100% Media Roundup: 25 April- 29 April

This is a daily digest of news stories from around the media world, updated by The Media Leader team, to ensure you’re 100% up-to-date.

Friday 29 April

IPG posts 12% organic growth

IPG reported organic net revenue growth of 11.5% in the first three months of 2022. of $2.23bn in Q1 2022, a year-over-year increase of 9.8%.

The company’s net revenue grew 9.8% year on year to $2.23bn.

Growth increased in every region; organic net revenue increased by 12.2% and 1.5% in the US and UK, respectively.

IPG raised its annual forecast from 5% to 6% organic growth because of the stronger-than-expected quarter.

Comcast beats estimates with Peacock growth

Comcast beat analyst estimates on its latest earnings report, helped in part by growth in subscription service Peacock.

Peacock added 4 million paid subscribers in Q1 – a 40% increase – to reach 13 million subs and 28 million monthly active users.

However Comcast’s stock sunk over 6% yesterday as it reported underwhelming broadband customer numbers.

James Corden to leave Late Late Show next year

British comedian James Corden is leaving The Late Late Show next year, CBS announced.

Corden has been host of the Los Angeles-based talk show since 2015, which became popular for its Carpool Karaoke segments featuring music artists.

Though his contract was originally due to expire in August, Corden agreed to continue the show through next Spring before moving on.

Other late night hosts like Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert also have contracts expiring in 2022 and 2023, respectively.

Thursday 28 April

MPs back calls to protect radio stations on smart speakers

A cross-party group of parliamentarians has backed calls for legislation to be introduced to guarantee access to UK radio stations on digital platforms like smart speakers in future.

Radio news teams from across the UK joined MPs and peers to discuss the way radio is featured on smart devices at the House of Commons last night.

The event was hosted by Andy Carter MP, chair of the APPG on Commercial Radio. Attendees included Julia Lopez MP, minister for media, data and digital infrastructure, Julian Knight MP, chair of the DCMS Select Committee, and Baroness Tina Stowell, chair of the Lords’ Communications and Digital Committee.

The APPG, which published The Future of Radio report in October, is calling on the government to ensure the availability and prominence of commercial and BBC radio services on voice-activated smart speakers.

Twitter sees boon in conservative accounts and a liberal exodus after Musk’s purchase

Twitter’s userbase has reacted to Musk’s purchase of the company as left-leaning users have left the service while conservative accounts have seen an increase in followers.

According to data from Social Blade, followers of former First Lady Michelle Obama and pop singer Taylor Swift are down nearly 20,000 and 15,000 respectively, while far-right Senator Ted Cruz and far-right congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene have gained more than 60,000 and 100,000 followers each, and Boris Johnson has also gained 10,000 followers.

In addition, Twitter’s policy and legal head Vijaya Gadde has been met with “vitriolic” harassment from users after Musk replied to a tweet that criticized her for temporarily suspending The New York Post from Twitter after it published a story on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

Twitch ‘considering changes’ to content creator payment

Twitch is considering reducing the amount of money it pays top talent in an effort to boost profits, according to reports.

One proposal would see a revenue cut from 70% to 50% for the top-tier streamers in its partner program, which could alienate the livestreaming service’s biggest stars.

Another potential change could be the introduction of new tiers to its partner program and loosening of restrictions on creators’ ability to stream on non-Twitch services even if they are a partner.

The Amazon-owned company is considering the restructuring of monetisation as a way to incentivise running more ads on the site.

Meta reports smallest ever quarterly revenue growth but beats daily active user estimates

Meta earned $27.91bn in revenue compared to expected $28.2bn in Q1 2022, but bounced back on daily active users with 1.96 billion versus 1.95 billion expected.

The recovery of daily active users is a boon to the social media company, which reported a decline in users for the first time in its history last quarter.

Revenue grew 7% quarter-to-quarter, the first time the company has posted single-digit growth since it went public in 2012.

Meta announced it expected revenue for Q2 between $28bn-$30bn, which is below analyst estimates.

