August 6th-August 12th // Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes

Below is a roundup of last week’s notable industry news, with summaries and our opinions. Q2 earnings this week did not paint as rosy of a picture for the industry as last week’s earnings…

The Trade Desk (👎): Revenue was up 19% to $694M, beating estimates, but growth decelerated from 26% a year ago. CFO Laura Schenkein departed, replaced by Alex Kayyal. Kokai, Trade Desk’s AI-powered interface, accounts for 75% of all budgets now. Analysts voiced concerns about Amazon's expanding DSP market share, to which Jeff Green said, "Amazon is not a competitor, and Google really isn't much of a competitor anymore either.” Q3 guidance suggests further slowdown amid tariff uncertainty. Analysts didn’t like any of this and downgraded TTD’s stock.🔒 Shares crashed 39% for its worst day ever.

AppLovin (👍): Revenue was up 77% to $1.26B, missing estimates. Net income more than doubled, and AppLovin's AI-powered AXON platform is driving growth. CEO Adam Foroughi said the Apple-Epic legal fallout could create a "tailwind" within 4-8 quarters as developers spend more on ads and avoid Apple's 15-30% App Store fees. Q3 guidance topped expectations. Shares popped 12%.

Pinterest (👎): Revenue was up 17% to $998M, beating estimates. Pinterest's monthly active users were up 11% to 578M, with Gen Z now comprising over half the user base. The CFO cited lingering advertiser concerns over tariffs and "broader market uncertainty." Q3 guidance topped expectations. Earnings per share missed expectations, sending shares 10% lower.

Magnite (👎): Revenue was up 6% to $173M, missing estimates. CTV revenue was up 14%, driven by partnerships with Roku, Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount. CEO Michael Barrett said Magnite is positioned to capture Google's SSP market share following the upcoming DOJ antitrust ruling, and highlighted SMB growth in programmatic CTV. Shares fell 7%.

PubMatic (👎): Revenue was up 6% to $71.1M, beating estimates. CTV revenue was up 50%, and omnichannel video grew 34%, now representing 41% of total revenue. The SSP also sees an opportunity to grab some of Google's market share in 2026. But management warned of headwinds from platform changes by a top DSP partner, putting pressure on PubMatic to diversify its DSP mix. Shares fell 28%.

LiveRamp (👎): Revenue was up 11% to $195M, beating estimates. LiveRamp says it is seeing momentum in its Data Collaboration Network and new Cross Media Intelligence measurement solution. LiveRamp raised its full-year revenue guidance but its guidance for this quarter came in below expectations. Shares fell by 6%. 

IAS (👍): Revenue was up 16% to $149.2M, beating estimates. The media measurement platform saw strong growth across all segments: optimization revenue up 16% to $67.9M, publisher revenue surging 36% to $24.3M, and measurement revenue up 8% to $57M. IAS raised full-year revenue guidance, citing strong adoption of AI-powered products. Shares rose 11%.

Viant (👎): Revenue was up 18% to $77.9M, beating estimates. CTV now accounts for 45% of ad spend on the platform. The company touted the launch of the third phase of its ViantAI product suite, AI Measurement and Analysis, and a $250M pipeline in potential ad spend opportunities. Shares fell 10%. 

Perion (👎): Revenue was down 5% to $103M, beating estimates. Advertising Solutions revenue was up 8%, the first year-over-year gain in two years. The company launched a new performance CTV solution, expanded to Korea, and the Greenbids integration is on track. Shares fell. 

Taboola (🤷): Revenue was up 8.7% to $465.5M, beating estimates. The native ads company bought back nearly 12% of shares in H1 and expanded its repurchase program by $200M. Taboola raised full-year revenue guidance, beating estimates. Shares rose 4% before falling.

Teads (👎): Revenue was up 60% to $343.1M, missing estimates. It's the first full quarter for the combined company, which includes Outbrain, and some integration benefits "are taking longer to materialize." Teads chose not to reaffirm its full-year guidance and will focus on reigniting growth. Shares fell 19%.

WPP (👎): Organic revenue was down 5.8%. Operating profit for the first half of the year was down 47.8%. The agency holding company has reduced its headcount by 7,000 employees. WPP will conduct a strategic review of its business (see below). Shares fell nearly 5% to a 16-year low.

Disney (👎): Revenue was up 2% to $23.65B, missing estimates. Disney+ added 1.8M subscribers to reach 128M, with direct-to-consumer streaming delivering $346M in operating income vs. a loss last year. Linear TV revenue is still a drag, but Disney raised full-year guidance. Shares fell 2%.

Warner Bros. Discovery (🤷): Revenue was up 1% to $9.81B, beating estimates,🔒 powered by strong box office wins. Max added 3.4M subscribers to reach 125.7M and turned profitable. Studios revenue is expected to remain strong. WBD plans to split into two companies next year. Shares gained initially before falling.

Opinion: Last week, we talked about the "AI dividend"—how Google, Meta, and Amazon turned AI investments into measurable, incremental revenue and soaring stock prices. This week's earnings reveal the flip side: independent ad tech is getting crushed by the same AI revolution enriching walled gardens. (okay, yes, we know, AppLovin is an outlier)

The irony is brutal. Independent ad tech built its reputation on transparency, flexibility, and human control—attributes AI makes obsolete. The Trade Desk gave agencies granular control over programmatic buying; agencies, in turn, billed clients for time spent optimizing campaigns. The Trade Desk rode this playbook to a $60B+ valuation at its peak. But now that AI can optimize 75% of budgets automatically, that control becomes a liability, not an asset.

