What you need to know in advertising today
US entertainment giant Comcast increased its bid for European broadcaster Sky last week, stymieing Rupert Murdoch's takeover attempt for the company.
Comcast's newest offer came in at £14.75 a share, valuing Sky at £26 billion ($34 billion), up from its previous offer of £22 billion. Earlier in the day, 21st Century Fox bid £14 a share for Sky.
So why are Comcast and Fox locked into a bidding war for Sky? Click here to read more.
In other news:
Amazon crashed for over an hour on its biggest shopping day of the year, likely losing millions in sales. The website was experiencing issues like links that appeared to go nowhere, leaving customers unable to access the special deals.
Speaking of Amazon, BuzzFeed snuck a paid ad for Maybelline into its Prime Day coverage - and didn't originally disclose it. BuzzFeed worked with Maybelline to create bundles of packages sold on Amazon and originally linked to those packages in its coverage of Amazon Prime Day without mentioning that it was an ad.
Netflix plunged 14% after it missed expectations on revenue and subscriber additions. Netflix's stock got hammered after the bell after reporting that it added far fewer subscribers in the second quarter than Wall Street was expecting - and warned of another subscriber shortfall to come in the third quarter.
Giant ad agencies realize they have serious problems - and are finally making some bold moves. Brian Wieser, senior analyst Pivotal Research, says that he is encouraged by a number of recent ad holding company moves.
"The process is really antiquated": Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian is backing a billboard company that's trying to take on Facebook and Google for ad dollars. AdQuick wants to make it easier for brands to buy out-of-home ads, and has secured $2.1 million to develop targeting and measurement tools.
Media - both on the left and right - are pressing Facebook to define what journalism is, reports Recode. Facebook's global news partnerships head Campbell Brown met with a group of editors and publishers that Facebook works with last week, including BuzzFeed, The Daily Caller, Vox Media and The Huffington Post.