This week’s round-up of the latest mergers and acquisitions, partnerships, and account moves includes Fox, Roku, Adobe, and Smartly.
Deal Desk rounds-up the latest moves across the global affiliate and digital marketing industry and why it matters.
This week, Fox looks to acquire Roku; British retailers form an alliance; and Roku partners with Smartly.
Fox to buyout Roku
Media conglomerate Fox is set to purchase Roku, a consumer electronics brand focused on streaming and video distribution. The $22bn deal is expected to create the third largest US TV organisation by viewing share.
Fox is looking to consolidate its online audiences with the integration of the streaming platform, combining it with high performing news and sports channels.
“This is a defining moment for Fox, and a natural extension of the deliberate and focused strategy we have been executing for nearly a decade,” said Fox chief executive, Lachlan Murdoch.
“In 2019, we reoriented the company around live news and sports. In 2020, we acquired Tubi and under our stewardship it has become one of the most successful businesses in streaming.”
“Today, we take the next step: bringing together the most valuable live content portfolio in video consumption with the preeminent streaming platform through which America watches it.”
Leaders take
Roku boasts over 100 million household users worldwide, and this deal will combine the platform with Fox’s own streaming service, Tubi, to create a platform that could rival Netflix and Amazon.
Roku has encountered disputes with big names like Google, HBO Max, and Peacock, primarily over the company’s refusal to carry their services. The platform requires providers to agree to a revenue sharing model for subscription services, which are billed through the platform, and to hold 30% of advertising inventory.
Adding Fox’s existing streaming site could prove troublesome for rival streamers, especially given the organisation’s extensive reach.
The emergence of competitors to streaming services has resulted in a frustrating system for consumers who now have to sign up to multiple different sites in order to get access to sports and entertainment content – so this deal should look to make merger as smooth as possible for viewers. For sports affiliates and marketers, it also means there’s one platform that holds a lot of content for their audiences.
British retailers come together to build dunnhumby alliance
John Lewis, Waitrose, Tesco, and B&Q (the latter two being owned by Kingfisher) are joining forces to make retail media more simple to purchase at scale.
Until now, creating a campaign across the three retailers has meant running the same campaign three completely different ways, with each having its own console, measurement definitions, and systems.
Launched on 19 June, dunnhumby’s network alliance looks to bring all three together for easier scale, consistency, and measurement. dunnhumby is a data science company owned by Tesco, and it has built a connective layer for the whole industry to take advantage of.
“Brands are demanding scale, consistency and transparency, but fragmentation has held the market back. This ground-breaking alliance is made possible through dunnhumby’s unique position in the market, bringing the industry together under a shared framework, making it easier for brands to activate, measure and grow through retail media,” said Josh Bottomley, chief executive officer of dunnhumby.
Leaders take
The network alliance stresses that retailers keep their own media businesses instead of surrendering to one overarching brand, as is the case with Amazon.
It’s telling that a Tesco owned brand is building a framework that will help its rivals, but it illustrates just how deep these compatibility issues run in the industry, and how far retailers are willing to go to fix it.
This alliance offers a way for brands to scale, with cleaner measurements, something which would have been unlikely if they did it alone. For marketers, they get to tailor their ads to what the consumers want.
Roku partners with Smartly
That’s not all for Roku though: Roku Advertising has partnered with Smartly – an AI advertising platform, to help deliver advertisers “speed, precision and measurability of social advertising to the biggest screen in the home”.
“CTV’s performance era is here,” said Laura Desmond, chief executive of Smartly.
“The best advertising follows attention across every screen, and streaming is where we can now finally unlock the same proven results. Partnering with Roku brings the same rigor, scale, and incrementality advertisers have built on social to the biggest screen in the home. Together, we are creating a structural shift in how brands grow.”
Leaders take
This pairing will help advertisers save time by eliminating the need to build separate ads for each platform, streamlining the campaigns between social and TV advertising.
Marketers will be able to run CTV campaigns with tools they have already developed for social, making activation much simpler, and allowing advertisers to reach new audiences and deliver greater impact.
Other notable deals
LinkedIn and Adobe have launched a global AI skills initiative for marketers, with a set of free courses designed to help marketing professionals add AI credentials to their repertoire.
The programme is split into four set courses; digital marketing, content and creative, social and communications, and data and analytics – each taking roughly three hours to complete.
Magnite, a large sell-side platform, has partnered with Viasat Aviation to bring programmatic advertising to in-flight Wi-Fi entertainment.
This integration will unlock premium in-flight ad inventory through automated, data-driven buying.
Mathbook and ADI Predictstreet launch World Cup prediction market experience
Matchbook has joined forced with ADI Predictstreet, the Official Prediction Market Partner of FIFA World Cup 2026TM to become the first betting exchange to offer its prediction market platform as a co-branded experience. The move brings prediction market experience to viewers across the UK, Ireland, and Brazil.
