Mediagazer: As Google restricts third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users, marketers, adtech companies, and publishers say Google has not done enough to prepare the market (Wall Street Journal)

11:20 AM ET, January 4, 2024

Top News:

Sara Fischer / Axios:

Sources: The Messenger is seeking to raise around $20M amid layoffs and financial struggles; it launched in 2023 after a $50M raise — Digital news start up The Messenger is seeking to raise around $20 million amid layoffs and financial struggles, sources tell Axios.

Discussion: @ernie.tedium.co, @themaxburns, @rolandsmartin, @henryporters, @scottnover, @jasonshevrin and The Wrap

Max Tani / Semafor:
Sources: The Messenger's board weighed shutting the site down at a December 29 meeting, and Jimmy Finkelstein has expressed a willingness to sell the site

Kim Masters / The Hollywood Reporter:

A look at the men allied with Nelson Peltz and their histories with Disney: Ike Perlmutter, the ousted Marvel chairman, and former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo — As ousted Marvel mogul Ike Perlmutter and activist investor Nelson Peltz enlist former Disney exec Jay Rasulo in their quest to reshape the studio …

Discussion: @erik_hayden, @thr and @kimmasters

Variety:
Blackwells nominates three candidates to Disney's board to rival Nelson Peltz's proxy fight, and says Disney's ValueAct deal is “a disappointing defensive move”

Discussion: @xpangler, GlobeNewswire News Room, Radio & Television …, The Information, Deadline, Reuters and Bloomberg

Michael Flaherty / Axios:
Hedge funds vie for power at Disney: ValueAct supports Disney's board slate, Trian and Ancora support Nelson Peltz, and Blackwells pushes other board candidates

Discussion: The Information, Los Angeles Times, UPI, Reuters, IndieWire, New York Post, Wall Street Journal, The Walt Disney Company, Bloomberg, The Wrap, Variety, Financial Times and The Hollywood Reporter

Michael M. Grynbaum / New York Times:

RedBird IMI invests in Media Res, the independent studio behind “The Morning Show”; Jeff Zucker plans to take a seat on the studio's board — The former CNN president will return to Hollywood by investing in the studio behind streaming hits like “The Morning Show” on Apple TV+.

Discussion: Variety, The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter

Brian Steinberg / Variety:

GroupM forms a consortium with Disney, Roku, NBCU, YouTube, and others to push for standardized measurements and ad formats that can be used across streamers — One of the nation's biggest investors of ad dollars wants to push big large streamers to work together when it comes to commercials.

Discussion: Adweek, Ad Age, Next TV, Deadline and GroupM

Wall Street Journal:

As Google restricts third-party cookies for 1% of Chrome users, marketers, adtech companies, and publishers say Google has not done enough to prepare the market — Search giant plans to remove a technology seen as critical to the digital-ad industry — Google is going forward …

Discussion: Ad Age, Gizmodo, The Register, Press Gazette, Digiday and Adweek, more at Techmeme »

The Information:

Sources: OpenAI offered some media companies as little as $1M-$5M/year to license their articles for model training; Apple offered more but wants more rights — OpenAI has offered some media firms as little as between $1 million and $5 million annually to license their news articles for use …

Discussion: @garymarcus and @alex, more at Techmeme »

Paul Sandle / Reuters:

Layered Reality announces Elvis Evolution, an AI, AR, and holographic-based show, launching in London in 2024 before traveling to Las Vegas, Tokyo, and Berlin — Elvis Presley fans who missed out on seeing their hero when he was alive will be able to catch a glimpse of the King …

Discussion: Billboard, The Guardian, BBC, @michaelsocolow, The A.V. Club, Variety and Rolling Stone, more at Techmeme »

Bloomberg:

Sources: TikTok aims to grow TikTok Shop US' merchandise volume tenfold to $17.5B in 2024 and plans to increase merchant fees to 6% of each sale in April 2024 — - ByteDance's video app is fast expanding beyond advertising … The 2024 merchandise volume goal for the US version of TikTok Shop …

Discussion: @herrmanndigital, @rishabhmjain, @alejandrochahin, @yohaas, @carnage4life@mas.to, WWD, Forbes, Insider Intelligence, The Information and MediaPost, more at Techmeme »

Agence France-Presse:

