Weekly Roundup – March 3rd, 2026
Roundup Links
I’m one of America’s top pollsters and I’ve got a warning for the AI companies: customers aren’t sold on ads
"...As with most issues, analyzing public opinion does not yield a simple “yes” or “no” answer. Advertising
is quintessentially American, after all. While some consumers accept them as a necessary evil, others
eagerly seek out and share creative ads, or at least don’t mind fast-forwarding through them.
However, AI tools can cross into personal spaces, and even private ones—from high school journaling to
planning vacations. Many users experience AI chats as closer to therapy than search, so ads can feel
acceptable in transactional moments but aggressive in reflective or emotional ones. Imagine your
therapist taking a break from listening to sell you a supplement.
Using data generated from LLM queries, AI responses will mix real information with sponsored content,
and the line between “info” and “ad” may be blurred. The scale of LLM advertising will be unprecedented
because it fundamentally alters the ad business. Moving from keyword-based, demographic targeting in
Google Search to intent-driven targeting based on conversational context, LLMs are already integrating
ads directly into natural language answers as a new “discovery.”"
Our Take: I know I’m not supposed to say this as a Vice President of a Media research/Consultancy company, but Americans (if not the world) have become so desensitized to ads having been buffeted relentlessly by every company on every platform for over a decade, that I suspect no one is really even paying attention to them in the first place. Modern ad metrics tend to place emphasis primarily on impressions and view/listen counts, not earned trust and attention, which are key factors in turning someone into a brand-loyal customer. The industry will have a major reckoning over this at some point.
FCC Examines Migration Of Sports Rights From Free Broadcast To Subscription Streaming
"The FCC is launching a public inquiry into the migration of sports rights from free, over-the-air broadcast
outlets to subscription streaming, something that has been increasing source of concern among
lawmakers on Capitol Hill.
The agency is seeking public comment on the trend, with the FCC Media Bureau noting that while
“streamers have helped expand access to professional and collegiate sports, they also appear to have
contributed to the fragmentation of the sports media marketplace.”"
Our Take: The FCC might hold hearings over the fragmentation of sports rights across multiple streaming networks – but that won’t change the reality for sports fans going forward. Say you’re a Chiefs fan that lives in Kansas City. You will need basic cable to watch the in-market games on Sundays (NBC, CBS, or Fox). However, you will also need Amazon prime to watch the Thursday Night Football games, and Netflix to watch the Christmas game (in which the Chiefs seem to always appear). All added up, you’re looking at around $500 per season to watch your in-market team play every week. The onetime payment for an antenna used to guarantee you access to every in-market game, a cheap option everyone could afford. Being an in-market fan that only watches games at home is becoming a not-insubstantial annual investment for the majority of fans. But here’s the catch: NFL fans are so delirious about the NFL that they don’t care how much it costs if they are able to watch their team every week. And here’s the problem: how do other sports leagues compete in this media ecosystem that is effectively dictated by the whims of NFL execs? NFL fans been trained to tolerate fragmentation and rising costs. Other leagues cannot fragment as aggressively, they can’t demand similar prices, and they risk becoming irrelevant if they go too exclusive.
HBO Max and Paramount+ Will Become One Streamer
"HBO Max and Paramount+ will combine into one direct-to-consumer (DTC) streaming service if and
when Paramount Skydance’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery is complete.
“As we said, we do plan to put the two services together, which today gives us a little over 200 million
direct to consumer subscribers,” Paramount CEO David Ellison said during a Monday investor call
outlining his broader business plan. “We think that really positions us to compete with the leaders in the
space. At Paramount, by the middle of this year, we’ll have completed the consolidation of our three
services under one unified stack, and you can see us taking a similar approach to this platform going
forward. And we think the combined offering, and given the amount of content and what we can do from
the tech side, really will put us in a position to be able to compete with the most scaled players in DTC.”"
Our Take: Paramount+ lacks an ‘anchor show’ in the sense that you have a committed audience that is constantly returning to said show as a sort of nighttime balm or background noise. The acquisition of Warner Brothers Discovery changes that deficiency for Paramount. Paramount now has the evergreen roster of HBO’s prized premium shows (ahem, GAME OF THRONES) in addition to Gen Z/Millenial catnip like FRIENDS. There’s also the inherited prestige of HBO studios’ tendency to pump out critically acclaimed series that sweep at industry award shows. Paramount also get discovery’s sizable roster of home reno shows. In essence, Paramount wants to become ‘Prestige Netflix’ with this acquisition.
Bring On Defunct: The iPod Enthralls Young Music Listeners
"...Ms. Richard, 25, continued discovering that other songs she loved or had added to her playlists were
no longer available on the app. Upset with the disappearing songs and ever-increasing prices of
streaming services, she set a goal for this year: “To get off as many streaming services as possible, just
so I can own the things that I listen to, that I read, that I watch.”
So in January, Ms. Richard bought a silver, third-generation iPod Nano from eBay for about $40. She
immediately added Deftones’ 2000 album, “White Pony,” to her iPod and has downloaded 10 more CDs to
the device since. The process of adding music to her iPod, she said, has been “so fun” and “like a little
meditation.”
Over the past month, Ms. Richard has found another upside to her iPod.
“If I’m on my phone, I’m listening to music, then I get a notification, I click on that notification and I keep
going into different apps,” Ms. Richard, a content creator in Raleigh, N.C., said. The iPod “just grounds
me, and it feels convenient to be in one place at one time, instead of everywhere at once.”"
Our Take: We’ve touched on this in previous roundups, but a scarcity of media options usually leads to audiences developing stronger attachments to media properties that are available to them.
