• Free TV startup Telly hired Seho Lee as its first advertising president.
• Lee, formerly of Uber, will pitch Telly's personalized ad capabilities.
• After early distribution hiccups, the company says 2025 will be a big growth year.

Telly, the startup that's giving away TVs in exchange for viewers' personal data, just hired its first advertising president as it gears up for an ad blitz.

Seho Lee is hitting the ground running, with a packed meeting schedule with marketing and ad agency executives at the CES electronics show this week. He comes from Uber, where he helped Uber Ads become a $1 billion business.

Pluto TV cofounder Ilya Pozin launched Telly in May 2023. The startup raised a seed round of over $20 million from investors, including media analyst Rich Greenfield's LightShed Ventures and VaynerMedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk.

Telly gives users a 55-inch, 4K HDR display with a separate, programmable screen that sits under the main display and shows news, sports, games, and other content. Users can also use Telly to make video calls, play video games, do fitness workouts, play music, and connect to smart-home devices like doorbells and thermostats.

At launch, Pozin said the Telly would be worth $1,000 if sold at retail. But it's free for users who consent to an extensive questionnaire about brands they prefer and products they use.

Telly has had early interest from advertisers

Many advertisers in the current marketplace are demanding measurable results from their ads. Telly's general pitch is that it serves personalized ads on the second screen that encourage viewers to take action without interrupting them.

"We're bringing a new and innovative format to the big screen that's never been really utilized before with our dual-screen operating system," Lee said.

Telly has seen some interest from advertisers. In January 2024, it was named a participant in WPP ad-buying giant GroupM's Ad Innovation Accelerator program. The group sought to create ad formats that could be distributed across TV platforms like Telly, Roku, YouTube, and more. Telly said it's worked on a pilot basis with several partners in categories like fast food, retail, and car insurance, mostly pulling from digital and video advertising budgets. It said it plans to share case studies from those partners this year.

"We're big fans of the innovation Telly is bringing to TV, both for consumers and advertisers," said Sam Bloom, head of partnerships at ad agency PMG, which has used Telly on behalf of advertising clients. "Telly's ability to transform the biggest screen in the home into a dynamic and measurable platform is a game changer."

An obvious limitation is distribution. Telly launched with a big media push and a goal of giving away 500,000 TVs in its first year. It fell short of that, though, only distributing "thousands" by the end of the year, the company told Marketing Brew. Telly switched device manufacturers and has been distributing more TVs at giveaways around Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Telly execs said there's strong interest based on word-of-mouth signups but wouldn't disclose how many households currently have Tellys or detail its distribution goals.

"I truly do think we'll be one of the fastest growing TV brands in 2025 and potentially the largest and fastest growing 55-inch TV," Lee said. "Our ambitions are to create a multibillion-dollar business."

Telly says its ads can make TV spots work harder

For now, Lee is focused on showing advertisers what they can actually do with the TV.

Telly has a variety of ad units it offers, some of which the company is debuting at CES.

To get the free Telly, people have to answer a 120-question survey about their location, spending habits, and preferred brands. Telly can use that information to create localized ads for brands on the bottom screen. These are meant to sync with and boost the performance of the TV ad running on the top screen (from either network TV or a streaming service).

State Farm, for example, ran a companion ad that let people schedule an appointment with a local agent by clicking.

Another format Telly offers is a tune-in ad, which asks a viewer to click to watch a show, movie, or other offering.

Telly gave other examples of ways advertisers could use its ad products, such as a fast-food chain using the second screen to invite people to order food.

Most of Telly's ads are sold through automated channels, making it easier for advertisers to jump on board. Others require custom creative. Telly is also exploring other ways advertisers can buy, like by time block.

• Media lawyers weighed in on Justin Baldoni's lawsuit against the New York Times over its Blake Lively article.
• They said it'll be hard to prove libel but that the suit could be effective amid a broader strategy.
• The Times defended its story and said it would vigorously fight the lawsuit.

Justin Baldoni's libel lawsuit against The New York Times may be tough to win but could help him in the court of public opinion, media lawyers told Business Insider.

Baldoni was part of a group that sued the Times this week over its bombshell story on Blake Lively's sexual-harassment claims against him. Baldoni and Lively starred in "It Ends With Us," a film that debuted in August.

The libel suit accused the Times of relying "almost entirely" on what it described as "Lively's unverified and self-serving narrative" and said the newspaper disregarded "an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives" in its December 21 story.

The bar for someone considered a public figure, like Baldoni, to prove libel is high. Public figures have to show that a news outlet not only published false information but also knew it was false or had a reckless disregard for the truth, a standard called "actual malice."

"The suit against the paper is going to be an uphill battle," said Desirée Moore, a partner at Venable LLP who specializes in similar disputes.

The Times said in a statement that its story was "meticulously and responsibly reported" and that it planned to vigorously defend against the suit.

Many jurisdictions offer broad protections for news outlets to publish accusations that are deemed newsworthy and also part of official proceedings — even if they know those accusations are false.

The Times article was largely based on a California Civil Rights Department complaint (CRD) that Lively filed, which would be considered official proceedings. It included excerpts from text messages and emails that the CRD said she obtained through a subpoena. Several media lawyers told BI that this could help insulate the Times.

The "fair report privilege" in New York, where the libel suit was filed, protects the news media from defamation lawsuits when they publish accurate and fair reports of official proceedings.

"The public policy behind this privilege is that keeping citizens informed about matters of public concern is more important than protecting individual reputations," said Sean Andrade, a Los Angeles lawyer who's represented plaintiffs in libel cases.

Baldoni accused the Times of falsely attaching him to a smear campaign

Baldoni's libel suit claimed that the Times falsely accused him of a campaign to smear Lively by cherry-picking the messages it reported. The suit said the Times knew its portrayal of him and the other plaintiffs was "false, incomplete, misleading, and highly inflammatory."

The libel suit claimed, for example, that the Times' reporting on a text exchange between Baldoni's publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel omitted the use of an upside-down smiley face emoji that indicated sarcasm. The Times said in a statement to BI that its reporters didn't see the emoji in question in the version of the docs they reviewed.

If the Times took certain texts out of context, that would be "a little unethical," Andrade said. But, in his view, that alone wouldn't negate that Baldoni's reps engaged in an alleged smear campaign.

Baldoni's libel suit also claimed that the Times made a false promise by publishing its article about two hours before the deadline it gave him and others to comment.

The Times said in a statement to BI that the outlet shared the information it planned to publish with Baldoni, his production company Wayfarer Studios, and other subjects of the article, and that they chose not to talk to the Times or address any specifics. Instead, the Times said, the subjects emailed a joint statement, which the Times printed in full.

Andrade felt that while it might be fair to point out that the Times didn't provide enough time to respond, as the libel suit claimed, that doesn't necessarily make the story libelous.

Baldoni's libel suit could have aims other than victory

Media lawyers said that whether or not Baldoni prevails in court, filing a libel suit could give him other advantages.

The plaintiffs might learn something about the paper's defense in the discovery process that could help them in other potential legal fights. Baldoni's lawyer, Bryan Freedman, told NBC News that his client planned to sue Lively. Given both cases would share some underlying facts, discovery in the Times case could help in a potential case against Lively, Moore said.

The plaintiffs in the Times suit could also prevail over any future motion to dismiss, or win a small financial settlement that could let them claim victory and keep the story in the public's eye.

"There is value for him potentially in simply getting his story out and presenting a counter-narrative," Moore said. "Any time we're working with high-profile clients, we look at the long-term narrative. To the extent you can control some of it, you want people to look back and say, there was more than one narrative."

It's hard to say if the case will impact other media outlets. Armed with strong First Amendment protections, news outlets are loath to pay big settlements in libel cases lest they appear to be conceding wrongdoing, Moore said.

ABC News and Fox News have recently paid settlements in high-profile defamation cases, however. Damon Dunn, a First Amendment attorney at Clark Hill, said courts have been allowing more cases to go to juries as media companies have lost prestige in some corners.

"The Dominion settlement rattled a lot of news desks," he said of the Fox case. He didn't expect the mere filing of a case against the Times to have a ripple effect on other newsrooms, though.

• Justin Baldoni sued The New York Times over its story about Blake Lively's harassment claims.
• The lawsuit claims the Times relied on Lively's narrative and caused Baldoni damage.
• The Times defended its story as "meticulously" reported.

Justin Baldoni sued The New York Times over its bombshell story on his "It Ends With Us" costar Blake Lively's sexual-harassment claims against him.

The libel lawsuit, filed Tuesday and reviewed by Business Insider, accused the Times of relying "almost entirely" on what it described as "Lively's unverified and self-serving narrative" and said the newspaper disregarded in its December 21 story "an abundance of evidence that contradicted her claims and exposed her true motives."

The suit said Lively embarked on a negative PR campaign against Baldoni and that she falsely accused him of sexual harassment to gain control over every aspect of the production. The lawsuit included screenshots of messages that it said contradicted the Times' reporting.

The suit is the latest legal action to emerge from the romantic drama, which premiered this past summer.

A New York Times spokesperson said Wednesday the story was "meticulously and responsibly reported" based on a review of thousands of pages of original documents, including text messages and emails quoted "accurately and at length in the article."

"We published their full statement in response to the allegations in the article as well," the spokesperson said. "We plan to vigorously defend against the lawsuit."

A representative for Lively, who is not named as a defendant in the libel lawsuit, said in a statement Wednesday that "nothing in the lawsuit changes anything" about the claims in her California Civil Rights Department complaint, which the Times story cited, or a federal complaint she filed on Tuesday. The rep said they planned to address the suit's allegations in court.

Reps for Baldoni; Lively's husband, Ryan Reynolds; and others named in the suit did not respond to requests for comment.

The suit said the plaintiffs — including Baldoni, his publicists Melissa Nathan and Jennifer Abel, and the producers Jamey Heath and Steve Sarowitz — suffered damages that amounted to at least $250 million.

"This lawsuit seeks to hold the Times accountable for its role in this defamation campaign, but plaintiffs are not done," lawyers for Baldoni said in the suit. "There are other bad actors involved, and make no mistake — this will not be the last lawsuit."

Here's a breakdown of the top takeaways in the suit:

Baldoni and his fellow plaintiffs claim the Times article missed key context, wrongly bolstering Lively's case

Lively's California Civil Rights Department complaint, as reported by the Times, said Baldoni used the public-relations pros Nathan and Abel to spread negative content about Lively with the press, fearing that she would come forward with complaints about Baldoni and Jamey Heath, the lead producer of "It Ends With US" and the CEO of their production company, Wayfarer Studios.

The Times story included a text exchange that was part of Lively's complaint. In the texts, Nathan and Abel discussed a Daily Mail story that described Lively's promotion of the domestic-violence-themed film as "tone deaf."

"You really outdid yourself with this piece," Abel wrote, to which Nathan replied: "That's why you hired me right? I'm the best."'

The libel suit said the Times omitted a text from Nathan preceding the exchange where she said she was uninvolved in the story's publication, writing, "Damn this is unfair because it's also not me."

The suit said the Times also didn't include Abel's use of the upside-down smiley face emoji when she wrote, "You really outdid yourself." It added that the emoji showed that the writer was being sarcastic.

In his statement to the Times, Baldoni's lawyer called the reporting cherry-picked.

The suit claimed that the backlash against Lively was due to "her own tone-deaf messaging."

