Madison and Wall: Saturday Summary
For the week ending December 16, 2023
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Although happenings in digital advertising have an outsized impact on the world of advertising – as digital represents the overwhelming share of advertising by now in the US and around the world – this week’s news biggest news was arguably Google affirming the date of the start of third-party cookie deprecation.
I’ve certainly written a lot about the consequences that may follow (including last week in context of the ANA’s programmatic report, the looming AI-driven “tsunami of crap” and the decline of the open web) so it doesn’t bear too much repeating here
However, with the announcement, it did occur to me that the increasing focus on walled gardens could prove to be a helpful trend to TV network owners with subscription-focused data, at least for those who partner closely with digital platforms who are also walled gardens. But odds are that most of the industry’s current owners will experience decline in years ahead, presuming the industry continues to focus on what it has focused on, and as advertisers whose businesses are online-centric become increasingly important in the broader economy.
Further M&A is consequently in the cards for many in the TV business as I wrote earlier in the week in a piece looking at some of the catalysts and consequences of such activity. As it turns out, there was some TV-related M&A announced on Friday with news that RTL has agreed to sell its Dutch business, which posted €636 million euros in revenue last year, to the Belgian DPG group. While RTL had previously tried to combine this operation in a consolidation with the Netherlands’ other major broadcaster - but was blocked by regulators - this transaction may very well be focused on generating a return for the business while maintaining much of the company’s scale (as many of the operations will continue to be run by RTL).
To be sure, there will be growth opportunities and longer-term approaches to drive capital appreciation available to today’s TV network owners around the world, but I think that increasingly it will depend on their efforts to become much broader platforms rather than sellers of adjacencies to “premium” video content.