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Marketing Brew

Jasmine Sheena

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LinkedIn logo on an overlapping TV and phone screen

LinkedIn debuts CTV ads and more at NYC marketing summit 

The networking juggernaut is partnering with NBCUniversal on CTV ads.

Ryan Barwick

A gif of the Narrator in Fight Club watching TV

More than half of US TV watchers are cordless, according to report

Streaming continues to take up larger percentages of total time spent watching TV, according to the Video Advertising Bureau. 

'Suits' stars Gabriel Macht and Patrick J. Adams appear in an ad for T-Mobile

Why brands like T-Mobile and e.l.f love ‘Suits’ 

The legal drama’s resurgence on Netflix has won it new fans—and brand interest. 

A TV with a play button on it denoting TV & streaming

TV & Streaming

Jennimai Nguyen

When you minus a plus, you could still be left with a positive. At least, that’s what a basic understanding of math points to, and what Apple might be going for.

The tech giant’s streaming service recently underwent a subtle rebrand, dropping the plus sign from Apple TV+ to simply become Apple TV, a move the company said in a press release was part of a “vibrant new identity” for the streamer. But there’s one problem—Apple TV is already the name of the company’s existing connected TV hardware device and its streaming app, and the plus sign had previously helped delineate the difference.

It’s a dilemma for customers who might need to refer to the different products or who are new to the Apple universe, but the pared-down moniker could also be reflective of how users interact with the streaming world today, according to Anthony Shore, chief operative at brand naming agency Operative Words.

“Apple has always been about simplicity in all kinds of ways, and this is a continuation of those efforts,” Shore told us. “Clearly it’s their intention that they want ‘Apple TV’ to mean all of these different things [related to entertainment].”

Apple wasn’t the only brand to adopt the “+” naming convention when streaming became a serious scene. Disney, ESPN, and Paramount all opted to use the symbol in the names of their streaming services..

“These companies wanted to create a distinction between what they aired on broadcast television and what was now available on demand, on streaming,” he said. “‘Plus’ was their way of signaling that, and it afforded them a little buffer of safety in case things didn’t really work out.”

 the plethora of pluses, the adoption of a streaming category naming convention could also be seen as useful and empathetic to the consumer, Shore said, setting them up to more easily understand what was being offered. The issue, though, was that the plus sign seemed to mean ever so slightly different things to different companies, ranging from a large collection of owned content beyond what was offered on broadcast (like with Disney+), to an ad-free, premium experience of original content (Apple TV+), to an owned and licensed content library (Paramount+).

Bobby Hougham, founder, ECD, and CCO of creative branding agency The New Blank, told us that Apple TV’s original adoption of the plus sign was the most out of place among streamers.

“The intent [of many streamers] was that maybe we could show some different and unique stuff, so it was additive, and the plus actually kind of made sense,” Hougham said. “Apple TV+ doesn’t make any sense because there is no other place to watch Apple programming.”

Apple TV is not the only streaming service to recently drop the plus sign. 

 less than a month after debuting in 2022, is coming back (sort of) as CNN All Access, while ESPN+ was effectively sunset amid a new ESPN app roll-out earlier this year. While there are still some plussed-up streamers remaining, Shore believes this gradual shed reflects a decreased need to distinguish between streaming entertainment offerings.

“This is what has always happened any time a new technology has emerged and become ubiquitous,” Shore said, pointing to the early-internet trend of putting “E” or “I” in front of company and product names, like eHarmony and iPod. “A new technology emerges, companies find a way to signal that, and sometimes that becomes an industry standard practice. And then once that becomes ubiquitous, that marker of that new technology doesn’t make sense, and holding on to it can look a little ridiculous and can look dated.”

Still, dropping the perhaps-dated part of Apple’s streaming brand while still having other products with the same name has passed the burden of communication and clarity on to users and anybody who might be talking about the products, Shore said.

And while adopting “Apple TV” may align more closely with what customers colloquially call the streamer, Alexandra Watkins, founder and chief innovation officer at branding agency Eat My Words, told us that when it comes to avoiding customer confusion, it could be too little, too late.

“Brands need to look into their crystal ball when they’re naming anything,” Watkins said. “Look into the crystal ball and imagine ‘What could this be in the future?’”

the Apple TV logo appears on a mobile phone in front of a white Apple logo, which is shaped like an apple 

What Apple TV’s subtle name change might signal in streaming

Removing the plus sign from the service’s name aligns with what customers need from streaming, brand experts told us. 

Netflix may have had its “best ad-sales quarter ever,” but its Q3 was not entirely smooth sailing.