Baldoni pushes back on harassment claims

The libel suit accused the Times of "uncritically advancing Lively's
unsubstantiated claims of sexual harassment against Heath and Baldoni."

The Times story said, for example, that Heath had shown Lively a video of his naked wife. The Baldoni suit said the video depicted a home birth that was discussed in connection with a scene in the movie.

The libel suit also denied that Baldoni and Heath repeatedly entered Lively's trailer uninvited while she was undressed and while she was breastfeeding, and that she considered certain sex scenes gratuitous, as the Times story reported, citing the Civil Rights Department complaint.

Baldoni's suit said Lively breastfed in their presence. It also shared a text message she sent before production suggesting she wasn't in a hurry to meet with the film's intimacy coordinator, in which she wrote: "I feel good. I can meet her when we start :) thank you though!"

Baldoni claims he never agreed to a document seeking safeguards

The Times reported that Lively presented a letter to the movie's producers in November 2023 that sought safeguards on the set before shooting began.

Baldoni's suit said that the letter wasn't presented to Wayfarer.

"No such document was ever presented to Baldoni, the Wayfarer team, or, to their knowledge, anyone else — whether during that meeting or at any other time — and therefore, could not have been agreed to," the suit said.

Baldoni alleges Lively's PR launched a negative press push against him

Lively's Civil Rights Department complaint said Baldoni "abruptly pivoted away from the film's marketing plan" days before its release as part of a "multi-tiered plan" using "social manipulation" to ultimately "destroy" her public reputation.

Baldoni said it was the other way around. He said in the suit — as well as in a statement to the Times — that he and his company hired a PR firm to protect him, with Lively's PR going on the attack against him. The libel suit claimed that Lively's PR hire, Leslie Sloane, planted stories critical of Baldoni, including one that said he made Lively uncomfortable on set.

Baldoni accuses Lively and her husband, Ryan Reynolds, of bullying

The libel suit described multiple confrontations between Baldoni and Lively's husband, Reynolds, the star of "Deadpool."

The suit said Reynolds "aggressively berated" Baldoni and accused him of "fat shaming" Lively during a meeting at the couple's penthouse in the Tribeca neighborhood of New York.

Baldoni's suit said he had asked his trainer about Lively's weight because he had back injuries and wanted to determine if he could safely lift her as directed in a scene. The trainer later shared Baldoni's inquiry with Lively, the suit said.

"The confrontation that followed was so aggressive that Baldoni felt compelled to offer repeated apologies, despite his question being entirely reasonable and made in good faith," Baldoni's suit said.

In another meeting at the penthouse, the suit alleged, Reynolds "blindsided" Baldoni by berating him over a list of grievances and became "enraged" when Baldoni didn't apologize. Baldoni later called it a "traumatic" encounter and said others left the meeting in "shock," his suit said.

Baldoni's suit further claimed that Reynolds pressured Baldoni's agency, WME, to drop Baldoni as a client. Both Lively and Reynolds are repped by WME. In a statement to BI, a WME spokesperson denied that Lively or Reynolds pressured the company to drop Baldoni.

"The wielding of power and influence became undeniable," the suit said. "Baldoni and Wayfarer grew increasingly fearful of what Lively and Reynolds were capable of, as their actions seemed aimed at destroying Baldoni's career and personal life."

• Some celebrity-led production companies struggled in 2024 as Hollywood cut spending.
• Investments by firms like Blackstone and RedBird were hampered by market shifts.
• Despite headwinds, companies like LuckyChap could thrive by diversifying beyond their famous founders.

2024 was a bad year for the TV and film business — and was particularly hard for a set of celebrity-backed production companies that previously raised large amounts of capital at eye-popping valuations.

Private equity firms like Blackstone and RedBird Capital Partners poured a lot of money into celebrity-led production companies, making notable deals in 2021 to back roll-up Candle Media and LeBron James' SpringHill, respectively. The bet was that their star power would give them a head start in a crowded market and that streamers' appetite for filmed entertainment would continue to rise.

The investment boom drove a celebrity production company bubble, said Paul Hardart, who directs the entertainment, media, and technology program at NYU's Stern business school.

"The prices they were garnering were probably bigger than the market could hold," he said. "The Candle thesis was, we'll buy all this content, we'll roll them up and sell them to the streamers. But the scale they put into it wasn't justified."

The cracks in the investment thesis started to show when streamers pulled back on spending, and production was hampered by the 2023 labor strikes.

Reese Witherspoon's Hello Sunshine fell far short of its profit expectations in 2023, leading parent Candle Media co-CEO Kevin Mayer to admit they "paid at the top of the market." Candle Media — which restructured its businesses in 2024 to cut costs — had invested $500 million in the company as part of a Blackstone-backed roll-up strategy.

2024 was grim for many in Hollywood, with new TV series orders down 42% from their peak in mid-2022, per Ampere Analysis. The year brought more damage to some celebrity-backed outfits. These companies don't have big content libraries and usually depend on streamers' fees. That has meant they've acutely felt the pain when streamers started ordering fewer shows.

Will and Jada Pinkett Smith's Westbrook Inc. laid off staff in early 2024 and restructured after struggling to get major deals following The Slap episode of 2022, Semafor reported.

James' company, SpringHill, in late 2024 agreed to merge with Fulwell 73, the British TV, film, and music production company behind shows including "The Kardashians" and "Carpool Karaoke," after losing $45 million from 2022 to 2023, Bloomberg reported. SpringHill had been one biggest fundraisers in the athlete-entertainer space and was valued at $725 million in 2021 after a funding round led by RedBird. The combined company didn't release a new valuation.

One media investor said at least one celebrity-led company struggled to raise funds this past year because its reliance on a famous face gave potential backers cold feet. This person asked for anonymity to protect business relationships; their identity is known to Business Insider.

Which companies will survive and why

Some industry insiders say the celebrity production companies with staying power will be the ones that move beyond their famous backers. Celebrity founders can't star in everything, after all.

Kevin Hart's Hartbeat has expanded beyond projects starring Hart with its development slate. The company also had someone take over as CEO from Hart, who was leading it after its last chief exec left.

Dwayne Johnson's company, Seven Bucks Productions, is looking beyond Johnson's persona for success and making a doc about the comedian Andy Kaufman.

One favorite around town is Margot Robbie's LuckyChap, which has raised no money and just got a big film deal with Warner Bros. after its success with the Robbie-starring "Barbie." But it's produced other hits that don't feature her at all, like "Saltburn" and "My Old Ass," which stars Aubrey Plaza.

Another is Brownstone Productions, the company founded by Elizabeth Banks and Max Handelman, which is behind recent hits "Cocaine Bear" and "Bottoms."

"The key is to develop things they don't have to be in," said a second investor, who also asked for anonymity to protect business relationships. "You can only be in so many things."

• Ad industry M&A activity is expected to surge in 2025.
• Key areas of interest include retail media, streaming TV, influencer marketing, and AI.
• Insiders think companies like Accenture, AppLovin, and The Trade Desk could be active acquirers.

Bankers and M&A advisors say advertising and marketing acquisition deal flow picked up in the second half of 2024 after a slow start, and they're expecting a flurry of activity in the new year.

"It feels like the tide has turned," said William Ritchie, the managing director of the M&A advisory firm WY Partners.

Some in the industry told Business Insider they thought Omnicom's planned $13.25 billion deal to buy Interpublic Group would be a lightning rod for further ad industry M&A in 2025.

Key areas of buyer interest include the fast-growing retail media and streaming TV sectors, influencer marketing, and the implementation of data and AI. Industry insiders said private-equity buyers would also most likely remain active.

"Everyone is looking for the glue that ties together some of the components," said Charles Ping, a managing director of the Winterberry Group management consultancy.

BI talked to about a dozen advertising, marketing, and adtech industry executives, investors, bankers, and advisors, who speculated about the deals they think could happen in 2025 and beyond. Some of the people were granted anonymity to protect business relationships; their identities are known to BI.

Accenture could go revenge shopping

Matt Lacey, a partner at the M&A advisory group Waypoint Partners, said the combination of Omnicom and IPG may leave Accenture feeling vulnerable. Its Accenture Song creative marketing group could look to acquire a new asset in areas like data and media, "where it has limited capabilities," he said.

Brian Wieser, an analyst at Madison and Wall, wrote in a recent note to clients that Accenture Song was arguably the "world's largest marketing services business" — at least until Omnicom and IPG come together. Wieser noted that it marked "high single-digit growth" in its most recent quarter, faster growth than its agency-holding-company peers.

Accenture has been a consistently active acquirer of advertising and marketing businesses in recent years. In April it acquired the customer-engagement agency Unlimited to boost its customer-relationship-management offering. In June it bought the Brazilian creative agency Soko.

Another area of interest for Accenture Song is experiential marketing, a person familiar with its strategy told BI.

"Experiential is going to be hot in 2025," this person said. "The sheer fact that people are coming out and younger generations don't just want to be in a digital world, they want social connections. You can do a significant amount of innovation in the integration between tech and real-world settings."

AppLovin could swoop in for deals while its stock is riding high

"Everyone is looking at AppLovin," said Alex Iosilevich, a partner at Alignment Growth, which invests in media and entertainment companies. "The expectation is they'll be acquisitive."

AppLovin's stock has been soaring, and it's been trading at a market value above $100 billion. Investors have been wowed by its move into e-commerce, which has opened up a new and lucrative pool of advertisers beyond its mobile-gaming roots.

While AppLovin's executives have said M&A isn't part of the company's near-term growth strategy, that hasn't stopped industry insiders from speculating about its next move.

"I think they should buy someone like Snapchat and get a foothold in the social space," said Alex Merutka, a former early AppLovin employee who's now the CEO of the adtech company Craftsman+.

Other ad industry insiders said AppLovin could further expand into connected TV, adding to its 2022 acquisition of Wurl, a company that helps publishers distribute and monetize their video content on TV screens.

Connected TV presents a "massive area to unlock SMB budgets to play in TV ads," said Tom Triscari, the CEO of the programmatic-advertising advisory firm Lemonade Projects.

Criteo could be bought or go shopping itself — or both

Criteo has long been the subject of takeover speculation. Reuters reported in early 2023 that the company had appointed the investment bank Evercore to explore its strategic options.

News that Criteo's CEO, Megan Clarken, plans to exit the company next year also fueled rumors that a sale could be in the cards. Digiday listed The Trade Desk, Microsoft, Walmart, Publicis Groupe, and WPP's GroupM as logical suitors.

Triscari said it could be equally possible that Criteo itself makes a transformative acquisition.

"Criteo has retail media, the second-best shopper dataset to Amazon, and better adtech than Amazon," Triscari said. "All they need is an access point to CTV inventory. Very doable with some creative options out there."

Criteo might also want to double down on retail-media tech. Digiday reported this summer that Criteo had been in talks to acquire Skai, a marketing platform that specializes in retail search advertising, among other things. The Israeli news site Calcalist reported this month that Skai recently laid off 80 employees, which could signal that the company is preparing for a sale.

Havas listing could spur deals

The French advertising group Havas listed on the Euronext stock exchange in Amsterdam this month, separating from its parent company, Vivendi.

Havas has said it will continue taking a "disciplined approach to acquisitions," with a plan to target high-growth markets and areas like data analytics, digital transformation, and AI.

"They look at everything right now," Ritchie, of WY Partners, said.

