Advertising news today: AT&T vs. Comcast, Refinery29 layoffs

Comcast CEO Brian
Roberts.
Getty Images, Kevork
Djansezian

The summer of 2018 produced blockbuster activity for media
M&A.

AT&T won an antitrust trial to secure its acquisition of Time
Warner, and followed the victory up closely with the purchase of
ad platform AppNexus. Nearly $90 billion and an ad business —
newly named Xandr — later, AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson boldly
declared his ad ambitions at the company’s multi-day Relevance
conference, and to an auditorium full of investors at Goldman
Sach’s annual Communacopia conference.

Comcast CEO Brian Roberts also had an impressive media-buying
summer, acquiring the British broadcaster Sky for $39 billion.
Comcast adds Sky to its solid arsenal of assets, including
NBCUniversal and the ad tech that makes up FreeWheel.

But the way the two companies talk about their ambitions is very
different.

Click here to read more about how Comcast
and AT&T’s ad ambitions compare.

In other news:

Oath has gutted its leadership team over the past year —
and former employees say it’s a cause of
dysfunction. A team of 13 is now five, only two of
whom were on the team last year.

JPMORGAN: Amazon’s ‘fast-growing’ ad business is putting
pressure on Google. Amazon’s rapid rise in digital
advertising has spooked Google investors, according to a note
from a JPMorgan analyst.

Inside Maybelline’s plan to fight back against beauty
upstarts like Glossier and Fenty that are winning over hordes of
millennials. The L’Oreal-owned brand plans to lean
heavily into its marketing centering on New York City and is
investing in technology like chatbots to compete with upstarts.

‘It has not yielded a great monetization strategy’:
Refinery29 is laying off 10% of staffers, citing challenges with
making short-form videos for Facebook and Snapchat.
The digital publisher is on track to miss its 2018 earnings by
5%, according a memo obtained by Business Insider.

Facebook is giving Messenger an overhaul to try and cut
down on bloat — and adding a dark mode.
Messenger has got horrendously bloated in recent years, as
ever-more features are added to it, from face filters to games to
Stories to bots.

Apps installed on millions of Android phones tracked user
behavior to execute a multimillion-dollar ad fraud scheme,
according to BuzzFeed News. The investigation found
a fraud scheme with more than 125 apps and websites.