The streamer missed Wall Street expectations, registering a lower-than-expected operating margin due to a dispute with Brazilian tax authorities, Spence Neumann, Netflix CFO, said Tuesday on the company’s earnings call.

“It’s a unique tax,” Neumann said. “No other tax looks or behaves like this in any other major country in which we operate…Absent this expense, we would have exceeded our Q3 ’25 operating income and operating margin forecast, and we don’t expect this matter to have a material impact on our results going forward.”

Tax dispute aside, the streamer reported a 17% increase in revenue in the quarter, with the same YoY growth in revenue in the United States and Canada. It also registered its highest quarterly view share ever, a measure of platform engagement, in both the US and the UK.

 Netflix’s ads business grew in Q3, according to Greg Peters, Netflix co-CEO. Beyond its best ad sales quarter to date, the streamer expects to more than double its ads revenue this year. Netflix previously announced in August that its US upfronts commitments had doubled.

As its ad business continues to grow, it’s infusing AI into its ad biz, too. The streamer is testing ad formats with AI to help with ad creative and placement, as well as to speed up media plan creation, Peters said.

“We made considerable progress in building out our general capabilities in the ad space,” Peters said. “If you use our beloved crawl-walk-run model, we’re now squarely in that walking phase.”

AI is also being used in other parts of Netflix’s business, including in content recommendations, through localizing promotional assets for different markets, and offering creators access to GenAI tools to assist in content creation. (In the shareholder letter, the company noted that “in 

, filmmakers used GenAI coupled with ML and Eyeline’s proprietary volumetric capture technologies to de-age characters in the opening scene.”

 As is typical in its shareholder letter, Netflix highlighted some of its biggest TV shows and movies in the quarter, including the sophomore season of 

. The movie, Netflix’s most popular film ever, has proven to be so successful that the streamer is partnering with Hasbro and Mattel to create more toys and games tied to the title.

Looking ahead, Netflix has a stacked content roster, including Guillermo del Toro’s 

. On the sports side, it will present a live boxing match featuring Jake Paul and Tank Davis in November, following it up with two NFL Christmas Day games. Some video podcast content is also coming to Netflix beginning next year through a partnership with Spotify announced earlier this month.

Whether Netflix will expand its content roster through more ambitious M&A, or whether it’s seriously eyeing the 

 in front of Warner Bros. Discovery, is anyone’s guess. Peters noted that it’s “our responsibility to look at every significant opportunity” when asked about M&A opportunities, while co-CEO Ted Sarandos was even more muted in his remarks.

“We’ve been very clear in the past that we have no interest in owning legacy media networks, so there’s no change there,” Sarandos said on the call. “But in general we believe that we can be, and we will be, choosy. We have a great business; we’re predominantly focused on growing organically.”

Netflix reports ‘best ad-sales quarter ever’ despite earnings miss

While acknowledging M&A opportunities, co-CEO Ted Sarandos said the company is “predominantly focused on growing organically.”

The Federal Communications Commission is in the 

 a cap preventing entities from owning broadcast TV stations that reach more than 39% of the national TV audience, as well as reviewing other existing media ownership rules and limits. But first, at the FCC’s September meeting, at least one of its commissioners wanted to talk about Jimmy Kimmel.

During the meeting, Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, a Democrat, called out FCC Chair Brendan Carr’s comments about ABC and its late-night talk show,

, which was briefly suspended by Disney after the host made remarks about conservative activist Charlie Kirk’s alleged killer in an on-air monologue. She also seemed to reference an incident from last month when President Trump, who appointed Carr, in a heated exchange with ABC News correspondent Jonathan Karl, 

 that the Department of Justice might “go after” Karl.

“First, an ABC reporter was told that his coverage amounted to hate speech and he should be prosecuted simply for doing his job. Then, this FCC threatened to go after the same network, seizing on a late-night comedian’s comments as a pretext to punish speech it disliked,” Gomez said during the meeting, referencing Carr’s apparent 

 that their licenses could be at risk if they carried Kimmel’s show. “That led to a new low of corporate capitulation that put the foundation of the First Amendment in danger. This was no simple business decision. It was an act of clear government intimidation.” In a press conference held after the meeting, Carr pushed back, saying, “There was no threat made or suggested that if Jimmy Kimmel didn’t get fired, that someone was going to lose their license,” 

. (Carr has agreed to appear in front of the Senate Commerce Committee to talk about the Kimmel situation, though no date has been set, Semafor 

Gomez mentioned these incidents during the meeting as part of a broader commentary about the potential that increased consolidation could lead to fewer viewpoints being represented and could give government agencies like the FCC more power to exert control over protected speech across networks.