Havas had a busy 2024 with the acquisitions of the data firm DMPG, the B2B marketing company Ledger Bennett, the Australian media agency Hotglue, and the social-media agency Wilderness, among others.

IAS could get taken private

BI reported last month that KKR and other private-equity buyers were weighing a deal to acquire the publicly traded ad-verification firm Integral Ad Science. KKR and IAS declined to comment at the time.

Bloomberg first reported that IAS had appointed the investment bank Jefferies to explore its options after receiving inbound takeover interest.

A take-private deal could help IAS grow further without the quarterly Wall Street scrutiny.

Speaking generally about the adtech industry, Ping, of Winterberry, said, "There are many companies that don't have access to the capital that they imagined they would when they listed, and it's hampering their growth, particularly if they have a global outlook."

He added that take-private deals could unlock new capital while offering some value back to shareholders. Ping pointed to Mediaocean's $500 million acquisition of the CTV advertising and analytics firm Innovid and to the advanced-TV ad company Cadent's $324 million acquisition of the performance marketing company AdTheorent as recent examples of this trend.

PE-backed independent agency groups could make big moves

Jay Pattisall, a vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, said the consolidation of Omnicom and IPG could open up more opportunities for private-equity-backed independent ad agencies like Dept, Horizon Media, PMG, Tinuiti, and Wpromote.

"Anticipate more growth in independents' innovation investments and more focus in their proposition to compete with the global consolidation of marketing scale at Omnicom, Publicis, and WPP," Pattisall wrote in a recent blog post.

According to the advisory firm SI Partners, private-equity and private-equity-backed transactions were responsible for about a third of deal volume in the agencies, consultancies, and technology-service-provider sectors in the year to mid-November.

Some might seek new investors, given where they are in their private-equity investment life cycles.

Dept, which sold a majority stake to Carlyle Group in 2020, is expected to be in the market for a new investor next year, industry sources told BI.

The US media agency Horizon Media could also be in play, since Temasek, the investment firm that bought a minority share in 2021, will want an exit at some point, said Dave Morgan, the executive chairman of the TV-ad-buying company Simulmedia. Last month Horizon added a full-service creative agency to its ranks, hinting at ambitions to become a bigger global network.

Talent agencies like CAA, Wasserman, and UTA will be jockeying for influencer experts

M&A insiders said talent agencies were gearing up to make deals to broaden their offerings beyond traditional talent management.

Influencer specialists are at the top of their shopping lists, these people said.

"You have this melding — where does influencer live in the context of things like TikTok Shop or Instagram?" said Bob Morris, a managing partner of the M&A advisory firm Bravery Group. "We hear over and over that talent agencies are looking for different models and sets of mechanics."

Talent agencies are also looking to become more data-centric to identify which influencers drive sales, Morris said. Adobe Analytics said influencers and other affiliate marketers drove about 20% of US Cyber Monday e-commerce revenue this year.

There are plenty of interesting targets on the market. In 2024, 17 creator-focused startups raised at least $10 million in new funding, totaling over $900 million.

Could The Trade Desk buy Roku?

The Trade Desk this year announced a coming connected-TV operating system called Ventura, which it said was designed to make the buying and selling of streaming TV ads more efficient.

Ahead of the launch, The Trade Desk's CEO, Jeff Green, batted off speculation that it planned to rival Roku, saying it wanted to continue to partner and not compete with the TV platform.

In separate notes to investors, analysts at Guggenheim and Needham said they thought it was likely that The Trade Desk could eventually acquire Roku to advance its TV ambitions.

"It's almost impossible to build these" TV platforms now, the Needham analyst Laura Martin said in an interview on Bloomberg TV. Roku has 85 million homes watching four hours of TV a day on average, which would open up a large engaged audience and lots of first-party data to The Trade Desk's advertisers.

All eyes are on WPP's next move

WPP was already licking its wounds after Publicis Groupe hired Snoop Dogg to help promote that it had become the world's largest advertising holding company. The coming together of the third- and fourth-biggest firms, Omnicom and IPG, is set to push WPP further down the pile.

"It will put even more pressure on Mark Read," WPP's CEO, said David Jones, the CEO of a rival ad firm, The Brandtech Group. "And it will bring renewed interest from the investor community."

WPP insiders and observers had speculated for more than a year that the company might be taken private by a private-equity firm or that it might announce its own merger with another holding company.

But some industry insiders now think it's more likely that divestitures are in the cards.

"I think WPP is too big of a buy to go private, but I think they will have a divestiture plan that they are going to execute on in areas that are not high performing and not sexy enough for the public markets," said Andreas Roell, the CEO of Evros Group, which advises on media deals. Case in point: WPP in August sold its majority stake in FGS Global to the private-equity firm KKR in a deal that valued the public-affairs and communications group at $1.7 billion.

AdAge reported that in a recent memo to employees, Read described the Omnicom-IPG deal as "good news" for WPP, adding that WPP would double down on its strategy around creativity, data, AI, and tech "while our peers are distracted and turning inward."

• Movie studios have new competition — from Madison Ave.
• A slew of brands got behind films and TV shows in 2024 as they try to combat ad fatigue.
• Here's what marketers from Walmart to H&R Block say about their approach to the format.

People are increasingly tired of seeing ads, so big brands, from Walmart to Chick-fil-A, have been getting behind filmed entertainment as a way to grab their attention.

Brands' dollars and ability to promote projects have been welcomed by Hollywood, which is still hungry for programming but has less money to buy it.

"Brands, platforms, and partners, they're all open for business more than I've ever seen," said Paul Furia, head of content and creative packaging at ad agency Media by Mother. "Everyone's having conversations."

2024 brought many new iterations of the branded content trend to life.

Mattel's success with 2023's "Barbie" notwithstanding, brands' comfort zones have largely been unscripted formats like documentaries. But 2024 saw some branch out to new formats like reality TV and game shows, which are cheap to make, crowd favorites, and lend themselves to product integration. Brands have also been getting into shoppable shows, a trend that's likely to continue as brands figure out how to get people to buy things straight from their TVs.

Read: Why Brands like Ally and H&R Block are making reality TV-style shows

New players are trying to capitalize. Many Hollywood production companies are actively pitching their talents to brands, from Michael Sugar's Sugar23 to Ron Howard and Brian Grazer's Imagine Entertainment (which produced "The Day Sports Stood Still" alongside Nike) and Anonymous Content. New ones like Sonic Gods Studios are going a step further, using brands to fully finance TV shows from the start.

Top talent are no longer turning up their noses at brand films (or their money). Saint Laurent, for example, paired with Pedro Almodóvar and David Cronenberg to make films.

Read: 13 production companies helping Chase, Pepsi, and more brands make Hollywood movies and TV for streamers like Netflix

Streamers are willing partners in brand films. As streamers increasingly look to ad dollars to become profitable, they're rolling out the red carpet for brands. And brands want the distribution because it legitimizes their projects and helps ensure they get seen (and in some cases, even make a profit). They're also becoming more systematic about tracking measurement and results.

Read: Netflix and Amazon are duking it out over brand partnerships as streaming ads enter a new phase

Read more about how brands and partners are jumping on filmed entertainment:

• Amazon's newest branded entertainment show wants to tie its boxes to 'spreading joy'
• Walmart is betting this holiday movie can get you to spend more

• Advertising took over the streaming-TV experience this year, and it'll only get bigger next year.
• Interactive ads that try to get viewers to shop or take other actions are gaining traction.
• This article is part of "Transforming Business," a series on the must-know leaders and trends impacting industries.

It's back to the future in Hollywood.

Streaming is starting to look like the TV days of old. Entertainment for the masses is back. Bundles are making it easier to consolidate subscriptions.

And ads seem to be everywhere.

Netflix, Disney+, and Max — which all started ad-free — now have cheaper ad-supported tiers. Amazon turned on ads in Prime Video this year, making advertising de facto for more than 100 million viewers in the US in one fell swoop.

EMARKETER expects streaming advertising to reach half of linear-TV advertising's size in 2024 and approach parity with it in 2027.

According to the analytics firm Antenna, these cheaper versions are gaining traction with viewers, too. In May, most new paying subscribers to five major streamers were choosing ad-supported tiers — a year earlier, this was true for only two streamers.

On Disney's latest earnings call, execs said that about 60% of new subscribers in the US were opting for its ad-supported tier, which accounted for 37% of its total US subscribers.

Ad-supported TV viewing also is on the rise through free services like Fox's Tubi, Paramount's Pluto TV, and The Roku Channel. According to Nielsen, those services plus YouTube made up 14.8% of viewing in July, up from 12.5% a year earlier.

"What's old is new again," said Jonathan Miller, a veteran media executive and chief executive of Integrated Media Co., which invests in digital media.

Miller sees ad tiers as a validation of the dual revenue streams that long supported cable. "Advertising and subscriptions have always been a successful model," he said.

Streaming ads are here to stay because — along with bundling, cheaper programming, and password-sharing crackdowns — they're one of the ways streamers can help make themselves sustainable.

Ads have also begun to directly shape the content streamers offer. Streamers are showing more sports and other live programming because of the big audiences and advertisers they attract.

For example, Netflix's highly anticipated Mike Tyson-Jake Paul fight on November 15 was a win for the streamer despite some tech glitches. Why? Because it showed Netflix's ability to draw huge audiences at once; it said that as many as 60 million households tuned in. That large audience bodes well for Netflix's NFL games on Christmas and its live WWE programming set to debut in January.

Viewers' tolerance for ads will be increasingly tested

Streamers that dipped a toe in the ad space are looking to wade in.

The ad load — or ad volume per hour of entertainment — has crept up over the past year, according to the measurement firm MediaRadar. There was an average of six minutes of ads per hour in September across eight leading ad-supported streamers, up by 9% from January 2023, when Netflix and Disney had just entered the ad-supported game. That's still far lower than cable, where ad loads can push an eye-watering 15 minutes or more an hour. Viewers are also more likely to tolerate ads in live sports because people are used to them being part of that content.

Amazon and Warner Bros. Discovery recently said they'd start showing more ads to their streaming viewers in 2025, while emphasizing that their ad loads were lower than their competitors.

"On the ad-load side, we are light," WBD's streaming chief, JB Perrette, said of the streamer Max during the company's third-quarter earnings call. "We have a very light ad load compared to everyone else in the market, so there's room to grow on the capacity side."

The industry consensus is that streaming ad loads won't become a throwback to cable, though — at least not anytime soon.

For one thing, it's a buyer's market. Amazon flooded the market with ad inventory, which depressed ad prices for everyone. Streamers aren't incentivized to add too much more ad inventory because it'll just drive the price down more. Some advertisers are also wary of annoying viewers who are still getting used to seeing ads in streaming.

"The supply has grown significantly over the last few years," said Maureen Bosetti, the chief investment officer for Mediabrands. "It's created a marketplace for marketers."

Makers of streaming video ads are also becoming more ambitious. It's not enough for an ad to be seen — they'll try to get viewers to take action, whether by clicking a QR code or dropping a featured product in their shopping cart. These interactive ads could get higher price tags at a time when streaming ad prices have come down.

"As a consumer, I'm seeing more of them," Jessica Brown, a managing director of digital investment at GroupM, said of interactive streaming ads. "We're getting more pitches from the streaming partners. You can measure success in a different way."

