The Brief – Thursday 12 February – Sky offers new TV bundle, YouTube kicks off US trial on addictiveness, and activist investor approaches WBD deal

📺 Sky is offering a new bundle inclusive of Disney+ (with ads), HBO Max (with ads), Netflix (with ads), and Hayu. The Sky Ultimate TV subscription will cost £24/month, beginning 1 April. (Sky)

📱 In its opening statement during a groundbreaking US trial on the addictiveness of platforms, YouTube argued that it is an entertainment platform akin to Netflix rather than a social media platform like Facebook. Prosecutors have accused YouTube, as well as Meta, Snap and TikTok, of intentionally designing addictive algorithms. (New York Times)

📽️ Activist investor Ancora Holdings has taken a $200m position in Warner Bros Discovery and intends to combat the agreed sale to Netflix worth $83bn. The investor is expected to argue that WBD’s board has not given enough consideration to a rival bid from Paramount. (Financial Times)

🏈 This year’s Super Bowl averaged 124.9m viewers in the US, according to figures from Nielsen and broadcaster NBCUniversal — the second most-watched Super Bowl ever. Even more viewers tuned into Bad Bunny’s halftime show, which averaged 128.2m viewers. (Variety)

👋 New research published by the Influencer Marketing Trade Body (IMTB) has found there is no negative impact on engagement rates when influencers effectively disclose commercial content. Across influencers of all sizes, posts with “#ad” were found to consistently generate stronger median interaction metrics, such as likes and comments. (IMTB)

🎧 Ad sales for Acast increased by 29% year-on-year (in the US, by 60%) in Q4 2025. It made a loss of (US) $2m for the year but for last quarter, a profit of (US) $7.2m. Total listens increased slightly for the year, +1.1%. (Podnews)

📺 The European Programmatic TV Initiative has entered stage two of its collaboration, moving from industry discussion and alignment into action as part of its effort to make programmatic TV easiest to scale. This stage will be overseen by a Joint Industry Steering Committee, inclusive of adtech companies like Google Ad Manager, Equativ, LiveRamp, The Trade Desk, and Freewheel, as well as broadcasters, streamers, agency groups and trade bodies. (European Programmatic TV Intitiative)

📻 New research from Radiocentre has found that radio advertising boosts daily web sessions by an average of 16%, doing so twice as cost-efficiently as other “demand-generation” media combined. (Radiocentre)

🐮 Oatly has been banned by the UK’s supreme court from using the word “milk” to market its plant-based beverage products. The company had been in a legal battle with trade association Dairy UK after Oatly traded phrases, such as the slogan “Post Milk Generation”, associated with the dairy sector. (The Guardian)