This meeting centered on discussing rules including the Local Television rule, which prohibits one company from owning more than two stations in a market, and the Dual Network rule, which restricts mergers between two of any of the four major broadcast networks (ABC, NBC, Fox, and CBS).

While Gomez warned about the “danger of allowing vast and unfettered media consolidation,” Commissioner Olivia Trusty, a Republican, and Carr, who has 

 media ownership limits in the past, argued that reviewing (and potentially lifting) limits on ownership would be an appropriate response to a changed media landscape.

At the end of the meeting, the FCC ultimately voted to 

 with seeking public comment on media ownership limits.

Gomez acknowledged that one argument for removing the ownership limits is that local broadcasters might benefit financially from consolidation under entities with more resources as advertisers move to streaming and online platforms. However, she added, this “unfettered” consolidation could lead to a severe reduction in the diversity of viewpoints available to consumers, she said, as “corporate behemoths” could impose their viewpoints on consumers. Nexstar and Sinclair, which own a combined 70 local ABC affiliates, preempted 

, while Sinclair has come under fire for 

 produced by the company. Nexstar is seeking approval of its proposed merger with Tegna, a move that would 

 the FCC to loosen media ownership limits.

Gomez stressed the value of the public-private partnership traditionally preserved in the broadcast ecosystem, which she said incentivizes broadcasters to serve their communities under FCC rules that prioritize diverse perspectives.

“A consumer wrote to me about the fact that four of the five stations in Eugene, Oregon, that broadcast local news are owned by a single entity,” Gomez said. “She raised concerns that the commonly owned stations all share the same crew, reporters, on-air personnel, and stories for the local news programming. This means that although there are five stations with local news programs on air each day, there are really only two choices.”

During the meeting, Trusty and Carr sang a different tune in their comments on the potential ownership limit reversal. Trusty argued a review is needed in order to support broadcasters competing for viewers and ad dollars. She also mentioned a July ruling from the US Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, which struck down a previous FCC order that held that one entity can’t operate more than one of the top four TV stations in a given market in terms of audience share.

Carr made a similar argument during the meeting, stating that the limits should be reviewed to align with current market conditions and take into account the impact of streaming on the broadcast landscape. He said that the appeals court’s decision is motivating the FCC’s decision to move forward with the review so that reviews happen more consistently in the future, which he said should be every four years.

“I’ve emphasized the importance of what I call the ‘Gretzky test,’ keeping our eye on where the proverbial puck is going, not where it has been,” he said. “Nowhere is that more important than with our media regulations. As we kick off this quadrennial review, the FCC must do so with an eye to the future.”

As FCC considers loosening media ownership rules, one commissioner points to Jimmy Kimmel suspension as cause for concern

Commissioner Anna M. Gomez emphasized the danger of “unfettered media consolidation” as the agency voted to seek public comment on media ownership limits.

Nielsen’s measurement accreditation woes aren’t over yet.

The Media Rating Council (MRC), the independent governing body that reviews, audits, and accredits media measurement products, is reviewing Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel product, which combines household panel data measuring TV measurement with data from set-top boxes and connected TVs, according to an email sent to audit committee members who attended a Sept. 10 MRC meeting

The email requests that members vote to start the process of stripping Big Data + Panel of its accreditation or to give Nielsen an additional 60 days to address some of the organization’s concerns about the product. (Members could also abstain.) Those concerns include delays in processing; Nielsen’s comprehensive weighting; Nielsen’s Household Demographic Assessment Model, which estimates demographic data for “data sets lacking those details,” according to 

; its sample representation; and its Hispanic measurement.

A removal of the accreditation could represent a step backwards for Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel measurement product, which the MRC accredited in January and has become a key currency for broadcasters and agencies during negotiations. At the time of the product’s accreditation, Nielsen CEO Karthik Rao 

 as a “landmark moment for TV ratings” that would “forever change audience measurement.”

Bill Daddi, a public relations representative for the MRC, noted in response to a request for comment that in-process audits and voting specifics are confidential, but confirmed that the organization is conducting voting on Nielsen’s 2024–25 audit, which he described as “a routine procedure that occurs at the conclusion of all audits.” Nielsen declined to comment on the record.

Nielsen has had a grip on the TV industry for quite some time, operating household panels that have been used to estimate TV viewership for decades.