Warner Bros. Discovery recently rolled out two such formats. "Shop with Max" identifies items in TV shows and films and matches them with relevant advertiser products that viewers can shop while they watch. "Moments" uses AI to figure out themes, sentiments, and on-screen elements that line up tonally with the advertiser's message.

Fubo recently announced four ad formats, including ones that show trivia questions or polls and product carousels. Fubo said such ads made people 47% more likely to purchase something compared with standard video ads.

"A big objective we have is to make a majority of ads have some form of interactive or engaging feature," Krishan Bhatia, an NBCUniversal exec who was hired by Amazon to lead its Prime Video ads push, said at a recent event. "What brands love about it is not just the fact that you generate a potential purchase off it but people are spending more time with your brands."

• Media and entertainment insiders expect an uptick in industry M&A in 2025.
• Comcast and Skydance Media's deals could unleash more activity.
• Insiders identified the deals they think are most likely to happen in 2025 and beyond.

With several buzzy media and entertainment deals already planned for 2025, industry insiders say next year could see a flurry of M&A activity.

Bankers and investors largely expect Trump's return to the White House will be favorable for dealmaking and are rubbing their hands together in anticipation of a big year ahead.

"Every banker that has pay-TV is crunching the numbers," said Jonathan Miller, CEO of Integrated Media, which invests in digital media. Miller sees media at an inflection point that could accelerate M&A. Now that streaming TV businesses are maturing, owners of linear TV channels can start to think about hiving off that no-growth business.

A big player here is Comcast, which announced in November that it would spin off most of its NBCUniversal cable channels, including CNBC, MSNBC, and E!, into a new SpinCo. That new entity plans to grow in part by acquiring other cable channels, so the move is widely expected to trigger other deals.

A second potential trigger of M&A is Skydance Media's long-awaited merger with Paramount Global. This will combine David Ellison's production company, known for hits like "Top Gun: Maverick," with Paramount's assets, including a storied movie studio, CBS News, and cable networks like MTV and Nickelodeon. Paramount is expected to get rid of assets alongside the merger.

Both the Comcast and Paramount deals are expected to close in the second half of 2025.

Another big theme that could pave the way for deals is the continued fallout of Peak TV's end, which industry insiders expect to continue to winnow the number of independent TV suppliers. Look for more production companies to shut down or combine, as in the recent merger of LeBron James' sports-focused SpringHill with Fullwell 73, the production company behind "The Kardashians."

While Big Tech has become a major player in entertainment and, increasingly, sports rights, don't look to them to be the savior of struggling media and entertainment companies.

"The tech companies have realized they could get the milk without buying the cow," said Alex Iosilevich, partner at Alignment Growth, which invests in media and entertainment. "You see it with the sports rights. You don't need to buy Warner to get the next NBA rights."

Business Insider spoke with half a dozen media and entertainment investors, bankers, and advisors who speculated about the deals they think could happen in 2025 and beyond. Some of the people were granted anonymity to protect business relationships; their identities are known to BI.

Paramount is widely expected to unload assets

It's taken as a given in the industry that Paramount will pare down, as it's tried to do for years, now that its Skydance merger is imminent and the company is poised to install former NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell at the helm.

Co-CEO George Cheeks has said the company is evaluating sales of assets to shave $500 million in costs, which could include BET Media and the Paramount Pictures lot. (It's already been in talks to sell BET to a group led by CEO Scott Mills.) Leaders have insisted they're keeping CBS. But Paramount's networks face the same tough market as the rest of the linear landscape.

Some see Showtime as a prime target for Starz, the cable network that's shifting to streaming with its imminent spinoff from studio Lionsgate. Starz could be on the hunt for assets to help it bulk up.

Comcast SpinCo could be a buyer or a seller

NBCU executive Mark Lazarus, who will be SpinCo's CEO, has talked it up as a buyer. It certainly has options. It could look no further than Paramount, which has already hung a for-sale sign on assets, or Warner's grab bag of channels like TBS or TLC. Another potential target is AMC Networks, the prestigious but sub-scale network and streamer (though it specializes in the type of TV dramas that have largely migrated to streaming).

SpinCo could also be a seller. Some also think SpinCo could be bought entirely by a private-equity firm further down the road. SpinCo may have to wait a couple of years to sell itself to avoid a tax liability anyway.

WBD is expected to make a move

Warner Bros. Discovery recently announced that it would split into two divisions in 2025, signaling M&A options are on the table. One will house the growing digital streaming and studio businesses, and the other will consist of its declining legacy television networks. WBD needs the cash from its linear channels to pay down its still-considerable debt, but separating the good from the bad could help it sell some assets.

Industry insiders have predicted WBD could do anything from adding Paramount's linear channels or Comcast's SpinCo — considering Warners' debt, it could happen in a stock-for-stock swap — to selling properties like CNN that aren't core to its streaming business. And depending on how the Murdoch succession plays out, a longer-term play could be to buy Fox assets. With scale still the coin of the realm, Warners has to eat or be eaten.

Lionsgate has a valuable catalog

Now that Lionsgate is separated from Starz, it's widely seen as a candidate for sale, something Anson Funds Management, an activist investor, is pushing for.

"I don't think they'll be independent in 2026," one banker said.

There'd be no shortage of buyers for Lionsgate, as it's one of the last independent Hollywood studios out there. Its massive library includes "John Wick," "The Hunger Games," and "Twilight."

Paramount or WBD could snap it up for its library, though they wouldn't necessarily want its distribution or management business. Legendary Entertainment (home to "Dune" and "Godzilla") and its major investor Apollo Global Management, as well as Sony, were previously said to all be interested in Paramount, so they could be potential buyers for Lionsgate. Some also see Fox in the market for a studio, as it sold its TV and movie studios to Disney in 2019.

And while Big Tech has generally preferred to build than buy, Amazon has shown an openness to acquiring, having put down $8.5 billion for MGM Studios three years ago.

Don't count out Disney

That leaves the other legacy media giant: Disney.

About a year ago, CEO Bob Iger floated the idea of selling Disney's TV and cable properties like ABC, but he's since retreated from it. The company line was that Disney wouldn't get the price it wanted and that it'd be too complex to separate them from the rest of the company. Iger and Trump have also sparred in the past, and Disney could look to avoid deals that need government approval.

That said, Iger could change his mind, and now that its streaming business sees a path to ongoing profitability, he seems to have more options. Disney could entertain selling its TV networks like ABC, which it doesn't need to fuel its streaming business. And Disney, without its linear TV business, could be more valuable to a potential buyer, should it decide it's better off selling itself.

One industry player mused that Disney could sell Hulu+ Live TV, its cable-like TV package, and exit the distribution business.

Is Roku headed for a sale?

Roku has been a beneficiary of the continued shift of viewers to streaming, with smart TVs in 85 million homes. Needham recently got Roku in the conversation again with a note predicting it could be sold in 2025, now that Walmart has closed its sale of TV maker Vizio. Needham analysts think anyone from Netflix to The Trade Desk could be interested in Roku as a way to build their streaming ad business, while a retailer like Target could see Roku as a way to use TV ads to drive shopping.

Lara O'Reilly contributed reporting.

• Business Insider spoke to up-and-coming filmmakers and professors as OpenAI's Sora debuted.
• AI video generation could open the door for indie filmmakers — and more blockbusters.
• Fear of job losses looms, but one professor called AI text tools a bigger threat.

Up-and-coming filmmakers and professors at some of the nation's top film schools say the arrival of OpenAI video generators like Sora signals a democratization of the industry may be afoot, even though the tech is still limited.

Sora rolled out widely on Monday following a February pilot program. The tool generates short video clips — 20 seconds max — from users' text prompts. Sora can also modify existing clips.

For example, say a user wants to create a scene with green monsters in a thunderstorm. To do that, she'd type a prompt, and Sora would spit out a file.

While bold-faced creators are already bracing for impact, early Sora testers told Business Insider it gave them new ways to think about their work — even as others also complained the platform appeared to regurgitate content from a limited database.

Michaela Ternasky-Holland was one of the first directors to create and premiere a short film using Sora. It screened at Tribeca in 2024. She said she's excited about Sora's potential to cut filmmaking's development costs by creating things like sizzle reels, but she's aware of its limitations.

These things are giving you an illusion of control. And no matter how good the generations are, there's still someone behind them prompting it," she said. "Just because someone has a 4K camera, it doesn't make them a Steven Spielberg."

Dana Polan, a professor of cinema studies at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, said AI image generators aren't stoking the same fears as their text-based counterparts.

That's because many in Hollywood see the screenplay as "the first act of creativity," said Polan, who noted that other people in the filmmaking process, including cinematographers, are already seen as "adapters into images of words."

While he remains optimistic about AI in film, George Huang, a professor at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television — who has experimented with AI tools in his own moviemaking — concedes the technology has a bad rap in Hollywood, which has made countless movies on the topic.

"We think AI is now coming to destroy all of us, and that's a narrative that Hollywood created," he said. "It's embedded in our culture."

Sora's not quite ready for prime time — yet

Industry watchers told Business Insider that they don't foresee Sora or AI image generation appearing widely in finished films just yet given that the image quality still exists in something of an "uncanny valley."

Sora's pace of improvement has slowed down with later versions, Ternasky-Holland said. For example, it still struggles to put multiple characters in a scene no matter how many times it's prompted, she said.

But Polan told BI the tech could come in handy for the previsualization process — or animated storyboards to check pacing and flow. Huang also said he could see it being used as a "pitch reel" for screenwriters.

That said, other AI startups like Runway have created tools already used across the industry to expedite editing, with clients that include "The Late Show with Stephen Colbert" and the effects team behind "Everything Everywhere All At Once."

Michael Gilkison, a Lexington, Kentucky-based filmmaker whose latest project, "The Finish Line," is on Amazon's Prime Video, said a free AI app helped create a scene where a car was crushed. "That would have cost a lot more 20 years ago," he said over email. Using AI technology could also create cheaper ways to film period pieces. But it also can negate the need to hire extras, which can deprive a film of its spirit.

"As a producer, I would use it to keep the cost down, but it is all about balance," Gilkison said.

Tahsis Fairley, a creative producing student at Chapman University, said via email he envisions using Sora to expedite storyboarding and illustrate ideas to his team.

"We will be able to test out new visual ideas without investing significant amounts of money," Fairley said.

That said, Huang doesn't believe we're far off from full implementation, saying AI could appear within completed films "by the end of the next year easily."

Cost savings could boost indies and blockbusters alike

The expenses associated with filmmaking can put a damper on artistic vision, Huang said. But students are generally receptive to new technology, Polan said.

ChatGPT Plus subscribers, who pay $20 a month, get up to 50 Sora generations a month that are five seconds maximum. ChatGPT Pro users, who pay $200 a month, get unlimited generations up to 20 seconds in length.

In slashing costs, Huang said platforms like Sora are bound to "almost democratize the filmmaking process, sort of lower those barriers to entry." In addition to more tools for indie filmmakers working in the margins, this could also mean more blockbusters produced at a relative discount by major studios, he said.

Fairley, for his part, sees AI as a "double-edged sword."

While he cheered its efficiency gains, he expressed concern about job losses across the industry — particularly in fields like animation, pointing to a Coca-Cola Chrismas ad created entirely with AI.

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Warner Bros. Discovery is splitting its linear TV business from streaming and studios.
• Comcast last month also spun off its cable networks — except Bravo — into a stand-alone company.
• The moves illustrate a cable business in decline, with both repositioning for M&A opportunities.