Walled gardens don't have this problem. Google, Meta, and Amazon sell outcomes, not transparency, and not control. They have proprietary data and inventory at scale, which enables them to push advertisers toward black box AI that “works”. Advertisers happily trade transparency and control for performance.

When independent platforms automate away transparency and control using AI, they lose their differentiator without gaining performance advantages. The problem compounds when you take into account that open web publishers are also getting crushed by AI. Since indie ad tech relies on the open web for ad inventory, they're getting hit from both sides—their value proposition is eroding while their inventory base shrinks.

So what? The future belongs to:

Magnite hints at potential future legal action against Google🔒- The SSP could be following in OpenX's footsteps with a lawsuit against Google for its ad tech practices, which have been deemed monopolistic by a federal judge. During its Q2 earnings call, Magnite CEO Michael Barrett said, “And as it relates to any possible litigation and a civil action, I will just stick with the verbiage that we used in the script that we’re looking at, and we think there’s a lot of merit there.” Barrett said any court-mandated changes to Google's ad tech stack would also boost Magnite's competitive position. OpenX filed a lawsuit against Google last week arguing that Google’s policy to require publishers to use its ad server forced OpenX to shut down its own ad server in 2019, and that Google's ad auction policies hurt competing ad exchanges and ad networks. We expect more copycat lawsuits.

Sir Martin Sorrell’s S4 Capital in early talks over merger deal - The challenger agency holding company confirmed that it has received a merger proposal from MSQ Partners, owned by private equity group One Equity Partners. S4 would reportedly acquire MSQ to form a combined company if talks progress, though S4 cautioned that discussions are "very preliminary" with no certainty that a deal will happen. The potential merger follows rejected acquisition attempts by US firms Stagwell and New Mountain Capital over the past year. S4 reached a $6.76B valuation in 2021 before falling to about $189M today due to economic headwinds and AI disruption. Sorrell launched S4 seven years ago after leading WPP for 33 years, growing S4 with more than 20 acquisitions.

Hulu App to Be Phased Out as Disney Is ‘Fully Integrating’ Service Into Disney+ - Disney's unified streaming app will launch in 2026 as the company combines Disney+ and Hulu into a single platform, following the company's $9B buyout of Comcast's 33% stake in Hulu earlier this year. Disney CEO Bob Iger said the integration will create cost synergies, reduce subscriber churn, and unlock new advertising bundling opportunities. The company will still provide separate subscription options for customers who want standalone services for Disney+ or Hulu. The move extends globally as Hulu will replace the Star brand on Disney+ internationally starting this fall. Meanwhile, Hulu's live TV business will be spun into a joint venture with Fubo, and the Hulu + Live TV service will eventually integrate into Disney+ by 2026.

Perplexity offers to buy Google’s Chrome browser for $34.5B - The unsolicited bid is worth more than Perplexity's value, but the startup says it has backing from several investors. This is either brilliant positioning by the AI search startup or a desperate stunt for attention. Ari Paparo predicts the judge in Google's antitrust case will order a Chrome spinoff as soon as this week. Needless to say, this would have a seismic impact on the entire tech industry, especially digital advertising.

Elon Musk says X plans to introduce ads in Grok’s responses - Elon Musk announced plans to integrate advertising directly into Grok's AI responses during a livestreamed conversation with advertisers, positioning it as a way to fund expensive processing chips needed for AI development. Musk envisions an automated ad system where brands can "upload an ad and do nothing else," with Grok handling targeting and optimization for ads served to users within Grok itself. Seems a bit desperate? The move comes weeks after CEO Linda Yaccarino's departure following her two-year effort to rebuild advertiser relationships damaged by brand safety concerns and extremist content on the platform. 

OpenAI’s GPT-5 is here - The company launched its first "unified" AI model that merges reasoning capabilities with quick responses. Which means a user can input a simple query or a complex set of instructions and the model will simply figure out how to respond. GPT-5 is meant to be easier to use, faster, and less prone to hallucination / errors. It can also perform complex “agentic” tasks such as creating software applications or compiling research briefs. GPT-5 is now the default model for all free ChatGPT users, which is part of OpenAI's mission to give advanced AI to as many as possible. While GPT-5 slightly edges competitors on coding benchmarks and PhD-level science questions, it performs roughly equal to Anthropic's Claude and xAI's Grok in other areas, suggesting the AI race remains tight.

One more thing, GPT-5 has four new preset “personalities” you can toggle between: robot, nerd, listener, or cynic.

WPP Readies Strategy Review for AI Era🔒- Incoming CEO Cindy Rose will lead a review of WPP’s strategy and spending priorities when she takes over the top job in September. 

Google Has Been Quietly Using Gemini AI to Weed Out Ad Fraud and Invalid Traffic🔒- A pilot program trimmed mobile invalid traffic by 40%.

Zillow Pilots Containerized RTB, As It Rethinks The Equation Of Quality And Cost - The pilot test with Index Exchange and Chalice led Zillow to conclude that metrics related to CPM, reach, and frequency can be misleading.

Shell Shutters Its Volta EV Charging And Media Division - Volta, which focused heavily on advertising, was valued at $2B in 2021 when it IPO’d by SPAC, but it was losing $140M annually by late 2024. Yet another cautionary tale for commerce media networks.

Paramount buys UFC rights in $7.7B, 7-year deal in first major move post-Skydance merger -  This could be the end for ESPN+'s pay-per-view model used for some premium UFC events.

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