Shares in Meta soared nearly 18% in aftermarket trading, though the stock is still down 30% year-to-date after its Q4 2021 earnings release sent shares tumbling.

Wednesday 27 April

Day One of Future of Brands begins today

The first day of Mediatel Events’ The Future of Brands conference has kicked off today at the Andaz Hotel in Liverpool Street.

More than 30 brands will be speaking across panels and sessions throughout the day on topics of the day from measurement and first-party data to sustainability.

To follow the sessions, check out #FoBrands or @TheMediaLeader on Twitter for live updates.

WPP registers nearly 7% Q1 growth, ups predictions for 2022

WPP, the global holding group, reported 6.7% like-for-like growth across Q1 2022 in its latest earnings release.

Like-for-like revenue, minus pass-through costs, totalled £2.57bn.

Global integrated agencies experienced 8.6% growth, and within that GroupM revenue grew 12.8%.

WPP announced it won $1.8bn of net new business including Mars, JDE Peet’s and Sky.

Top five markets for growth included the USA (5.8%), the UK (8.1%), Germany (16.1%), China (11.9%) and India (25.1%), excluding pass-through costs.

The agency group revised its revenue predictions for 2022 to 5.5- 6.5% from 5% previously.

Alphabet misses on revenue, weighed down by YouTube

In its quarterly earnings report, Alphabet, the parent company of Google, reported a 23% year-over-year sales growth increase to $68.01bn, which was below average estimates of $68.11bn.

Noteworthy among the report was YouTube’s miss – the site’s advertising revenue came in at $6.87bn against a $7.51bn expectation.

The company attributed its disappointing earnings to the growth of TikTok as a serious competitor to YouTube as well as Google’s halting of Russian operations following the invasion of Ukraine.

Shares of Alphabet sunk over 2% in pre-market trading, and have been down 18% year to date

In case you missed it yesterday:

• GroupM to merge MediaCom and Essence into EssenceMediacom
• Is taking Twitter private ‘the correct first step’?
• IAB UK: digital adspend up 50% on pre-pandemic levels

Tuesday 26 April

The Guardian launches new ‘flagship’ current affairs newsletter

The Guardian launched a new curated newsletter yesterday called First Edition.

The newsletter will be edited by Archie Bland and Nimo Omer and will examine one important topic or news event in a similar strategy to the newspaper’s daily news podcast Today in Focus.

It will be sent every weekday morning and include a message from the editors, five big story headlines for time-poor readers, an in-depth look at one significant story, a “what else we’re reading” section directing readers to recommendations of non-news Guardian journalism and “the upside” for positive stories people may have missed.

The Guardian publishes fifty newsletters globally which reached one million unique subscribers last year.

Piers Morgan reaches peak of nearly 400,000 viewers for TalkTV launch

Piers Morgan’s new show Uncensored averaged 317,000 viewers during its first episode airing last night on the newly-launched TalkTV.

According to figures quoted in Broadcast, the TalkTV show beat Sky News and BBC News channels during the 8pm timeslot.

The audience peaked at 397,000 viewers at 8pm gaining a 2% share of all television viewing, but this dropped off over the full hour as viewers swapped over.

The viewing after Morgan’s show had finished was below GB News’ June launch figures for the same time period.

However, Piers Morgan’s individual show ratings were above Andrew Neil’s 8pm opening show on GB News which received an average of 260,000 people at 1.6% share.

Disney partners with Lumen to improve streaming quality

Disney Streaming and Lumen Technologies have partnered to lead an effort to produce standardised content delivery network (CDN) configuration metadata and application programming interfaces (API) for the SVOD industry.

Standardised metadata will allow content providers to use a common metadata model and a single API to publish CDN configurations to vendors.

Lumen currently operates one of the largest CDNs in the world via their Edge Platform, and as Pierre-louis Theron, Lumen’s VP of product management for content delivery services notes, “developing standards that reduce complexity for our media customers is key to our shared success, now and in the future.”