Warner Bros. Discovery is separating its linear television business from its streaming business and film studios.

It follows a similar move by Comcast, which announced in November it would spin off all of its NBCUniversal cable networks except Bravo into a stand-alone company.

The new corporate structure will be complete by the middle of next year, WBD said. Unlike Comcast, WBD won't spin its assets off into a separate company.

A new Global Linear Networks division will house TV properties like the Discovery Channel and CNN, while the Streaming & Studios side will be the home of Max and movie studio Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group.

"Our Global Linear Networks business is well positioned to continue to drive free cash flow, while our Streaming & Studios business focuses on driving growth," WBD president and CEO David Zaslav said in a statement.

A source with direct knowledge of the matter said the move was meant to clean up the company's structure, which was formed in 2022 from the combination of WarnerMedia and Discovery. (Discovery itself was the product of its acquisition of Scripps Networks in 2017.)

This person said the company is still determining how the specific business units will be divided, and no leadership changes were planned.

The moves by both Comcast and WBD illuminate a cable business increasingly in decline. Their repositioning of properties could help them participate in potential mergers and acquisitions expected to reshape the media and entertainment industry in 2025.

Warner Bros. Discovery was supposed to create scale and value and help compete with Big Tech by mashing WarnerMedia's prestige networks like HBO and CNN with Discovery's lifestyle properties like HGTV. But its stock has sunk to about a third of its value at the time of its creation in 2022. (It was up about 14% Thursday morning on the news of the new organization.)

Industry observers say a Comcast-like spin wouldn't be favorable for WBD because it needs the cash from its linear channels to pay down the heavy debt it took on to form the company.

Still, they see WBD bulking up or shedding channels, with Paramount Global or Comcast seen as the most likely merger partners.

The announcement was met with mixed reactions from analysts. BofA Securities, which has long argued that WBD should sell assets or merge with another company, said in a note that it saw WBD's linear assets as a logical partner for the Comcast SpinCo, while its streaming and studio assets could be an attractive takeover target for multiple suitors.

Longtime ad industry advisor Brian Wieser said that as with the Comcast SpinCo, a WBD separation weakens the company on a few fronts, though. Without being tethered to the cable channels, he said, it'll be harder for WBD's streamer Max to grow its ads business, which is becoming increasingly important. The linear networks will lose leverage in distribution negotiations without Max and have trouble attracting talent if they're seen as a declining business, among other issues, he said.

In July, WBD reportedly floated the idea to investors of essentially undoing the 2022 merger to create the two separate divisions. And in August, the company said its TV assets were worth $9 billion less than it had anticipated just two years ago.

• The billionaire owners of the Nets and Liberty are hatching a media brand rooted in Brooklyn culture.
• BSE Global plans to launch a new brand in early 2025, focusing on the "zeitgeist of Brooklyn."
• The venture has money and expertise but faces a tough digital-media climate.

A trio of billionaires is looking to turn "Brooklyn" into a media brand in the vein of the youth and pop-culture outlet Complex.

Details have been trickling out in the New York media scene about moves by BSE Global — the parent company of the Brooklyn Nets, New York Liberty, and Barclays Center — to build an expansive media and entertainment company.

BSE plans to launch the new global media brand in early 2025 with a focus on "capturing and sharing the zeitgeist of Brooklyn," spokesperson Sheerin Salimi confirmed to Business Insider.

The money behind BSE comes from Alibaba cofounder Joe Tsai and his wife Clara Wu Tsai, along with Julia Koch. Koch, the widow of billionaire and conservative megadonor David Koch, bought 15% of BSE Global in June in a deal that valued the company at $6 billion.

Five people with direct knowledge of BSE's media plans described grand ambitions, saying the company envisions building a brand that is rooted in Brooklyn culture but can travel nationally and even globally. These people were granted anonymity to talk about confidential plans; their identities are known to BI.

Salimi confirmed to BI that the project is being called "Brand X" internally. One of the people with direct knowledge of BSE's plans said one potential name floated was "Boom," though Salimi said this is not currently under consideration.

Salimi said BSE is building complementary businesses alongside its teams and Barclays Center that tap into Brooklyn's spirit through sports, fashion, food, music, and the arts.

BSE has hired a slew of Complex veterans

BSE planted the seeds for a media push when it purchased in March the local outlet Brooklyn Magazine, which it relaunched in November as BKMag.

"They're trying to be like the voice of Brooklyn," a second person with direct knowledge of BSE's plans said. "There's a national opportunity that doesn't exist with Brooklyn Magazine. People name their kids Brooklyn."

BSE has explored several different approaches and considered building or buying a collection of lifestyle titles. The second person with direct knowledge of BSE's plans said the company also looked at buying Complex to accelerate its plans.

Under CEO Sam Zussman, a veteran of sports and culture agency IMG, BSE has brought on at least five Complex veterans. He also hired former longtime Complex CEO Rich Antoniello as an advisor.

Complex was started in 2002 by streetwear designer Marc Ecko and became a rare digital media success story, helped by its influence on youth culture and its long-form video series on YouTube. It spawned a festival called ComplexCon, product lines, and other ventures.

BuzzFeed acquired Complex in 2021 for $300 million and sold it in early 2024 to the e-commerce company NTWRK for about a third of what it originally paid. BuzzFeed kept Complex's food vertical, First We Feast, best known for its popular video series "Hot Ones."

BSE sees Brooklyn as a launchpad for ventures from wine to comedy

BSE's broad idea is to use Brooklyn's cultural capital to build a string of businesses spanning from hotels and music venues to wine, streetwear, and media. As part of a $100 million plan to enhance the area, BSE recently opened two membership clubs at Barclays Center with luxury touches like velvet furnishings and specialty cocktails and has launched a wine club. BSE has also looked at doing a comedy tour, said a third person with knowledge of the company's media plans.

Overseeing the media effort is DeJuan Wilson, who joined BSE in February as its chief products and experiences officer. Wilson is a longtime marketer who's worked at Endeavor, Coca-Cola, Nike, and SoundCloud.

Along with tapping Antoniello, BSE has hired other Complex alums including Aia Adriano, Complex's former VP of content; Stefan Breskin, a former social media director; Zion Olojede, its former head of sports; Erika Turner, its former VP of programming and development; and Lucas Wisenthal, its former international content development director.

Digital media is a troubled sector

Digital media has faced major headwinds lately, as Big Tech companies have siphoned much of the digital ad spending and squeezed publisher distribution on their platforms.

Even with BSE's deep pockets and well-connected leadership, some of the people with direct knowledge of its plans were skeptical about how far its commitment to media would ultimately go. Some also noted that the city is already served by many established outlets like The New York Times, Vox Media's New York magazine, and smaller local outlets.

Still, BSE's roots in sports could be an important asset at a time when athletes and teams are becoming even more central to media and pop culture. BSE's New York Liberty women's basketball team just celebrated its first championship, and its mascot, Ellie the Elephant, has become a fashion icon in her own right. The NBA's Brooklyn Nets, meanwhile, has built a big global fan base, partly thanks to its willingness to play games abroad.

Other media companies have been built around sports teams. There's YES Network, a regional sports network that's home to the New York Yankees, Nets, and Liberty, all well as producing other sports-related content; and Sphere Entertainment's MSG Network, which carries New York Knicks games and other sports-themed programming.

"I think BSE realizes they have a really strong brand they can build stuff around right now," said a fourth person with direct knowledge of the company's media plans.

• Ad industry insiders say the Omnicom takeover of Interpublic Group could kick off more M&A.
• Insiders laid out who could be involved, from WPP to smaller holding companies.
• Private equity and global solutions providers like Accenture also could be consolidators.

The planned $13.25 billion takeover by ad holding company Omnicom of Interpublic Group by merger has industry insiders speculating: Who's next?

Other agency giants face similar conditions that led two of the six big ad-holding companies to seek a merger. There's the concentration of ad dollars with tech giants Google, Meta, and Amazon; the need for media-buying scale to maintain an edge with global advertisers; and the growing use of AI that threatens to wipe out certain agency tasks. The US ad industry has barely grown over the past few years. By combining, Omnicom and IPG are looking to ensure their continued survival.

Some industry insiders think the Omnicom-IPG tie-up is just the start of a massive reordering of the $70 billion ad agency industry and that it's only a matter of time before other holding companies are forced to acquire or be acquired as they look to bulk up.

"From an M&A perspective, it's only going to add fuel to the fire," said William Ritchie, founding and managing director of the media and technology advisory firm WY Partners. "As others vie for competitive advantage over the newly crowned world's largest holding company, I'd expect there is going to be more competition for the best assets and more focus on building a streamlined data and tech-first offering which can compete — notably with companies like WPP, which remains behind the curve on competitive advantage here."

Ritchie said he sees continuing interest in assets that specialize in using data, tech, and AI to inform advertising, as well as PR and communications companies. He noted KKR's recent move to increase its stake in FGS Global, a comms and public affairs firm.

The IPG-Omnicom combo will spark more consolidation for other reasons, said Andreas Roell, CEO of Evros Group, which advises on media, marketing, entertainment, and tech deals. Once the new group decides what it wants to be known for, it may discard the units that don't fit that new identity and also divest some agencies that have competing clients or culture clashes.

Other networks will have to look in the mirror and decide if they're strong enough to acquire weaker networks or acknowledge they're falling behind due to tech disruption, Roell added.

"My prediction is that 2025 will serve as a reckoning year for networks," he said.

Other holding companies could partner up

Starting at the top of the food chain, some industry insiders think the upheaval could force two other longtime rivals to come together: French ad-holding company Publicis Groupe, which has been outperforming its competitors lately, and London-based WPP.

"Mark Read has not done the job that he probably expected he would be able to do; [Arthur] Sadoun is doing a great job," Tom Triscari, CEO and founder of Lemonade Projects, a programmatic ad agency, said of WPP's and Publicis' leaders, respectively.

Such a combo might be tricky to align culturally, though. A proposed merger between Publicis Groupe and Omnicom famously broke down in 2014 after they failed to agree on multiple fronts, including which agency would be seen as the acquirer and who would be appointed chief financial officer. It would also need to pass regulatory muster. That could be harder to do if the IPG and Omnicom deal succeeds, reducing the number of big agency groups in the sector. And there would be so much complexity that Publicis might not see the upside.

Another top holding company that could be active is Havas. Its parent, France's Vivendi, just approved its split into four companies. This is set to lead to Havas being publicly traded as its own company. Havas has indicated that it has M&A in its sights.

A number of other smaller, independent ad-holding companies could help bigger players scale up, like Mark Penn's Stagwell, the Bill Koenigsberg-led Horizon Media, or the Martin Sorrell-founded S4 Capital.

David Morgan, executive chairman of TV ad-buying company Simulmedia, said Horizon Media could be in play since Temasek, the investment firm that bought a minority share in 2021, needs an exit at some point.

Digital performance shops like PMG and Kepler also could be of interest.

Private equity has been circling

The big holding companies could also be a target for private-equity giants. Apollo, KKR, and Blackstone have shown interest in media and entertainment. Industry insiders have speculated for months that WPP, which once ranked as No. 1 among agency businesses, could be taken private — or at least some parts of it could be.

"They all see the same thing — these assets are bloated and mismanaged," said an industry player who's had conversations with PE firms. They asked for anonymity to preserve business relationships. Their identity is known to BI.

