July 8th-July 14th // Estimated Reading Time: 9 minutes
Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Netflix cannot afford to chill…
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Top Stories 👁
Netflix is exploring live TV and bundles as it struggles to keep viewers hooked🔒
Source: The Wall Street Journal
July 9th, 2026
Summary: Netflix's share of total TV viewership fell to 7.8% in April, its lowest level since May 2025. Execs are now weighing adding live channels built around specific shows or genres and live sports, including possible bids for the 2030 and 2034 World Cups. The appeal for advertisers is that live content can't be skipped. Netflix may also let users subscribe to other streaming services, like NBCUniversal's Peacock, right from within the Netflix app.
Netflix walked away from buying Warner Bros. Discovery earlier this year, and now it's reportedly eyeing a smaller target: Letterboxd, the film-review app with 30M+ members. Sony, Paramount, and PE firm TPG are also circling, with bankers floating a $250M price tag, up big from Letterboxd's $50-60M valuation in 2023.
All this news lands right before Q2 earnings Thursday. Optimists point to the ad tier: it now has 250M+ users and ad revenue set to nearly double to ~$3B. Skeptics point to a warning sign: Viewing hours for top shows fell 13% last quarter. The stock is down 40%+ this year.
Opinion: Four forces are hitting Netflix at the same time:
Consolidation means fewer streamers, but the ones left standing have larger libraries, deeper pockets, and are ready for war.
AI is flooding the market with content, which means library size becomes more of a commodity; data and distribution become the differentiator instead.
Live is the last ad format that can't be skipped, so it commands a significant premium.
Creators and social platforms are winning the engagement war.
Every one of Netflix’s moves is in direct response to these forces. Selling Peacock inside its own app turns Netflix into a distributor. Bidding on the World Cup and building live channels manufactures appointment viewing, and appointment viewing creates more valuable ad inventory. Buying Letterboxd adds a creator / social layer to drive more engagement and compete with the TikToks and YouTubes of the world for attention.
Good on Netflix! And good for the ad industry!
Here's the risk: for years, Netflix earned a premium valuation precisely because it didn't need any of this. No affiliate deals, no rights bidding wars, no bundles, no ads. It was the disciplined, tech-forward, subscription-based alternative to legacy media. But all of its recent moves and these rumored initiatives make Netflix look more and more like legacy media. The more Netflix looks like legacy media, the more Wall Street will start valuing it like legacy media — and those multiples are a fraction of what Netflix commands today.
Other Notable Headlines 👀
Meta's AI advertising dreams have become a nightmare for brands - Advertisers say Meta's AI ad tools are generating distorted images and incorrect product details without warning. REI recently dealt with public criticism after an AI-generated bike ad showed an extra handlebar. Meta is also facing a number of regulatory headaches. EU officials have preliminarily determined that Instagram and Facebook run afoul of the Digital Services Act, pointing to addictive design features like endless feeds and autoplay video. That finding could carry a penalty worth up to 6% of Meta's yearly global revenue. Separately, a group of US state attorneys general is pursuing a case against Meta tied to claims that the company misled users about its data practices and prioritized profits over kids’ safety. With an August trial date approaching and EU scrutiny building, Meta has several serious challenges to juggle simultaneously.
OpenAI's ad business is on pace to miss its own forecast by 90%, analyst says🔒 - OpenAI has projected it will hit $100B in ad revenue by 2030, but eMarketer is casting doubt on that prediction. eMarketer estimates that the ENTIRE US chatbot advertising market will top out at only around $5.4B by 2030. Hitting $100B in ad revenue by 2030 would mean OpenAI absorbs the bulk of search advertising budgets, becomes the leading player in a fully mature chatbot ad ecosystem, and outperforms every ad format that came before it, simultaneously. Seems unlikely. The discrepancy stands out given OpenAI filed IPO paperwork last month and is using its ad revenue projection to support a trillion-dollar valuation.
