What you need to know in advertising today

If you've spent any time on YouTube, you know there's something for everybody. Sometimes the videos are weird.

There's a series of videos on the channel called Heroes Team that feature people dressed as Spider-Man and Elsa from Disney's "Frozen" having a baby together, for example. It's the internet. There are far worse things out there.

But for advertisers who pitch their products on YouTube, these kinds of videos are a nightmare. Worse, all the channels, at one time or another, have been part of something called Google Preferred. It's an ad offering launched about five years ago as a way for marketers to run ads on the top channels on YouTube.

To read more about how Google Preferred is full of landmines, click here.

In other news:

Google is taking its smart speaker battle with Amazon to movie theaters across the country. The company is touting the Google Home Mini through an ad across 200 movie theaters across the US that actually triggers the theater's lights to dim at the end.

A bidding war may be about to break out for 21st Century Fox. The desire for scale and flexibility to push into new digital businesses has led Comcast, Verizon and Disney to reportedly approach 21st Century Foxto buy some of its assets.

Mashable, the pioneering tech blog, is selling itself to the publisher of PC Magazine for $50 million - a quarter of its past valuation. The buyer is Ziff Davis, owner of PC Magazine, which also tried and failed to buy Gawker Media last year.

Meanwhile BuzzFeed, another digital media darling, is on track to miss its $350 million 2017 revenue target by about 15% to 20%, the Wall Street Journal reports. The company has also essentially shelved the idea of a 2018 IPO.

The startup VidMob says it can quickly make ads for Snapchat - and it's raising money to help it take on ad agencies. The company, essentially a Task Rabbit for video ads and content, has raised $7.5 million in new funding.

Airbnb has acquired Accomable, a startup which offers accommodation suitable for guests with disabilities, for an unknown amount. The company said it hired the founders and most of the staff to build out its wheelchair-accessible housing inventory.

Apple's diversity chief is leaving after less than a year on the job. Denise Young Smith joined the firm in May, and had caused controversy by suggesting a group of "12, white, blue-eyed blonde men" in a room could be diverse.

Amazon won the UK rights to broadcast the ATP World Tour, and will stream 37 men's games to British Prime subscribers. The company won the rights from Sky, amid signs the firm will step up its sports content.

Brad Jakeman, the outgoing president of PepsiCo's beverage group, called Pepsi's Kendall Jenner ad fiasco the "most gut-wrenching experience" of his career, speaking at the Ad Age Next conference. He also asked marketing executives to be compassionate twoards their peers when something goes wrong.

AT&T is reportedly looking to buy out The Chernin Group's stake in the Otter Media streaming video joint venture they formed three years ago, Digiday reports. Terms of the potential deal are unclear, but it would be one of the bigger digital video acquisitions.

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