Another group of potential acquirers is companies like IBM and Capgemini, which provide a range of business solutions. Tata Consultancy Services and Accenture Song have eyed ad agencies as a way to offer end-to-end services to clients. Tata was in talks to buy R/GA this year and Accenture acquired creative agency Droga5 in 2019.

When it comes to deals that are just about getting bigger, though, there's plenty of skepticism that bulking up will solve the problems agencies face.

"Agencies today are not losing to the tech giants because of a shift in power," said Jay Friedman, CEO of the Goodway Group, a brand consulting firm. "They're losing because the capabilities they have aren't fit for how brands need to buy advertising today. They need a better cost model overall, which is global and AI-driven."

• Gary Vaynerchuk says his company, VaynerX, is set to surpass $300 million in revenue this year.
• He says VaynerX has doubled its revenue in the past five years by diversifying beyond social media.
• But advertising firms like his face major disruption from generative AI.

Serial entrepreneur Gary Vaynerchuk built an advertising empire over the past 15 years by helping companies like PepsiCo and Mondelez jump on social media trends.

Now, his holding company, VaynerX, is on track to top $300 million in revenue this year, he told Business Insider. He said it also continues to be profitable. Most significantly: Its revenue has more than doubled in the past five years, Vaynerchuk said — a feat that way outpaces the ad industry overall.

Vaynerchuk, a colorful persona in an industry where legends David Ogilvy or Leo Burnett are largely a thing of the past, made a name for himself by identifying and jumping on the next big thing in consumer attention.

VaynerX has grown by adding other disciplines beyond social media marketing, including units focused on buying retail media and TV advertising and one focused on advising direct-to-consumer startups. It also benefits from Vaynerchuk's massive social following — including 15 million on TikTok alone — and his personal network.

Consulting is one of VaynerX's fastest-growing areas. The company started offering consulting in 2022, helping marketers with things like social media strategy and corporate communications. Consulting now represents 10% of revenue.

International expansion to areas like Asia-Pacific and Latin America is another growth area. VaynerX now employs nearly 2,000 employees from New York to Singapore, up from about 800 people in 2019 — and international work accounts for 20% of revenue. (As a private company, VaynerX doesn't release financial data, so BI couldn't independently verify its figures.)

Vaynerchuk said he sees the company's revenue doubling again in the next five years.

Still, the ad industry is staring down major potential disruption as generative AI threatens to automate some of the work agencies do, and many in the industry are wondering what Vaynerchuk's next big act will be. CMOs no longer have to be convinced to embrace social media, and many have bypassed agencies like VaynerX altogether to take that work in-house. Firms like VaynerX have had to diversify.

"The creative agencies are shrinking — holding companies downsize every year," said Michael Farmer, a consultant to ad agencies and marketers. "It's not a healthy business. Nobody knows what works."

Vaynerchuk still evangelizes to CMOs about the importance of social media marketing. But his passions have expanded to include Meta's Ray-Bans (Vaynerchuk is an investor in Meta), which he thinks could replace the mobile phone. He's big on live social shopping, which he predicts will blow up next year.

He's also styled himself as something of an AI guru. Vaynerchuk's stance is that business leaders should find a middle ground when it comes to the new technology.

"Don't demonize it, like, 'We'll never do AI; that's bad for humanity,'" he said. "Or the other way: 'Oh great, we don't need to do anything else; AI will take care of it.' So, let's not get too high on it. Let's not get too low on it."

Vaynerchuk urges clients to see AI's potential beyond just cost savings. "We talk about it from internal and external efficiencies of course, but clients are starting to understand the big game, which is, 'How do you earn views in social?'" he said. "And they're agnostic, whether that's an AI piece of creative or a human piece of creative. They just want to get the awareness and the consideration and the relevancy."

Social marketing is still central to the company's identity. One of Vaynerchuk's coups in 2023 was helping PepsiCo jump-start sales for Mug Root Beer by suggesting new uses for the 80-plus-year-old brand, like using it to make ramen and Boba tea.

Greg Lyons, CMO of PepsiCo's North American beverage business, said rather than going the traditional marketing route of spending a lot of money and time to come up with a single message, VaynerX's media agency, VaynerMedia, created a lot of social media posts and waited to see which ones took off before deciding which message to put dollars behind.

"The thing I love most about Vayner is that they're social-first, which means they understand what happens in culture very quickly," Lyons said. "They've shot Super Bowl ads in the past for us. But they're at their best when they're leaning into their core — they're best in the world at being social-first."

Read more about how Vaynerchuk's personal brand has evolved to stay current with the culture and how he uses it to fuel his many businesses.

The hustle mindset made Gary Vaynerchuk famous. But another quality has been increasingly important to the 49-year-old serial entrepreneur's staying power: empathy.

"So many of you are so much more capable than you think," Vaynerchuk said during his closing keynote at this year's VeeCon, an annual event designed to showcase his various interests, from blockchain to the creator economy. "And I can see it in your eyes that you don't think you can. And it's so blatantly obvious to me that you can. I just want all of you to know from the bottom of my heart, you're dramatically more capable than you think you are."

The audience ate it up.

Vaynerchuk, also known as Gary Vee, has built a legion of fans, many of whom are young men, by evangelizing hard work. He has 50 million social followers, including 15 million on TikTok. He's also drawn critics who say he glorifies a toxic hustle culture and capitalism. For years, his Twitter handle read "a dude that Loves the hustle." In recent years, though, his message has become less shouty and more affirmative, a shift that's coincided with a growing desire for empathy and national attention to the plight of young men.

This turn, like so many in Vaynerchuk's career, has involved a combination of personal branding and business. He launched a direct-to-consumer wine brand called Empathy Wines, which he later sold to Constellation Brands. He started VeeCon to sell his line of cartoon characters, VeeFriends, that personify positive characteristics, like Capable Caterpillar. It's partly this constant evolution — and ability to adapt to cultural trends — that has helped Vaynerchuk's 15-year-old advertising holding company, VaynerX, get on track to post $300 million in revenue this year. That figure, which he revealed for the first time to Business Insider, has more than doubled in the past five years and outpaced growth in the ad industry overall.

In the collection of podcasters and other media figures sometimes called the manosphere, Vaynerchuk is closer to Scott Galloway than Joe Rogan. His schtick lands with a generation that's grown up with — and is now exhausted by — social media, which encourages constant comparisons with others. He understands that many young men have fallen behind but aren't necessarily looking for a handout. Rather, they often want a path toward self-reliance.

Vaynerchuk says his brand's softer turn started when he noticed a lot of fear in his DMs.

"I started to realize in probably in 2015 and '16 that there was just a lot more insecurity in the world," he told BI. "I think I took for granted how well I was parented. And that started me to really start to talk about the why, and that got me more into empathy."

Vaynerchuk has also maintained a safe distance from politics, which seems savvy now as some other CEOs clam up to avoid getting caught up in the culture wars.

"I was a no-go when it was much more popular five, seven years ago," he said of talking politics. "I don't trust the American consumer right now in that I just think we're overly emotional. We're very far away from the middle, and so I really couldn't find a way to feel great about it. I care about my employees too much and the thought of doing things that immediately makes half of them not feel good just did not feel right."

Friends float other theories for the gentler Vaynerchuk. He recently went through a divorce (and is now engaged). It's no longer the early days of the internet when you often had to be loud and obnoxious to get hidebound CMOs to pay attention to digital media. Whatever the reasons for the shift, it appears to be a good business move.

"In the beginning, it was, 'That's dumb, that's dumb,'" Jon Halvorson, SVP of Mondelez and a longtime client, said of Vaynerchuk's rhetoric. "I think it's appealing because a good yelling is fun, but people want a consistent partner. I don't want a rock star, I want Ted Lasso."

Can Vaynerchuk stay relevant in the AI age?

Vaynerchuk made a name for himself helping companies jump on social-media trends, but many in the industry are wondering what his next big act will be. CMOs no longer have to be convinced to embrace social media, and many have even bypassed agencies like VaynerX altogether to take that work in-house.

Agencies like VaynerX have had to diversify. Social marketing is still the company's core, but revenue is increasingly driven by other things like consulting and overseas expansion, which the company says now represent 10% and 20% of revenue, respectively. It employs nearly 2,000 employees from New York to Singapore, up from about 800 people in 2019. Vaynerchuk said he sees revenue doubling again in the next five years.

Still, the ad industry is staring down major potential disruption as generative AI threatens to automate a lot of the work agencies do.

As for Vaynerchuk himself, he still bangs the drum about social-media marketing, but his passions have expanded to include Meta's Ray-Bans (Vaynerchuk is an investor in Meta), which he thinks could replace the phone. He's big on live social shopping, which he predicts will blow up next year.

He's also styled himself as something of an AI guru. Vaynerchuk's stance is that business leaders should find a middle ground — staking out a lane that it'd be hard to disagree with.

"Don't demonize it, like we'll never do AI; that's bad for humanity," he said. "Or the other way: 'Oh great, we don't need to do anything else; AI will take care of it.' So let's not get too high on it. Let's not get too low on it."

How the Vaynerchuk flywheel works

Vaynerchuk calls VaynerX the "operating system for everything I do professionally for the rest of my life."

When the Fox streaming service Tubi sought help promoting itself to Gen Z, Vaynerchuk tapped his influencer connections to help. Other work provided the basis for "The Z Suite," a workplace comedy starring Lauren Graham ("Gilmore Girls," "Parenthood") and set at a New York ad agency; Vaynerchuk is executive producing. Empathy Wines grew out of the company. VeeFriends promotes VeeCon, which in turn showcases Vaynerchuk's other businesses. The list goes on.

"He's proven you can take this value of a personal brand and use it to create value in other services," said Brian Morrissey, former president and editor in chief of Digiday and founder of The Rebooting, a newsletter focused on the media industry.

For CMOs, Vaynerchuk's massive social presence and ability to master the platform du jour is a big part of the value he brings.

"The fact he has 10 million followers on Instagram shows he understands how the platform works, so I do put a lot of weight on his recommendations," said Sandeep Seth, chief growth officer of Tapestry and CMO of its Coach brand. "He's not just selling me a theory. So I definitely value that expertise he brings."

Being a CMO can also be a lonely job in the current market — they often have more responsibility and fewer resources to get it done, and their tenures are generally getting shorter — and he's won clients' loyalty by being available. Access to Vaynerchuk's personal network, nice wines, and, for the lucky few, a ride on a Vaynerchuk-chartered plane to industry events like the Forbes CMO Summit doesn't hurt.

"They get CMOs who are interested in a relationship with him," Halvorson said. "It creates a lot of inbound interest."

At a time when household names in advertising like legends David Ogilvy or Leo Burnett are largely gone, Vaynerchuk is something of an anomaly.

"In a world in which tech and data dominate, larger-than-life personalities are increasingly hard to find," said Andrew Essex, former CEO of Droga5 who's now senior managing partner at consulting giant TCS. "For some, a CEO with so much heart might feel anachronistic. Gary is the rare exception who can pull it off."

Is there a Vayner without Vaynerchuk?

The big question for many personality-led companies like Vaynerchuk's is whether they can transcend their leaders.