In recent years, though, that grip has loosened, particularly after its flagship National Television Audience Measurement product 

 in 2021 after the measurement giant acknowledged it undercounted TV viewing audiences in the earliest months of the pandemic, which the MRC estimated could have cost broadcasters 

 in lost ad revenue. (That product’s accreditation has since been 

Since then, it hasn’t exactly been smooth sailing for Nielsen. Paramount made headlines late last year when it 

 a contract with Nielsen to expire over a pricing dispute and opted to use data from alternate measurement partner VideoAmp instead, although the companies have since come to an agreement. Just last month, the NFL’s chief data and analytics officer, Paul Ballew, 

 Nielsen, telling the Wall Street Journal that “there are millions of viewers that we believe they are systematically undercounting.” Network execs from Fox and ESPN 

 after Nielsen used a custom methodology to measure an NFL game from Brazil that was broadcast on YouTube last month.

Amid the measurement disagreements, alternative measurement providers like VideoAmp, Comscore, and iSpot have all jockeyed for more market share and legitimacy among advertisers and agencies. Ahead of this year’s upfront season, the US Joint Industry Committee 

 all three as currencies of record. According to a 2024 survey from Advertiser Perceptions 

 decision-makers said they view alternatives to Nielsen “to be more or just as effective than the legacy currency provider.”

Nielsen measurement accreditation faces uncertain future—again

Media Rating Council members are voting on whether to begin the process of stripping Nielsen’s Big Data + Panel of its accreditation or giving Nielsen more time to address concerns.

Media buyers, here’s one more streaming ad unit to potentially factor into holiday budgets.

This week, Paramount rolled out Streaming Fixed Units, an offering that lets brands activate against the first seven days of new episodes of some of Paramount+’s most popular shows, including 

The standard units are 30 seconds long, with Paramount offering separate pricing options for shorter or longer lengths, Leo O’Connor, EVP of streaming at Paramount Advertising, told Marketing Brew. The units will play during standard ad breaks (the second ad break in a Paramount+ show, for example, has 90 seconds of time available, enough for three 30-second slots.)

Advertisers from the AI, travel, and quick-serve restaurant categories have already bought up Streaming Fixed Units, which are designed to provide premium inventory during some of Paramount+’s most coveted programming at the time when most people are tuning in, O’Connor said. Western-wear brands have also taken an interest in the ad format to show up against the Taylor Sheridan shows, he noted.

“We saw that this filled this need in the market to eventize these big drops of new episodes,” O’Connor said. “This is something that’s available today in sports. I think there’s a lot that’s being said about that in the industry, but we felt like there was some white space on the entertainment side to do a similar type of execution, where you could find a huge audience doing the same thing at once and have a brand own that moment.”

 Paramount, which is in the midst of navigating a massive merger with Skydance, has been adding to its ad offerings this year. In January, its broadcast of the AFC Championship game between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs featured 

. The same month, it joined peers like Roku and NBCUniversal in partnering on Comcast’s 

 platform for small- and medium-sized businesses.

In March, the company unveiled a measurement 

 with iSpot that implements iSpot’s Outcomes at Scale offering, giving advertisers information about conversion rates.

The new ad format announced this week is designed to offer advertisers even more ways to get in on the company’s streaming inventory, O’Connor said.

“This is meant to complement the already existing programmatic and audience targeting capabilities that we have,” he said. “This is not meant to signal a departure from that type of selling…Breaking through with the Streaming Fixed Unit and then following up that buy with more precision-targeted programmatic across Paramount+ and Pluto TV, we think that’s the formula.”

Jeremy Renner portraying Mike McLusky in the Paramount+ series "Mayor of Kingstown"

Paramount unveils new ad format letting advertisers own episode drops

Streaming Fixed Units are designed to help “eventize” new episodes, an exec said.

Disney and Hearst are reportedly exploring a sale of A+E Global Media, a joint venture between the two companies that operates cable networks A&E, History, and Lifetime, according to a July report from 

. But whoever might be interested in buying up the joint venture is likely to find a struggling cable business.

Disney recently reported that income from equity investees (which denotes income made from what a company invested in)

in Disney Entertainment’s linear networks segment decreased by $90 million in the nine-month period ending June 28, from $440 million to $350 million. That was due, according to the filing, “to lower income from A+E attributable to decreases in affiliate and advertising revenue.”

The disclosure, from a quarterly filing last month, comes as other media giants like Warner Bros. Discovery and NBCUniversal look to shed their cable businesses. Disney, on the other hand, has made fewer such moves, which executives have defended as a strength.

“As many others exit that business, it gives us a stronger hand to stay in that business,” Disney CEO Bob Iger said in a June 

 on CNBC. “We will have, interestingly enough, a linear television business that’s paired with a streaming business. When you think about it, these spinoff companies won’t have the assets from a streaming perspective that we will have.”