12 state attorneys general sue to block the Paramount-WBD merger - Led by California's Rob Bonta, the coalition filed suit in federal court arguing the combined company would control close to a third of both film releases and basic cable programming, which they say would raise prices and shrink content choices for consumers. Paramount's agreement to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery in full is valued at $110B, or $31 per share, and the deal already has sign-off from the Department of Justice and several international regulators. Paramount pushed back, calling the challenge inconsistent with how the media industry actually competes today and arguing the deal would help it better compete against Netflix. The states have asked the companies to hold off closing until the case plays out, and have signaled they'll seek a restraining order if that request is ignored. The EU is still reviewing the merger separately, with its own decision expected around July 22nd.
VideoAmp, Nielsen ONE pull out of MRC accreditation process - Neither company has explained why they have withdrawn from the Media Rating Council's accreditation review; the news came buried in the Media Rating Council's latest quarterly update. The timing stands out for Nielsen, which had a pre-audit MRC review in July 2025 and still promotes its cross-platform measurement product as the benchmark for the industry. VideoAmp entered the review process in mid-2024 as it worked to position itself as a rival to Nielsen alongside Comscore and iSpot, but the council's report indicates VideoAmp stopped moving the process forward. Comscore earned its own MRC approval in March, narrowing the pool of validated challengers even further. Maybe MRC accreditation doesn’t matter all that much anymore.
Other Notable Headlines
(that you should know about too) 🤓
WPP plans to cut hundreds more jobs this year as its restructuring continues🔒 - Some employees at agencies including VML were notified of cuts on Monday. Its workforce is already about 1,200 people below 2020 levels.
tvScientific by Pinterest launches Certified Measurement Partner Program - Incrmntal, Measured, Singular, and WorkMagic are among the first partners advertisers can use to measure tvScientific CTV campaigns. More are on the way.
The New York Times' top editor explains why its new push into video is a 'race against time'🔒 - Executive editor Joe Kahn says video is now central to the newsroom's strategy. He says the shift is as significant as the print-to-digital transition.
Integral Ad Science appoints Lidiane Jones CEO - Jones previously led Bumble and Slack, and takes over from Lisa Utzschneider, who will stay on as a board advisor through the end of 2026.
Google will now disclose which ads are made with AI - A new "How this ad was made" disclosure is rolling out for ads on Google Search, YouTube, and Discover.
MFA ad spend is increasing. Is AI slop to blame? - Ad spend on made-for-advertising sites rose from 0.6% to 1.1% of ad budgets in Q1, the first uptick since 2023. The ANA points to AI-generated content as a factor.
The Trade Desk taps ex-Google and LinkedIn ad exec Penry Price for board appointment🔒 - Price previously helped lead Google's $3.1 billion DoubleClick acquisition and held senior roles at LinkedIn and Dstillery.
Investors can proceed with suit against Zeta Global, judge rules - The lawsuit centers on claims that some of Zeta's 240M-person data set, including data from Disqus, wasn't actually collected with opt-in consent.
Adobe Advertising just launched its own custom algorithms product - The tool lets Adobe's DSP use Adobe Analytics data directly to train a brand's ad-bidding model.
Adelaide introduces the AU Ecosystem for Creative Partners - The offering connects insights from creative measurement partners like CreativeX, DAIVID, and System1 to Adelaide's attention-based media quality scoring. It's meant to bring creative and media planning, which are typically evaluated separately, into one decision-making process.
MRC Issues 'Interim' Guidance On AI In Media Measurement - The principles cover areas like explainability, fairness, transparency, and accountability as the group reevaluates its standards amid AI's growing impact on media measurement.
Once unimaginable, publishers are preparing to opt out of Google Search🔒 - Google's crawler forces publishers to choose between letting it crawl its content to feed Google’s AI AND appearing in Google search results, or nothing at all, since the same crawler handles both. Cloudflare just announced that blocking the crawler will be the default setting for websites that have ads.
X just tweaked its algorithm to make it more friendly, less battleground - The update boosts visibility of posts from friends, aiming to make the timeline feel less like a free-for-all with randos.
That’s It For This Week 👋
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