Walk around VaynerX, and its founder's presence is everywhere, from the framed inspirational quotes on the wall to the conference rooms named after his passions (the New York Jets, Empathy Wines). Naysayers say his personal brand is still bigger than his company; Vaynerchuk has 22 times as many followers on X as VaynerMedia. The agency isn't a huge buyer of TV advertising, which holds it back among marketers of a certain size, nor is it widely considered a destination for big-name execs or a feeder for prestigious marketers like Apple.

Vaynerchuk insists the company is no longer synonymous with him, thanks to the team he's built under him. In fact, he said, the onetime upstart is on such a strong footing now that he now worries about complacency setting in.

"I feel like very senior industry people would consider working at VaynerMedia where seven years ago they would laugh at the idea," he said. "So, I think we are the future establishment."

That's not to say he sees himself letting the place run without him.

Vaynerchuk said he sees himself naming his replacement in five to 10 years, at which point he would move into an active chairman role, running VeeFriends or scratching another longtime itch: buying and reviving bygone brands like Ocean Pacific.

"Could JC Penney's come back in a different form as a social live shopping show?" he mused.

Vaynerchuk prides himself on being a hands-off manager and says he'd let the new CEO run the company. But he won't disappear, either.

"I would just be driving another car, and if that person driving the VaynerX car would like me to come in and sit in the passenger seat and brainstorm some stuff or help, then I'm very there for that," he said.

• Vox Media just cut some staff and reorganized its lifestyle brands.
• CEO Jim Bankoff said the company was responding to constant change in the media business.
• Thrillist will be operated by Eater, among other changes.

Vox Media just cut staff across its lifestyle brands, CEO Jim Bankoff announced in a memo to staff.

The parent of New York magazine, Vox, The Verge, and other popular media brands last laid off employees a year ago, when it cut 4% of staff. A Vox Media spokeswoman declined to say how many people were let go in the current reduction.

In the memo, which Business Insider obtained, Bankoff said the layoffs and "organizational changes" would impact Thrillist, PS, and Eater.

He said that, moving forward, Thrillist would be operated by Eater and that PS would "concentrate on its extensive footprint across social and video platforms with an even stronger emphasis on shopping."

Vox Media got the lifestyle brands Thrillist and PS (previously named PopSugar) when it acquired fellow digital media company Group Nine in early 2022. The deal was part of an ongoing consolidation of digital-media outlets to better compete for ad dollars with Google and Facebook. Digital publishing has generally struggled as Big Tech platforms have dominated digital ad spending.

Bankoff said in the memo that Vox Media would continue to focus on areas where it sees the most opportunity, including building direct audiences and its Vox Media Podcast Network. Vox Media also recently put tech-focused The Verge behind a paywall.

Here's the full memo from Bankoff:

Team,

Today, we're implementing role eliminations and organizational changes across our lifestyle brands (Thrillist, PS and Eater), Product, and the Media Production & Technology organization. All affected employees have been notified and are receiving transition support.

Each of our brands faces distinct market opportunities and challenges. As you know, the pace of change is accelerating for media businesses and it is essential to our success that we continuously evaluate how and where we invest to serve our audiences best to advance the long term health of our business.

In particular, the ways audiences are interacting with our Thrillist and PS brands have changed and we must adapt. Going forward, Thrillist will be operated by Eater, on a similar model to Punch, leveraging shared leadership and resources. PS will concentrate on its extensive footprint across social and video platforms with an even stronger emphasis on shopping. Eater is reorganizing its cities coverage into a regional model in order to most efficiently serve its audience's needs. The Product and Media Production & Technology organizations are being restructured to meet the current needs and scale of the business.

Throughout our history, we've led the digital media landscape because we've been willing to adapt and evolve as technology and the way people consume content change. These actions, while difficult, are consistent with our strategic priority to deepen audience connections to the brands and franchises that drive loyalty while ensuring our financial strength. As was the case this year, in 2025 we will continue to invest in our business where we see the clearest opportunities: editorial and user experiences that build loyal, direct audiences; a high-value advertising proposition based on unique intellectual property; strong brands that command audience attention; leading multimedia productions like we're building with the Vox Media Podcast Network; and consumer-direct businesses to diversify revenue streams and grow recurring revenue.

While our focus on improving our financial strength is always a priority, this year we have made meaningful progress to ensure our long-term profitability. This has meant difficult decisions and ongoing financial discipline about where we're investing and where we're pulling back. To our departing colleagues, I'm grateful for your contributions. To everyone at Vox Media, thank you for your continued commitment to our work.

Jim

• New survey data from Evercore suggests Netflix has room to raise prices in the US.
• The percentage of US subscribers who said they'd cancel in response to a price hike is well down.
• Almost half indicated more live content like the Paul-Tyson fight could keep them from canceling.

Netflix's subscriber gains from its password-sharing crackdown could be waning, and some on Wall Street think it'll raise prices soon to keep its growth going.

New survey data from Evercore ISI just added fuel to the theory. Its quarterly survey of Netflix subscribers, published December 1, showed that Netflix is in a strong position in the US based on market penetration, satisfaction, and likelihood of canceling. Citibank analysts also recently wrote that Netflix could raise US prices by 12% in 2025.

In Evercore's survey, price sensitivity among US Netflix subscribers was lower than it had been in four years, which should make it easier for the streamer to push through price increases. When asked how they'd respond to a $1 a month price hike, 26% of 1,300 US respondents said they'd be highly likely to cancel, down from 45% who said so in August.

Consumers often overstate their willingness to cancel services in response to price increases, so those absolute numbers should be taken with a big grain of salt. Netflix has consistently had a lower cancellation rate than the other major streamers, even as it's raised prices over the years, according to the data firm Antenna.

When it came to penetration, Netflix continued to dominate, with 58% saying they watched the service in the past 12 months, up 1% from the previous quarter and ahead of Amazon's Prime Video (54%) and Disney's Hulu (44%).

A third factor, satisfaction, was the highest it had been since the third quarter of 2020, with 63% of those surveyed by Evercore saying they were "extremely/very satisfied" with the service.

In addition to a hit-filled third quarter ("The Perfect Couple," "Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story," and more), Netflix has benefited from buzzy live events like the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson fight. Netflix's lower-priced ad tier has also increasingly kept people from canceling while giving the streamer cover to raise prices on its pricier, ad-free tiers. Live Christmas NFL games this month and WWE "Raw" starting in 2025 will likely drive more momentum, with 47% of those surveyed saying they would be more likely to keep Netflix if more live content were added.

Netflix has been raising prices roughly once a year, though unevenly among its various tiers. It's been over a year since the last increase, in October 2023, when Netflix raised the price of its Premium plan by $3 to $22.99 a month and upped the cost of its now-defunct Basic plan. The last time Netflix raised prices on its Standard ad-free plan was January 2022, when it raised it by $1.50 to $15.49.

When asked about price increases on Netflix's third-quarter earnings call in October, co-CEO Greg Peters said he saw a "tremendous amount of potential" if Netflix kept improving its TV and film offerings and expanded into new areas like live events. The company recently raised prices in Europe and Japan and said the results met expectations.

"Our approach towards pricing, it's been remarkably consistent over many, many years," Peters said on the call. "And our core theory is we've got to work really, really hard to make sure that we are delivering more value to members every quarter and then we sort of assess, based on how that's going, metrics like engagement, like acquisition, retention, did we do a good job there? How do we actually deliver on that promise of more value? And when we do, then we occasionally ask members to pay a bit more so we can invest that forward and keep that whole process going."

• Netflix emerged as the winner of the streaming wars this year.
• It's forecasting billions of dollars in profit, and its stock is rocketing.
• From vast ad ambitions to zeitgeisty true crime fare, here are five of its biggest achievements.

The year 2024 has been one to remember for Netflix.

Crowned the winner of the streaming wars, the streamer solidified its already huge lead in subscribers — with more than 280 million paying users around the world as of the third quarter, generating billions of dollars in profit annually and sending its stock price soaring.

Meanwhile, Netflix continued to flex its first-mover advantage over cash-hungry rivals, who retrenched and returned to licensing their shows back to Netflix, which will likely fuel its continued dominance.

Netflix continues to put out hits that keep people watching and subscribing. Lately, it's been leaning into popular fare like true crime and live events that have big advertiser — and water-cooler — appeal.

It's continued to capitalize on its password-sharing crackdown and is ramping up ad tech and measurement deals to entice more advertisers to buy on the platform.

Netflix faces questions about how much more it can grow its audience without sacrificing profits, whether it can compete for ad dollars with the likes of Amazon's Prime Video, and how it can capture younger viewers who grew up on YouTube.

But for now, here's a look back at the biggest swings Netflix took this past year:

A massive push into live sports

Netflix swung big into live programming in 2024, a format that's key to its burgeoning ad business.

The streamer hosted its most-watched live event to date in November, a glitch-ridden boxing bout between Jake Paul and Mike Tyson that drew 60 million households as live viewers. And it'll close the year with another spectacle: its first Christmas Day NFL game, which will include Beyoncé performing at half-time.

Stellar advertising growth amid an executive shake-up

Netflix has undergone leadership changes across multiple teams this year. In advertising, where the company harbors vast ambitions, Ampersand's Nicolle Pangis replaced Peter Naylor as VP of advertising.

The move came as Netflix reported stellar growth for ad-supported subscribers in 2024 — to the tune of 70 million, up from 40 million in May.

Next up for ads? Netflix is building its own ad technology to further open the spigot, which it said will roll out next year.

A leadership and strategy overhaul in film

At the beginning of the year, Netflix parted ways with longtime movie chief Scott Stuber.

The New York Times reported in April that Stuber clashed with higher-ups over what kind of movies to make. Chief Content Officer Bela Bajaria told staff in a meeting that quality needed to improve as the company shifted strategy.

Incoming film boss Dan Lin entered with a streamlined vision.

Rather than big-budget action films and big-name stars, he sought to diversify the company's offering, prioritizing in-house producers and skipping theatrical releases. Lin also ended the massive upfront checks the company had been writing to movie stars.

True crime hits with real-world consequences

Netflix continued to focus on true crime this year. But while its series were enormously popular, some plunged the streamer into controversy.

The stalker saga "Baby Reindeer" and the scammer series "Inventing Anna" drew defamation suits, which Netflix said it would defend. And Netflix's two projects about the Menendez brothers — a Ryan Murphy-produced drama and an accompanying documentary — were also ensconced in controversy.

The brothers' families criticized the show, though Murphy has said the brothers should be grateful given the attention the project received. In October, Los Angeles's top prosecutor recommended the brothers be resentenced with the option of parole.

A password crackdown continued to fuel growth

Subscribers initially balked at Netflix's bid to ban password sharing, but in the end, the streamer prevailed.

The move helped to fuel impressive earnings reports this year, with subscriber growth that repeatedly surpassed expectations — and caused its stock to soar.

While Netflix has emerged as the clear victor of the streaming wars, that wasn't always a foregone conclusion given the loads of debt it previously accrued to fund its production war chest. Today, the streamer is forecasting billions of dollars in profit while competitors struggle to break even.

That said, analysts expect the effects of Netflix's password crackdown to diminish in the future.

Correction: December 3, 2024 — The Paul-Tyson fight drew 60 million households, not people, as live viewers, Netflix said. An earlier version of this story misstated that figure.

• Disney brought the magic in 2024, but it isn't out of the woods just yet.
• Streaming turned a profit for the first time, and it righted the ship at the box office.
• While CEO Bob Iger won a proxy battle, Trump's second term now looms.

After a string of challenges, Disney brought the magic in 2024.