Earlier this month, ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro echoed similar sentiments at the Bank of America Media, Communications & Entertainment conference.

“We’ve been very clear about our continued focus on the traditional ecosystem,” he said at the event. “We are running parallel paths. We are all in on direct-to-consumer, but we continue to see the value in that traditional pay TV environment, not just for our business, but also for the sports fan.”

While some media giants like NBCU and WBD may be spinning off their cable arms, that might not be the right choice for others like Disney, Dan Rayburn, conference chairman at the NAB Show Streaming Summit, told Marketing Brew. Sports continues to be a huge driver of eyeballs for linear TV, and companies have varying levels of live sports content to offer viewers in an increasingly fragmented sports viewing landscape.

“Broadcast is still where it’s at for sports,” Rayburn said. Companies like Disney, Paramount Skydance, and WBD are “all in the business of sports. That’s what’s driving decisions.”

Another factor to consider is each company’s unique financial makeup, he added. “Each one of these companies has to be looked at individually based on the channels they have, the reach they have, their free cash flow, their advertising revenue, and where the debt is structured,” Rayburn said.

“It’s not fair to just say ‘One did this, the other one should do it.’ You really have to look at the financials.”

Disney’s not the only media company choosing to keep its linear and streaming businesses under one roof. Jeff Shell, president of Paramount, echoed Iger’s comments during a press event 

“We’re thinking about the cable networks not as declining linear assets that we need to spin off or deal with somehow,” Shell said. “We’re thinking of them as brands that we have to redefine.”

individuals featured in A+E Global Media content

Disney says it’s committed to linear TV amid declines in ad revenue at A+E

While other media giants prepare to spin off their cable channels, Disney execs have signaled that the House of Mouse plans to stay in the linear biz.

Creators may be celebrities in their own right, but attendees of YouTube’s creator event Made on YouTube in New York on Tuesday were in for a surprise visit from a more traditional star.

The singer Dua Lipa appeared onstage to discuss the beginning of her career when she first started using YouTube as a creator. Years later, YouTube and Dua Lipa have both changed plenty, and YouTube announced several new AI, creator, and live features at the event as it continues to seek to capitalize on an increasingly lucrative creator economy.

We rounded up some of the big announcements from the event below.

 Sick of hearing about AI? Well, then stop reading here, because YouTube Shorts is being integrated with Google DeepMind’s Veo 3 Fast, according to a press release. The integration allows users to generate clips or video backgrounds complete with sound, and users will be able to add props or motion to the content they create and to restyle videos. The feature is rolling out now to creators in the US, UK, Canada, New Zealand, and Australia, and further experimentation on these features is expected to start in subsequent months.

YouTube threw a few more AI surprises into the mix, including rolling out a tool called Edit with AI, which promises to “help turn…raw footage into a first draft video.” Edit with AI is currently being tested in Shorts and in the YouTube Create app, with plans to soon expand access to the offering. Another video editing feature, called Speech to Song, can turn dialogue from a video into a musical version for use in YouTube Shorts. The tool will be available to “more creators in the US” soon, as the platform begins to test it.

“When YouTube started 20 years ago, it was all about democratizing nationwide,” Neal Mohan, YouTube CEO, said at the event. “These AI tools are really just the next generation along the lines of that philosophy.”

 YouTube isn’t just offering new AI and video editing features for creators; it dropped some additional creator tools in YouTube Studio, too. As part of a new suite of features, YouTube Studio will get a “conversational AI partner” called Ask Studio, which is designed to provide channel-level insights. There’s also a new collaboration feature (which is called Collaborations) that aims to connect creators to one another to showcase partnerships and grow creator reach. YouTube is also adding A/B testing that can be used for titles, updating its Inspiration Tab, and rolling out more advanced auto-dubbing capabilities. While auto-dubbing with lip sync is still in limited testing, the Inspiration Tab features are slated to be accessible to users in most countries by the end of 2025, and many of the other new features are set to roll out before the end of the year.

YouTube is also rolling out a new function that allows links to a brand’s site to be added to Shorts. That feature is set to roll out widely in 2026. On the safety side, the company is expanding a likeness-detection tool that will “detect, manage, and request removal of unauthorized videos made with AI using your facial likeness on YouTube.” An open beta of this tool will be available in the near future for all YouTube Partner Program members.

Live viewing makes up a significant portion of viewership on YouTube, and on average, over 30% of daily YouTube viewers who were logged in consumed live content in Q2 2025. To lean into the trend, YouTube Live is getting some new features including side-by-side ads on livestreams and the ability for livestreamers to broadcast horizontally and vertically simultaneously.