August 5, 2026

Walmart said Tuesday it has completed its acquisition of Vibe.co, folding the self-service streaming TV advertising platform into Walmart Connect. The deal was announced in June, with the Wall Street Journal previously reporting a price of $1.4 billion. Vibe.co's platform lets small and medium-sized brands launch streaming TV campaigns across publishers. Ryan Mayward, GM and senior vice president of Walmart Connect, said Vibe "has built an exceptional platform that makes streaming TV advertising simple and accessible for businesses of all sizes." Walmart said combining the two platforms expands its connected TV advertising business and adds new ways to reach customers. The move follows Walmart's 2024 purchase of TV maker Vizio for $2.3 billion, made to strengthen its advertising business.

Hearst will pay Disney $1.2 billion in cash for Disney's 50% stake in A+E Global Media, taking full ownership of the company that runs Lifetime, History Channel, A&E Network, Lifetime Movie Network, FYI and Vice TV. The two companies had split ownership 50-50 for more than a decade before putting A+E Global Media up for sale in July 2025, a process that drew interest from Starz though it is unclear whether that interest reached a formal bid. The deal is expected to close in September, and Paul Buccieri stays on as president and chairman. It also includes A+E Studios, A+E Factual Studio, A&E IndieFilms, A+E Global Media Digital, and streaming and subscription services such as History Vault and Lifetime Movie Club. Hearst's separate roughly 18% stake in ESPN is unaffected by the transaction. 'We thank our Disney colleagues for decades of successful partnership,' said Hearst CEO Steven R. Swartz.

Teads filed an 85-page lawsuit against Google in the Southern District of New York, alleging the company's tying of Google Ads to its AdX exchange cost rival exchanges roughly 6.88 trillion impressions between 2017 and 2023, without disclosing the methodology behind the estimate. The complaint alleges Google has added new auction rules that parallel Last Look, the mechanic Google says it ended in 2019, and claims Google still updates the bid-rigging scheme once called Project Bernanke after presenting its 2019 shift to first-price auctions as fair and transparent. Teads CEO David Kostman said, "We believe Google's practices artificially suppressed fair competition and hindered innovation." Teads is seeking treble and punitive damages plus court-ordered changes to Google's ad auction practices. Google disputed the allegations, saying advertisers and publishers choose its tools because they are effective, affordable and easy to use. Teads is the fifth supply-side platform to sue Google in the past year, joining Index Exchange, Magnite, OpenX and PubMatic.

Paramount Skydance's net earnings fell to $41 million in the second quarter, down from $57 million a year earlier, even as total revenue rose 1% to $6.91 billion. The company's TV division, still its largest segment, saw revenue drop 9% to $3.12 billion, with ad sales down 14% and distribution fees down 6% as linear subscriptions eroded. Streaming offset some of the decline: Paramount+ revenue climbed 16%, helped by FIFA World Cup and UFC broadcasts, and the service added 2 million subscribers, more than expected, with its lowest churn quarter since launch. Studio revenue grew 16% to $1.3 billion. CEO David Ellison said upfront commitments grew by double digits and reiterated his confidence that the company's stalled Warner Bros. Discovery acquisition will close despite recent legal setbacks. Paramount projects TV declines to moderate next quarter.

RTVE's flagship channel La 1 posted an audience share of 18.8 per cent in Spain last month, its strongest monthly result since December 2006. Barlovento Comunicación credits the jump to the channel's exclusive coverage of the FIFA World Cup and Spain's run to the title. Antena 3 held second place with 11.4 per cent, while Telecinco slid to a record low of 7.1 per cent. Cuatro reached 5.8 per cent and La Sexta 4.9 per cent. The surge also pushed RTVE past Atresmedia and Mediaset España to lead Spain's broadcaster group rankings for the period. Among digital terrestrial thematic channels, Mediaset's FDF topped the list with 2.4 per cent, ahead of Energy on 2.2 per cent, Be Mad on 2.1 per cent, and Atreseries and Divinity tied at 2.0 per cent. The numbers show how much pull live sport still has on linear audiences even as streaming keeps splitting viewing time.

Newton Research launched Unlimited Analytics on Tuesday, an agentic layer that adds AI agents to every stage of a campaign, from planning through activation to measurement. Horizon Media has run the tool inside its Horizon Blu platform for about a year and reports a 10% to 20% increase in return on ad spend after gaining access to bid, creative and geographic data it lacked before. Clients can type a natural-language question, such as what happens if 20% of a budget shifts from social to programmatic, and the platform's causal models predict the likely outcome from millions of data points on creative exposure and timing. Newton CEO John Hoctor said data analysts typically spend about 80% of their time moving and checking data before reaching insight. Horizon EVP of Analytics Kevin McGehee said the tool "democratizes" the agency's analytics for teams that previously waited on specialists.

IAB Europe's AdEx Benchmark Report, now in its twentieth edition, puts 2025 digital advertising spend across 30 European markets at €131.1 billion, an increase of €12.5 billion over 2024. Growth reached 10.5% in nominal terms and 9.4% once adjusted for inflation using World Bank and IMF price data. Video-led formats, Connected TV, social video and Retail Media drove the expansion, while paid search and classifieds grew more slowly than the wider market. Video now accounts for more than half of all display investment in Europe for the first time, and Retail Media has passed 10% of total digital ad spend. Turkey's headline growth of 37% translates to roughly 2% in real terms. IAB Europe's Chief Economist Daniel Knapp said digital advertising is "increasingly moving beyond a communications expense to become sales infrastructure, shelf space and shopfront at once."

Yandex's revenue from advertising and promotion services grew 10.3% year on year in the second quarter of 2026, while the group's total revenue climbed 16% to 386 billion rubles, the company said in a financial report shared with ppc.world. Turnover from advertising and promotion services, a separate measure, came to 128 billion rubles, up 12% year on year. Within Yandex's "Search Services and AI" segment, which generated 137.4 billion rubles in revenue (+9% year on year), advertising and promotion revenue from external clients also grew 10.3% year on year, a pace Yandex says beat the broader Russian ad market. Foreign companies increased their ad spending on Yandex in Russia by 55% year on year, one driver Yandex cited alongside improved efficiency of its ad tools. Yandex's share of the Russian search market rose to 69.9%. In the first quarter of 2026, Yandex's ad revenue grew 9% year on year to 115.4 billion rubles.