It wasn't long ago that CEO Bob Iger was battling an expensive proxy fight, creative challenges, and streaming business losses.

Iger has put many of those concerns behind him. Disney fended off activist shareholder Nelson Peltz. And he addressed two areas that have been a big concern for Wall Street: returning the film division to profits with "Inside Out 2" and "Deadpool & Wolverine," and turning the corner in its streaming business.

On a fourth-quarter earnings call in November, a confident Iger projected rosy earnings all the way out to 2027 and was rewarded with a 9% surge in Disney's stock price.

Perhaps most important, after a botched succession in 2020, the company reassured critics that it's on track to name Iger's replacement in early 2026.

Disney isn't out of the woods just yet. It still faces the ongoing decline of its linear TV business. With another ESPN streamer in the works, its streaming offerings are multiplying, which risks consumer confusion. And some insiders have worried that a returning President Donald Trump could lead to retribution — or a chilling effect on the company's creative output and journalism — after Iger and Trump publicly sparred during Trump's first term.

Meanwhile, here's a look back at Disney's biggest wins of the past year:

For the first time, its streaming business became profitable

Disney turned a crucial corner with its streaming business in 2024.

Services like Hulu and Disney+ generated a small but noteworthy profit — to the tune of $47 million — for the first time in the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, that figure grew to $321 million.

Subscription price hikes were key. The basic price for Disney+ is now $16 a month, compared to $7 when it launched in 2019. Iger said on a call with investors this month that in raising prices, the company sought to move users toward ad-supported subscription options.

Edging forward on succession

Disney has given itself a self-imposed deadline of 2026 to name Iger's successor — which is when the executive's contract expires and is longer than some had anticipated.

After Iger's last succession plan fell flat, resulting in his return to the company in 2022, this time the effort is being spearheaded by Morgan Stanley's James Gorman.

Four internal candidates have been floated: Disney Entertainment cochair Dana Walden, movie head Alan Bergman, Disney Experiences chair Josh D'Amaro, and ESPN chair Jimmy Pitaro. Disney is also considering outsiders, though no frontrunner has emerged.

Getting back on track with box office hits

Iger acknowledged last year that Disney movies weren't what they used to be in terms of quality following box office disappointments like "Elemental," "The Little Mermaid," and "Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania."

But in 2024, Disney righted the ship. "Inside Out 2" broke the record for an animated movie opening, while "Deadpool & Wolverine" — the only film from the Marvel Cinematic Universe it released this year after the company decided to slow its roll — was an irrefutable smash, signaling a possible antidote to superhero fatigue.

Betting big on experiences

Experiences are key to Disney's future, with Chairman Josh D'Amaro overseeing a $60 billion investment over the next decade into park expansion — and the company's most ambitious foray yet into gaming, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

New attractions and lands inspired by hit films like "Avatar" and "Monsters, Inc." will arrive at parks worldwide, according to THR, and four new cruise ships will roughly double its fleet by the end of the decade.

Disney also placed its biggest bet to date on gaming earlier this year with a $1.5 billion investment in Epic Games. Disney will work with the "Fortnite" studio to develop an interactive space inspired by its IP.

Iger triumphed in the Peltz proxy battle (but now must face Trump)

Iger won a lengthy and expensive proxy battle against activist investor Nelson Peltz in April after shareholders voted to keep the CEO and Disney management's board over two new members nominated by Peltz's firm.

Peltz has criticized Disney's succession planning, streaming losses, and stock performance.

But looking ahead, Iger could be facing another threat when Trump takes office again — with its ABC News division having already drawn the president-elect's ire. While Iger criticized Trump during his first term, he appears to be remaining on the political sidelines this time around.

• This month, Walmart launched its first shoppable feature film, "Jingle Bell Love," with Roku.
• It's ramping up its efforts this holiday to get people to shop while watching TV.
• Walmart made some key changes to its shoppable entertainment strategy this year.

Walmart is making its biggest push yet this holiday season to get people to shop while watching TV by debuting its first feature-length movie.

Last year, Walmart brought viewers "Add to Heart," a rom-com series with integrated shopping features that was designed to be watched on social media. It's building on that this year by sponsoring its first "shoppable" feature film, "Jingle Bell Love," which is a Roku Original movie.

"Jingle Bell Love" is streaming now on The Roku Channel. Here's the logline: Jack Cooper, played by Joey McIntyre from "New Kids on the Block," visits his late wife's hometown for Christmas and gets more than he bargained for when his 10-year-old daughter matches him up with a local shop owner (Michelle Morgan).

Last year's "Add to Heart" was a test for Walmart to see if it could get people to shop directly while watching episodic TV. Online reviewers were mixed in their assessments: Some said the quality of the series was decent while others criticized the script and said the shopping experience felt clunky.

Walmart didn't share specific results of last year's experiment but made some key tweaks this time around:

• First, "Jingle Bell Love" is a feature film. Walmart learned that the longer people watched, the more likely they were to shop, and it hopes a film will encourage people to watch from start to finish.
• Walmart also produced "Add to Heart" itself, while "Jingle Bell Love" is a Roku production.
• "Add to Heart" crammed 330 shoppable products into the show. "Jingle Bell Love," in contrast, doesn't have any direct product integration. Instead, there are two "shoppable moments" featuring overlays with five Walmart products that are contextually relevant to the scene that people can buy directly on their TVs.
• During its "Add to Heart" launch, Walmart found people wanted more and easier ways to shop. This year, it's added the ability for people to link their Walmart and Roku accounts by clicking an ad on the screen with their remote, which sends a prompt to their phone to sign in to Walmart.com. From there, whenever a Roku user reaches the checkout screen, their Walmart payment details are pre-populated so they can buy with a single tap.

"'Add to Heart' was one of the first times that we really created that fully shoppable type of video experience," Aimee Roesler, senior director of social commerce at Walmart, told Business Insider. "One of our key insights is that it can be very hard to shop from your remote control."

Are people ready for shoppable TV?

Retailers have been pushing "shoppable TV" — where people can buy products straight from their TV sets — for some time as they try to drive sales and media companies try to connect ads to business results.

For instance, during the CMT Music Awards in April, Paramount used QR codes to try to get people to buy items inspired by the red carpet looks. NBCUniversal had a tool that let people order food while watching the Olympics this summer.

Still, there's been a big challenge for these efforts: Shopping on TV isn't the most natural behavior for viewers. Add the fact that shoppable TV doesn't always fit neatly into ad agencies' buying practices, and it's been slow to take off.

Christopher Vollmer, a partner and managing director at UTA's MediaLink, said retailers and media companies have gotten smarter about shoppable TV, knowing video content is where most consumers discover new brands and products. He sees them increasingly prioritizing premium content environments like sports for their efforts, as that's where there are big, live audiences. This year, for example, Walmart and NBCUniversal are bringing shoppable ads to a Thanksgiving Day NFL game.

As the biggest US retailer, Walmart has a strong incentive to figure it out. The company has been experimenting in many ways. It's trying shoppable ads on social media, gaming platforms, and streaming TV.

Walmart said Roku was a natural partner, as 78% of the platform's audience are Walmart shoppers. Despite the large customer overlap, in the past couple of years of testing, Walmart said 70% of its shoppers from Roku were new to Walmart.com.

"Now we've gained a new type of shopping behavior and a new customer who has typically shopped our store now is shopping our store and our website, which is very, very exciting," Roesler said.

"Jingle Bell Love" isn't the only way Walmart will try to get people to shop from their TVs this holiday season. It created four videos — inspired by the YouTube ambient room trend — that are meant to immerse the viewer in a pleasant environment. All are shoppable with QR codes linking to decor and gifts sold at Walmart. The rooms portray a cozy chalet, a festive holiday party scene, Santa's reindeer in flight, and Luke's Diner of "Gilmore Girls" (an example of Walmart's effort to integrate itself into the culture). They'll be streamed on YouTube, YouTube TV, and Roku starting December 3.

Shoppable ad breaks will also pop up during a family movie night series in which Walmart is teaming up with Roku to offer classics like "Stuart Little" and "Miracle on 34th Street" on The Roku Channel.

• NowThis laid off about half its unionized newsroom, marking the second deep round of cuts this year.
• The layoffs affected 13 of NowThis' 21 WGA East members.
• A softness in digital advertising has led to widespread media layoffs in recent years.

NowThis recently laid off about half its unionized newsroom, the second round of deep cuts this year at the progressive digital news outlet.

The layoffs impacted 13 of NowThis' 21 members of WGA East, which represents the newsroom, a union representative told Business Insider. NowThis notified the laid-off staffers on November 15. The company also recently let go of three people on the sales side, a person close to NowThis told BI. They asked for anonymity because they weren't authorized to speak publicly about the cuts. Their identity is known to BI.

A NowThis spokesperson confirmed the layoffs to BI and said the company remained committed to making "impactful content."

In September, NowThis hired a new editor-in-chief, Michael Vito Valentino, formerly of Fallen Media and MTV, as it looked to shift focus to Gen-Z audiences.

NowThis was once a fast-growing digital news outlet that took off among young consumers. It soared in popularity by making short-form, text-on-screen videos — often about politics or social issues — that spread widely on social media. It joined Vox Media through Vox's 2021 acquisition of Group Nine Media. Vox spun NowThis off in 2023 through a deal with Accelerate Change, a nonprofit focused on promoting civic engagement among underrepresented groups. Vox retained a minority stake in the company and has an arrangement to sell advertising for NowThis.

A Vox Media spokesperson referred a request for comment to NowThis.

At the time of the spinoff, the plan was for NowThis to ramp up to cover the 2024 election. Accelerate Change is backed by progressive organizations such as the Open Society Foundations, which was founded by George Soros, the billionaire investor and major Democratic political donor. It also backs other news outlets, including ParentsTogether, PushBlack, Pulso, and Noticias Para Inmigrantes.

The earlier round of layoffs at NowThis, in February, curtailed some of the company's coverage ambitions, though. That round impacted 26 of its 50 members of WGA East. At the time, the company said the reduction was meant to ensure the business was sustainable, and that no more cuts were planned.

Many news media outlets have been hit by layoffs in recent years amid a general softness in digital advertising spending. Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas tracked 3,402 job cuts in news so far this year through September, up 40% from 2,423 cuts during the year-earlier period.

After this story's publication, WGA East gave a statement to BI about the recent layoffs:

On Friday, November 15, at around 8:30 AM, 13 of the 21 remaining NowThis WGAE members were laid off immediately upon receipt of an email notice. The layoffs eliminated 3 of 4 members of the publishing team, 3 of 4 video editors, 3 of 7 Producers and Senior Producers, the sole Senior Motion Graphics Designer, the sole Senior Writer, the sole Senior Insights Analyst, and the sole Audience Strategist. The barebones group of remaining salaried workers at NowThis will now be forced to meet tight deadlines and increasing pressure without proper teams to support them.

In late October the company celebrated their "new editorial vision and advisory board" at an influencer-filled, private party. Mere weeks later, workers were blindsided by the news that the Company's "new editorial vision" apparently includes slashing their already stretched-thin teams.

At the start of 2022, there were 65 unit members at NowThis. Today, only 8 remain.

These reckless and cruel layoffs run completely counter to NowThis's self-professed "human-centered" approach to storytelling. The Guild stands in solidarity with the workers who built this company, only to be shown the door at the beginning of the holiday season.