August 4, 2026

MiQ has launched the Unified Screens Planner (USP), a planning tool that combines linear television, streaming, OTT and YouTube data into one interface for media buyers across Australia and New Zealand. Built into MiQ's AI-powered Sigma platform, USP draws audience data from OzTAM's VOZ, YouTube Ads Data Hub, Samsung Ads and Samba TV alongside MiQ's own signals. Planners enter campaign budgets, audiences, markets, channel selections and reach targets, and the platform returns unified reach curves and recommended media allocations across linear TV, BVOD, SVOD, YouTube and online video. MiQ calls USP the first tool of its kind in the Australian market, built to model campaign scenarios, optimise channel mix and measure incremental reach. MiQ Chief Revenue Officer Chris Freel said audience duplication across fragmented screens creates "unnecessary wastage, particularly given industry-wide budget constraints." The tool launches exclusively in Australia and New Zealand.

Comcast reported Peacock's first profitable quarter in Q2 2026, with EBITDA of $189 million, a swing of $290 million from the loss posted in Q2 2025. Paid subscribers grew by 2 million net in the quarter to reach 48 million, with growth attributed to the NBA Playoffs, the FIFA World Cup and Love Island USA. Revenue rose 54% year over year, with distribution revenue up more than 50% and advertising revenue up nearly 70%. Comcast CFO Jason Armstrong said the advertising gain was fueled by multiple drivers, with the Telemundo FIFA World Cup simulcast, NBA playoffs and Love Island named as notable callouts. Chairman and co-CEO Brian Roberts said Peacock added 2 million subscribers in each of the last two quarters and had its biggest viewership month ever in June. The results arrive as Comcast prepares to spin off NBCUniversal.

Deliveroo Media launched programmatic advertising on its Order Tracker page on July 27, 2026, opening the post-checkout screen to buyers on Display & Video 360, The Trade Desk and Amazon DSP through Google Ad Manager. The rollout covers the UK, France, Italy and the UAE, four of the more than 40 countries where Deliveroo Media operates. Deliveroo says customers check the Order Tracker up to six times per order, based on internal data from January to June 2026, so a single completed order can generate several ad impressions on the same screen. The placement has carried direct-sold video and display ads since 2023; the new layer runs on Programmatic Guaranteed deals, which reserve a fixed volume of impressions at an agreed price. To mark the launch, Deliveroo Media is offering agencies and non-endemic advertisers a 20% discount off local rate cards on programmatic campaigns booked between July and September 2026 in the four launch markets.

The IAB Tech Lab has released AAMP 2.3, the latest version of its Agentic Advertising Management Protocols, built to make AI agents reliable enough for daily use in advertising systems. The update adds enterprise deployment through Amazon Bedrock AgentCore, extends buying support to platforms including Meta, and integrates reporting from Google Ad Manager. It also brings privacy diligence checks, stronger pricing safeguards, and finalized industry standards, building on open-source contributions from HyperMindz and Mixpeek. IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur said the industry has already shown what AI agents can do and the focus now is making them reliable where advertising actually happens. The release gives buyers, sellers, publishers, and technology providers a shared framework for running AI agents inside the ad systems they already use.

Roughly 30 agentic programmatic campaigns have run through PubMatic's platform, and Optable's sell-side agent has powered about half of them, according to PubMatic VP of customer success Abbie Reichner. The integration pairs Optable's agent, which packages first-party publisher data into audiences based on a campaign brief, with PubMatic's buyer agent, which queries that data in real time under PubMatic's AgenticOS framework. Mediavine, whose network spans more than 18,000 publishers, already uses Optable as its data management platform and is testing the setup, while gaming media company Livewire is piloting it too. PubMatic has completed more than 1,000 agentic direct-sold deals to date, and this expands the approach into curated private marketplace deals. Mediavine's Charlie Morris said the tech lets publishers "unlock a data asset that's been there but untapped for quite some time."

India's Connected TV user base has crossed 50 million, with Kantar's Media Compass report counting 166 million monthly CTV viewers in Q1 2026, up 23% year on year. Roughly 59 million of those, 36% of the total, watch CTV exclusively and never touch linear television. CTV ad spend projections for 2026 range from ₹3,000 crore to ₹8,000 crore depending on methodology: trackers differ on whether they count only in-app OTT video or also OEM home-screen advertising and ACR-based targeting. JioHotstar, formed from the 2025 merger of Disney+ Hotstar and JioCinema, claims more than 500 million monthly users and holds exclusive rights to the IPL, ICC tournaments, the ISL and the Premier League. During early IPL 2026 rounds it captured the largest share of CTV ad volume by a wide margin. Verification partners warn that up to half of unchecked CTV impressions may be non-viewable.

Fifa president Gianni Infantino's plan to sell stakes in a new commercial entity is facing pushback, Simply Wall St reports, renewing scrutiny of who profits from football's media and sponsorship rights. The site's Media and Sports Rights Companies screener flags three stocks with direct exposure. Mission Group, a UK collective of marketing, media buying and events agencies valued at £16.3m, trades on a low price-to-sales multiple, and analysts expect its earnings to turn positive within three years despite current losses. Sports Entertainment Group, an Australian sports media company drawing A$84.9m from its Media Australia segment, is unprofitable and funded entirely by debt, but has signed a fresh multi-year media rights deal. Omnicom Group, which reported US$22.4b in revenue including US$12.5b from the United States, is integrating Interpublic and using its Acxiom Fan Graph platform to link brands, fans and sports content, with analysts forecasting an earnings recovery.