What you need to know in advertising today

Brian
Roberts, chief executive officer of Comcast, arrives at the Sun
Valley Resort for the annual Allen & Company Sun Valley
Conference, July 10, 2018 in Sun Valley,
Idaho.
Drew Angerer/Getty
Images

Comcast beat Rupert Murdoch’s Twenty-First Century Fox in the
battle for Sky after offering around 30 billion pounds ($39
billion) for the British broadcaster in a rare auction to decide
the fate of the pay-television group.

US cable giant Comcast bid 17.28 pounds a share for control of
London-listed Sky, versus an offer of 15.67 pounds a share offer
by Fox, the Takeover Panel said in a statement shortly after
final bids were made on Saturday.

To read more about the deal, click here.

In related news: 

Comcast outbid Rupert Murdoch in $40 billion Sky deal —
and it shows just how much of a threat streaming services are to
cable companies. Some analysts think the deal was
driven by the threat of streaming services like Netflix and
Amazon.

In other news:

“The product still needs a lot of work”: Ad execs say
Instagram’s IGTV has a lot to do after investigation exposes
disturbing videos. A Business
Insider investigation of Instagram’s IGTV showed how
rampant brand safety issues remain in digital video.

Google quietly started logging people into Chrome without
their consent, and a security expert says it’s terrible for
privacy. When users login into a Google service,
such as Gmail, Chrome will automatically sign the browser into
their account without consent.

“Nearly every aspect of humanity will be impacted”:
Verizon and AT&T are banking on 5G to connect every device on
the planet to the Internet. Analysts in a Cowen
research note believe that IoT represents the biggest 5G
opportunity for the carriers.

WPP is considering a merger between Young & Rubicam
and digital-ad firm VML, with VML Chief Executive Jon Cook
leading the combined business, the Wall Street Journal
reports. The holding company’s new CEO Mark
Read is considering the consolidation to keep pace with the
industry’s digital shift.

Vox Media is expected to miss its $200 million 2018
revenue goal by more than 15%, the Journal reports.
The publisher, valued at $1 billion in its last funding round, is
the latest one to have struggled to live up to ambitious growth
goals in a challenging online ad market.