Sky Sports inks broadcast deal with W Series

Sky Sports F1 will broadcast live coverage of every W Series qualifying and race beginning this May in a three-year deal with the racing championship.

W Series is an all-female single-seater racing championship that began in 2019.

The deal – the Series’ largest media investment to date – seeks to increase W Series’ footprint with coverage across Sky’s linear, digital, and social platforms.

NABS names PHD’s Appleby as chair of Fast Forward

James Appleby, managing partner at PHD Media London, will become the new chair of Fast Forward, NABS’ training programme for rising advertisers.

Appleby previously volunteered as a Fast Forward mentor for the past seven years, and will replace Jo Arden who led the programme last year.

He intends to focus on helping young professionals build much needed friendships and connections.

Appleby said: “[Y]oung people have been some of the worst affected by the last two years”.

This year’s course will begin 6 September and will run for eight weeks, incorporating both in-person and virtual sessions.

Monday 25 April

Heineken places alcohol-free beer on ITV soaps

Heineken has struck a deal with ITV to place its alcohol-free beer “on draught” in Coronation Street and Emmerdale. 

With the aim of normalising choosing alcohol-free beer, viewers will see Heineken 0.0 draught taps in both fictional pubs, The Rovers Return and The Woolpack, from 29 April with characters from the soaps drinking the beer in branded glasses.

Both shows have a combined viewership of 11 million and, according to figures from Nielsen and CGA, Heineken 0.0 is the market leader in the UK with 24.6% share of the alcohol-free beer market.

PHD appoints Victoria Radcliffe as joint head of media experience

PHD has chosen Victoria Radcliffe for the new position of joint head of media experience.

In a LinkedIn post Radcliffe, who has worked at PHD for four years, said this was formerly known as joint head of investment.

Her previous role was director of client investment.

Prior to this, she worked at Publicis Media as head of investment and spent more than fourteen years at Starcom moving from account executive to activation director.

Twitter, Musk in ‘advanced talks’ for sale

Twitter’s board is reportedly in advanced talks to sell to Elon Musk , according to reports that negotiations between the parties continued into the early hours of this morning.

The social media platform had previously taken a defensive stance over Musk’s bid, deploying a ‘poison pill’ strategy, but have appeared to reconsider following Musk’s securing of financing for the deal.

Musk’s bid of $54.20 per share is a 54% increase in value over the share price the day before he began investing in the company, though still well off from the stock’s all-time high of $77.06 per share in February 2021.

Law Roach announced as British Vogue’s contributing West Coast editor

British Vogue has announced Law Roach will be the publication’s new contributing West Coast editor.

The American fashion stylist has previously worked as creative director for the Tommy x Zendaya fashion line by Tommy Hilfiger and has been a judge on HBO Max’s reality voguing competition, Legendary.

Apart from working with celebs such as Kerry Washington and Hunter Schafer, Law has been named ‘Most Powerful Stylist of the Year’ by The Hollywood Reporter for the past two years.

TalkTV launches today

TalkTV will be available to watch from 7pm today in the UK, US and Australia.

The network will formally launch withprimetime show The News Desk with Tom Newton Dunn who was previously political editor at Times Radio.

This will be followed by the first episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored at 8pm with an interview with ex-US president Donald Trump.

TalkTV will broadcast on Sky (channel 526), Virgin Media (channel 627), Freeview (channel 237) and Freesat (channel 217, as well as via connected TV and smart devices.

DAZN combines OTT live sports viewing and betting

The sports streaming service DAZN has struck a multi-year partnership with Pragmatic Group to launch a betting service under the DAZN BET brand.

Read more on this story on our sister publication Videonet.

In case you missed it last week:

• Google rolls out ‘reject all’ cookie option in Europe after fines
• Future appoints UK group commercial director
• GroupM appoints Wignall, Humphreys to leadership in UK, EMEA
• Why Chris Kenna is getting ‘divorced’ from his company Brand Advance
• Netflix mulls ads tier after first subscriber loss in a decade
• UK households with SVOD services drop as inflation hits
• AOP leads by example by adopting image streaming to cut emissions