Tunisian authorities arrest Al Jazeera reporter Samir Sassi, one week after the arrest of Tunisian journalist Zied el-Heni, who criticized a minister — Samir Sassi joins growing number of journalists imprisoned and prosecuted in country — Tunisian authorities have arrested an Al Jazeera reporter …

Discussion: IFJ

Spencer Soper / Bloomberg:

BOA analysis: Amazon's video ad push will boost annual revenue by up to $5B, comprising $3B in video ad sales and $1.8B in Prime users paying to avoid ads — - Subscribers can pay extra $3 per month for ad-free streaming — Amazon.com Inc.'s push into video advertising will boost annual revenue …

Aditya Kalra / Reuters:

Sources: Disney and Reliance executives signed a non-binding term sheet in December and both have hired law firms to do antitrust due diligence for their merger — Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries (RELI.NS) and Walt Disney (DIS.N) have appointed law firms …

Discussion: Variety and Wall Street Journal

Kari Paul / The Guardian:

Q&A with Jacob Bakkila, who ran the popular @Horse_ebooks Twitter account for two years, on the inspiration for the language bot, AI chatbots, and more — By reusing and repurposing existing writing into viral fragments on Twitter, the account functioned like today's chatbots.

Georg Szalai / The Hollywood Reporter:

MPA: the Asia Pacific video industry grew 5.5% in 2023 to hit $145B in revenue, with a 13% jump in online video sales to $57B; TV revenue grew under 1% to $98B — The video industry in the region grew by 5.5 percent in 2023 to hit $145 billion in revenue, says research firm MPA.

Discussion: @livemint, Livemint, WORLD SCREEN, Advanced Television and Variety

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More News:

Winston Cho / The Hollywood Reporter:
In a lawsuit, a Disney employee claims she was sexually assaulted by former VP of distribution Nolan Gonzales and that management didn't escalate concerns to HR

Discussion: Deadline and Bloomberg Law

Michael Schneider / Variety:
After a WGA protest, the Television Academy and Fox reverse an earlier plan and return the Emmy for variety series outstanding writing to the Emmys telecast

Discussion: @wgawest, IndieWire, The Wrap and The Hollywood Reporter

Oliver Darcy:
Internal note: Alex MacCallum, who became The Washington Post's chief revenue officer in July 2023, is leaving; sources: she's in talks to join CNN

Discussion: @dylanbyers, @benmullin, @dylanbyers, Oliver arcy, Puck and Variety

Advanced Television:
Nielsen: Prime Video's Thursday Night Football averaged 11.86M viewers per game in the US during the 2023 season, up 24% from 2022 season's 9.58M viewers

Discussion: Amazon Studios, The Streamable, Awful Announcing, MediaPost and Media Play News

Earlier Picks:

Marc Schneider / Billboard:
UMG and Tencent Music Entertainment renew their licensing agreement, allowing Tencent to distribute UMG content on QQ Music, Kogou Music, Kuwo Music, and WeSing

Discussion: Variety, Music Ally, PR Newswire and Music Business Worldwide

Jay Peters / The Verge:
Twitch changes its sexual content policies again and says the platform won't allow streamers to “imply or suggest that they are fully or partially nude”

Discussion: Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Forbes, safety.twitch.tv, @carnage4life@mas.to, ClutchPoints and @MikeElgan@mastodon.social, more at Techmeme »

Alex Weprin / The Hollywood Reporter:
T-Mobile plans to bundle Hulu's ad-supported tier with its Go5G Next plan from January 24; Netflix and Apple TV+ are already free on the Go5G Next plan

Discussion: The Information, BGR, The Streamable, 9to5Mac, Variety, MediaPost and Cord Cutters News

Charlotte Tobitt / Press Gazette:
The UK Editors' Code of Practice Committee rejects calls to extend the discrimination clause in the code to cover Jews, Muslims, those with ADHD, and others

From Techmeme:

Meta:
Meta launches Llama 4 Maverick with 400B parameters and Scout with 109B parameters and a 10M context window, and previews Behemoth with 2T total parameters

Tom Warren / The Verge:
Microsoft unveils a demo of Quake II generated using its Muse AI model, with limited playability in a browser, as part of the company's Copilot for Gaming push

Xinmei Shen / South China Morning Post:
DeepSeek and Tsinghua University researchers detail an approach combining reasoning methods to let LLMs deliver better and faster results to general queries

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