The Brief – Friday 20 February – Omnicom earnings, Spotify updates ad exchange, Sony sends cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance

📈 Omnicom Group reported 27.9% revenue growth in Q4 2025, much of which was inorganic due to including one month of revenue attributable to the then-newly acquired IPG. Media and advertising contributed 60.1% of total revenue. Full year 2025 revenue grew 10.1% year on year. (Omnicom)

🎧 Spotify has added reserved buying alongside its existing biddable model in its ad exchange. Advertisers can now reserve inventory at fixed rates with audio and video music available through The Trade Desk and Google Display & Video 360. Reserved buying is also being expanded to its Ads Manager across music and podcasts, with fixed CPM pricing to give advertisers cost predictability in high-demand periods. (Spotify)

🚫 Sony Pictures has sent a cease-and-desist letter to ByteDance demanding that its Seedance 2.0 model immediately remove Sony’s IP from its AI training data. Sony is the fifth studio to lodge a protest against Bytedance, joining Disney, Paramount, Warner Bros and Netflix. (Variety)

📱 Prime minister Sir Keir Starmer has said deepfake nudes and “revenge porn” must be removed from the internet within 48 hours or technology firms risk being blocked or fined millions in the UK. Amendments will be made to the crime and policing bill to regulate AI chatbots such as X’s Grok, which generated nonconsensual images of women in bikinis or in compromising positions. (The Guardian)

⚖️ Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg took the stand in US court on Wednesday to defend his company from claims it sought to addict young people to social platforms. Zuckerberg maintained lawyers were “mischaracterizing” internal company communications related to Meta’s youth strategy. It was Zuckerberg’s first court appearance before a jury. (BBC)

💼 Veteran Labour peer Baroness Hodge of Barking is reportedly the frontrunner to become the next head of Ofcom. The Baroness is understood to be one of three shortlisted candidates, who include former Conservative culture secretary Sir Jeremy Wright and former Channel 4 chairman Ian Cheshire. (The Telegraph)

💸 Substack has partnered with prediction market Polymarket to allow writers on the platform to natively integrate its data. It follows a similar partnership with CNN, and comes despite concern over Polymarket’s regulatory status as a potential gambling market. (LinkedIn)