its ads tier with Microsoft’s tech, but now it’s built its own ad server and tapped Magnite as its SSP partner. Its goal is to bring Netflix-style personalization to advertisers, fueled by rich first-party data about its members viewing habits and preferences that will help advertisers align with content and genres of greatest member interest. Netflix is also integrated with DSPs DV360, The Trade Desk, and Xandr, and offers access to third-party data. So far, Netflix has a pretty light ad load at 4 minutes per hour but says that having its own ad tech will help it improve its capabilities around custom formats. Launched in 2022, Netflix's ads tier is attracting 55% of new sign-ups in places where they're offered. In Q4, ad-supported memberships grew 30% compared to Q3.

Taboola strikes deal to sell Microsoft display ads - Native advertising giant Taboola is capitalizing on its strategic partnership with Microsoft with a deal to sell display ads for MSN.com, Microsoft Outlook, Games, and Microsoft's broader Office Suite. The news comes weeks after Taboola launched Realize, a performance ad platform for the open web that goes beyond native formats, including display and social media ad formats such as vertical video. Taboola has loads of first-party data from its work with 18,000 global advertisers and 9,000 publishers. It's another win for the company, which also has a 30-year ad deal with Yahoo in which advertisers can use Taboola’s platform to buy Yahoo's native ad units across its digital properties (though Yahoo still takes care of its display ads). Taboola also sells native ads for Apple within the Apple News and Apple Stocks apps in the US.

The FTC Is Taking a Closer Look at Omnicom's IPG Takeover🔒- The FTC has made a second request for more information and documents regarding Omnicom's proposed acquisition of fellow agency holding company IPG. Omnicom is characterizing the request as a customary part of the regulatory review, but ~75% of mergers that receive a second request are either abandoned or restructured, according to the FTC. If regulators approve the $13B deal, the combined company would be the world's largest agency holding company by revenue, leapfrogging Publicis and WPP. Both Omnicom and IPG maintain that the sale will close in the second half of this year, though some are reportedly expressing concerns that it won't happen, including consultants who attended a recent closed-door meeting with Omnicom CEO John Wren and IPG CEO Philippe Krakowsky. Shareholders approved the deal Tuesday.

Coca-Cola Co. moves North America media business from WPP to Publicis🔒- WPP will keep the rest of Coca-Cola’s global business for creative, media, data, and marketing technology, but Publicis will oversee media and data in the U.S. and Canada. The Coca-Cola account is huge, with 200 brands for sodas, sports drinks, juices, coffee, tea, and plant-based drinks. The US portion is also big, with ad spend reaching an estimated $1.8B in 2023. Coca-Cola's measured US media spending through the first nine months of 2024 rang in at $409M and $621M in 2023. Losing that part of the account is a big loss for WPP, which won the account in 2021 and predicts flat or negative organic growth for the year. It’s another big win for Publicis, which continues its hot streak.

Luma’s Crown as Adtech’s Top M&A Dealmaker Is Under Threat🔒- Investment bank Atlas Technology Group is gaining ground on dominant player LUMA Partners in ad tech M&A after helping Lotame and Rockerbox recently find exits. Three former LUMA Partners vets—Brian Andersen, Mark Greenbaum, and Dick Filippini—left the company in 2023 to launch Atlas. While the startup has focused on SaaS companies, it isn't surprising that the recent deals it's done have been in ad tech, considering that's LUMA's bread and butter. Since the beginning of 2025, Atlas has been involved in five new M&A deals, while LUMA hasn't announced any, though its pipeline is robust, according to CEO Terence Kawaja. There are other players in the investment bank space, of course, and with ad tech M&A activity continuing to gain steam, there should be plenty of work for everyone this year.

Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓 

Mediaocean Unveils Innovid as Unified Brand for Global Ad Tech Business - Mediaocean has merged Innovid with Flashtalking to create a new brand under the Innovid name, offering creative personalization, ad serving, measurement, and optimization.

LG Loses Again Over Firing Ad Tech Startup Alphonso's Founders🔒- LG acquired CTV data company Alphonso in 2021 to power LG Ads. In January, Alphonso's founding team and minority shareholders won a lawsuit against LG for wrongful termination and board misconduct. Last week, the Delaware Supreme Court upheld the decision.

Perion Announces Adoption of Unified ID 2.0 Powered by The Trade Desk to Bridge First-Party Data and Omnichannel Scale - The third-party cookie alternative will work within the Perion One platform and alongside Perion's proprietary tech SORT, an AI-based tool that predicts consumer mindset.

Brian Wieser revises ad forecast downward as U.S. ad market grows wary🔒- Wieser predicts non-political ad spend to grow 3.6% this year, down from 4.5% growth previously forecast, due to tariffs, a slowing economy, and macroeconomic uncertainty. Not good.

IOC and Comcast NBCUniversal Agree on Groundbreaking Partnership for the New Digital Era, Including an Extension of their Olympic Media Rights Agreement Until 2036 - The extension of the media rights for the 2033-2036 cycle is valued at $3B. It covers the Olympic Winter Games Salt Lake City-Utah 2034 and the Olympic Games 2036, for which the host has yet to be determined.

Wonder Acquires Tastemade for Its Latest Quest: to Make a ‘Mealtime Super App’🔒- Food-delivery startup Wonder is paying $90M for media company Tastemade, adding an international production company, content studio, and ad business to its portfolio.

Reddit Allows Users To Block Specific Advertisers - If a Reddit user blocks an ad from their feed, the platform will hide all ads from that advertiser for that user for a year or more.

Advertisers upped women’s sports spend by triple digits in 2024 - TV ad spend for women's sports soared by 139% last year compared to 2023. Engagement for the average ad was 40% higher than the average ad on prime-time TV.

Apple, Mozilla, Advertisers Back Google - Apple and Mozilla receive billions of dollars to make Google's search engine the default in Safari and Firefox. Unsurprisingly, they don't want to lose the revenue when Google gets punished in its search antitrust case. Other companies are also voicing support for Google. Could such a ruling hurt these companies more than Google itself?

That’s It For This Week 👋

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