The news: At Cannes Lions 2025, Netflix announced it has added Yahoo’s DSP to its growing list of programmatic partners, joining Google, The Trade Desk, and Microsoft. The expansion boosts flexibility for advertisers targeting Netflix’s 94 million monthly ad-tier users across 12 countries, with new capabilities for first-party data and interest-based buying. Our take: With its Ads Suite now live globally, Netflix is done crawling—it’s competing directly with YouTube and social platforms for CTV budgets. As its per-user ad revenues rebound and its content ecosystem broadens, Netflix is evolving into a full-funnel marketing platform poised to reshape premium video monetization.

The news: Meta’s $14 billion investment in Scale AI drove Google to cut ties with the startup. With Meta now owning a 49% stake, Google could be concerned that contracting with Scale would give Meta access to its proprietary data. Our take: Big Tech is racing to consolidate control over AI and cloud security infrastructure. Independence and agility could help companies avoid vendor lock-ins and data entanglement as regulators close in.

Programmatic ad buying is undergoing a sea change: Microsoft’s DSP closure signals a smaller role for Big Tech in managing third-party ad inventory—so who will take its place?

The news: Disney and Universal are suing AI startup Midjourney, alleging copyright infringement. The lawsuit states that Midjourney pirated their content libraries and continues to produce “innumerable” copies of their characters, including Shrek, Homer Simpson, and Darth Vader. Our take: A victory for the studios could cut off AI companies’ access to media libraries, accelerate a shift toward paid content licensing deals, and set legal precedents to help web publishers and IP owners protect their content from data scraping.

The news: Meta is in talks to invest upwards of $10 billion in Scale AI, a data labeling startup. The deal would be Meta’s biggest ever external AI investment and could help it position its Llama large language model (LLM) as an industry standard, per Bloomberg. Scale AI has already partnered with Meta to develop Defense Llama, an LLM designed for military use that’s built on Llama 3, and also works with Meta competitors like Microsoft and OpenAI. Our take: Meta’s massive investment could draw antitrust scrutiny in an era of acqui-hires. The outcome of active probes in Big Tech partnerships could influence regulatory action, especially if this investment contains any exclusivity that limits model training resources for other companies.

e at last: Microsoft’s update kills default Edge and Bing prompts, giving rivals room to breathe—and forcing marketers to rethink how they reach EU users.

AI can be both sword and shield in layoffs: Businesses are cutting costs and staff while repositioning around AI, which is slashing entry-level opportunities and pushing workers to upskill.

Neon fuses AI search, code generation, and digital agent tools into one browser—aiming to outpace Google by doing the work, not just finding it.

By snapping up staff and software without a full buyout, Google may have found a gray zone. Regulators want to know if it’s a loophole or a land grab.

GenAI search is gaining traction, but not all consumers are seeking out the conversational experiences that will eventually disrupt the search ad market.

Copilot, Edge, and Azure upgrades show Microsoft is building an AI pipeline to control development, infrastructure, and productivity.

Apple’s Fortnite feud, Amazon’s device division cuts, and Apple Music’s new user lure reveal how tech titans are adjusting strategies in a volatile regulatory and consumer landscape.

Tech layoffs surge as AI eats middle management: Microsoft, LinkedIn, and others are slashing jobs to “flatten” org charts, raising concerns that generative AI's rise will echo the dot-com era's reckoning.

As OpenAI downshifts profit goals, Microsoft may trade revenues for long-term access, reshaping one of AI’s most powerful partnerships.

A move to a public benefit structure could drastically cut Microsoft’s profits, signaling a power shift in the alliance that has fueled Azure’s recent growth.

Microsoft moves to kill the password for good: New accounts skip passwords entirely, and users can delete old ones—part of a bigger push to make passkeys the new normal.

More than just a cloud leader: Microsoft ad revenues surged 21%, gaming stabilized, and LinkedIn grew, too.

Amid dizzying policy unpredictability and a grab bag of unpleasant economic possibilities, precise ad spend forecasting is challenging. A scenarios-based approach can help clarify potential outcomes.

Agent Pay could transform the payments experience for consumers with hyperpersonalized recommendations

Lightrun isn’t building code—it’s safeguarding it, offering proactive debugging that major players like Microsoft and Salesforce trust to catch AI-generated mistakes before they cause chaos.