Next in Media by Mike Shields

He may want to head down to Bentonville Paramount and Warner Bros. are finally one company. And new media mogul David Ellison has made it clear through the announcement of his new executive team where his initial priorities lie. While he laid out who’s in charge of programming and streaming, it’s telling that there has been no news about leadership in ad sales or ad tech - you need to make Hollywood and the studios happy. It’s what the regulators cared most about, after all.

This past summer, Adam Bauer was surprised to see Matt Damon and a Trojan horse show up on Discord. Damon’s arrival was part of an activation for the mega-hit summer tentpole The Odyssey, which Bauer, Discord Global Vice President of Advertising, hadn’t initially expected. It turns out that Discord had created a dedicated space for the movie, where the cast recorded videos and sent visitors on movie-related quests. “We had a hundred thousand people join that server in four days,”said Bauer.

Yes, there’s a hitch Amazon once again made a bold collective statement at its annual unBoxed conference: we see it all. And because of that, we can help you figure out how to best spend every last dollar. The ecommerce giant’s obvious advantage - Amazon knows who consumers are, what they see and what they buy, since they are logged into Amazon.com, Fire TV, Prime Video, Amazon Audio and so on.

YouTube has a huge lead, but Meta has crazy scale Last week, YouTube hosted its fifth annual Made On YouTube event in New York, where the Google-owned video juggernaut unveiled a slew of new products and tools aimed at helping creators succeed, both in terms of viewership and revenue. “We want YouTube to be the most lucrative platform,” said Travis Katz, head of YouTube Shopping.

I am partnering up with Max Power Gaming’s Stephen Dypiangco - one of my go-to analysts if I want to understand what is going on in the gaming world, particularly Roblox - for a fun drinks event during Advertising Week. Specifically, we are co-hosting a Gaming-Meets-Advertising Mixer on Monday, October 5 during Advertising Week, sponsored by Super Awesome and Exclusible.

I wanted to highlight a few numbers and trends that I think may not have gotten enough attention of late: • 27%. That’s how much of advertising revenue Madison and Wall predicts will flow through automated AI-powered systems like Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ in just a few years: $158 billion by 2030.

Attention! In-game advertising is hot once again. I am co-hosting a drinks mixer with gaming industry analyst Stephen Dypiangco of Max Power Gaming on the Monday of Advertising Week, where we hope to bring together a cross-section of executives from the advertising, media, and gaming worlds. You should definitely join us. Please sign up here.

Web publishers are hurting. Search referrals are drying up, social media traffic is unreliable and revenue sharing models are unpredictable. Plus, there is more professionally-produced and creator-driven content available to stream than ever before. Sounds like a great time to launch an original scripted series.

There is a great song in the hit musical “The Book of Mormon” in which the singer goes through a list of Mormon beliefs, which increasingly sound more outlandish as he goes on (such as, “In 1978, God changed his mind about Black people.”) I thought of this as I recalled some of Trade Desk CEO Jeff Green’s stated beliefs, such as: “I believe it’s only a matter of time before the majority of spend is on the open internet and not inside of walled gardens.” “We believe that with this focus,...

Regulators are clearly trying to stamp down social media usage, particularly among children. But does that apply to ‘social media’ consumption that happens on TV? Or does YouTube have a hedge against the [coming set of] laws? And could TikTok and Instagram end up following their lead?