Kilar’s history of questioning the status quo may be AT&T’s motivation behind hiring Hulu’s founding CEO to oversee WarnerMedia.
WarnerMedia’s incoming CEO, 48-year-old Jason Kilar has been asked to oversee the overhaul of one of TV’s biggest companies as it shifts its business to streaming. The odds of success for an established company like AT&T-owned WarnerMedia may be high, but for a media conglomerate owned by a 135-year-old telecom giant, so are the stakes. Read more below. Jason Kilar's history of questioning the status quo may be AT&T’s motivation behind hiring Hulu’s founding CEO to oversee WarnerMedia. The first three months of the year were already a particularly slow quarter for M&A in the U.S. media and martech space. Now, the prolonged coronavirus crisis has shifted the entire M&A process online. For Digiday+ Members, C-Suite executives have seen marketing as a cost center for years. Now with coronavirus, they have a test case for how businesses handle those cut costs. Last week was characterized by layoffs, salary cuts and print closures in the media industry. But it was also the week publishers started seeing campaigns coming back in China. Other things to know about Tomorrow: Former Comscore and 360i CEO Bryan Wiener joins our next Digiday+ Talk to explore the importance of leading in a crisis. Learn more and become a member here to access the discussion. Subscription brands are utilizing a growing variety of tactics to fight consumer churn. Some are offering flexible plans that can be temporarily paused, while others are simply locking users into longer subscription terms. Sponsored by Recurly. | |
| howdy! Coronavirus Fallout | 'A function of confidence': Uncertainty casts a shadow over M&A deals | Dealmaking has been rife in the media and ad sectors in recent years as the market consolidated around fewer, more powerful players. But as the coronavirus hit, many companies have pulled the brakes on their acquisition plans. Save for one or two processes that were due to complete soon anyway, the majority of investment bank […] | | Sponsored by Confiant | A publisher’s guide to avoiding low-quality SSPs | New data from 2019 shows that the SSPs most likely to serve low-quality and malicious ads are also the ones least likely to address the threats. In a new guide for publishers, learn tips for steering clear of the worst-offending SSPs and preserving ad quality. | | howdy! Sponsored by CafeMedia | Publisher’s webinar: Using first-party data to drive post-cookies ad revenue | Regulations and cookie restrictions have made life harder for publishers, but new research shows that many are finding innovative ways to generate ad dollars. In a webinar on April 13, at 3 p.m. EST, join experts from CafeMedia, Huge and Atlanta Black Star as they discuss publisher techniques for driving ad revenue in the privacy era. | | howdy! DIGIDAY+ MEMBER EXCLUSIVE | Digiday Research: 73% of ad buyers have clients 'pausing' spending | A new survey by Digiday found that 75% of media buyers say their clients are reducing their marketing spend due to the coronavirus. In a separate question, 73% of buyers also said that clients were pausing their marketing expenditure on various channels almost entirely. | | howdy! howdy! Coronavirus Fallout | How food publishers are giving back to the restaurant industry | While producing additional coverage may be the obvious approach for serving their communities in a time of need, Food & Wine, Eater and Thrillist have taken it a step further by setting up fundraising features and promoting local businesses. | | | Complex’s Rich Antoniello’s recipe for media in crisis: ‘Brand plus brains plus balance sheet’ | For publishing companies to survive a global crisis like the one we're in, Rich Antoniello's formula is 'brand, plus brains, plus balance sheet." He would know, having stewarded Complex through the 2008 financial crisis as CEO, the role he still holds now. But compared to that, the downturn brought about by the coronavirus pandemic is "infinitely more difficult," Antoniello said on the Digiday Podcast. | | |