A week after Fox overturned the streaming-TV landscape with its $22 billion Roku purchase, Walmart strongly re-stated its intention of joining the CTV competition, too. Its $1.4 billion deal for fast-growing ad startup Vibe.co will usher one of the world’s biggest retailers fully into the business of performance advertising on connected TVs.

Piece this in with Walmart’s existing Walmart Connection service and the $2.3 billion acquisition in 2024 of TV OEM Vizio, with millions of users of its TVOS and ad platform, and you can start to see quite a powerful combination, indeed.

Vibe, a French-based self-serve ad platform, has built tools to handle all the expected chores of modern connected TV, including targeting, attribution, AI-generated creative and metrics to measure return on spend. You know, the kind of stuff users of Google Search and Meta Ads have been using for quite a while.

The acquisition, which isn’t expected to close until late next year, gives Walmart the software footprint it needs to seriously compete with the Big Three — Alphabet, Meta and Amazon — especially in serving millions of small and medium-sized businesses trying to efficiently reach just the customers they want with highly targeted, self-service ads.

Keynes CMO T.J. Hunter said the Roku and Vibe deals “point in the same direction,” and may represent an inflection point showing that “streaming TV is becoming a strategic business asset, not just an advertising channel.

“Walmart clearly sees an opportunity to bring more advertisers into the CTV ecosystem, but it also reinforces a bigger shift that's happening across the industry. … Companies are increasingly viewing streaming TV as a place where media, commerce, data, and customer engagement intersect.”  

Vibe has certainly been riding quite the high, reportedly reaching $100 million in annual revenue run rate in less than two years. It claims more than 5,000 clients already, and raised capital at a $410 million valuation about 18 months ago. The $1.4 billion price includes $180 million in retention payments if Vibe execs stick around for four years.

For Walmart, Vibe plus Vizio equals a serious run at the performance ad space. Arch-rival Amazon in particular can exploit the connected TV sector with brutal efficiency, with the ads around its programming to 200 million or so Amazon Prime subscribers linking directly to purchase opportunities through its vast online store. Attribution, advertising’s holy grail, is dead simple.

Nonetheless, investors were cool to the acquisition news. In a so-so week for Walmart, shares swooned a mild 1.5% on the announcement, which came with another deal, with Constellation Energy, for 176 megawatts of nuclear energy to power a perishables distribution center.

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It’s stock down another 8% this week, analysts say the streaming giant needs to find some way to ‘change the narrative’ and reaccelerate growth

Netflix revenue grew 16.2% in the first quarter to $12.2 billion, a YoY acceleration of nearly 3%, while receiving a $2.8 billion prize in February just because Warner Bros. Discovery walked away from their agreement to merge.

Investors were never fond of that $83 billion agreement anyway, and there was a feeling at the time that Netflix would return to its usual steady upward march on Wall Street. But that hasn’t happened.

Earnings data on the still active second quarter is just under a month away from release, but analysts predict, based largely on Netflix guidance, that growth will decelerate by around the same 3% — a belief that has put the streaming giant’s stock in a bit of a free fall since mid-April.

Netflix stock is down another 8% since Monday’s opening bell, with investors reportedly spooked by increased CTV competition — specifically, Meta’s stated intention to port Instagram video onto Samsung smart TVs. Shareholders are also reportedly concerned about the future of the company without co-founder and former CEO Reed Hastings, who stepped away from the board on June 4.

“People are wondering what turns the ship here,” Matthew Condon, director of research for Citizens JMP, told Barron’s. “There’s not a clear view of what Netflix does next, and that’s why the stock has struggled.”

“Barring an acquisition, I don’t think there’s a ton to move the needle beyond the core business.” Morningstar analyst Matthew Dolgin also told Barron’s.

Again, it remains unclear as to where this jolt comes from. Netflix kicked the tires on Roku, but never entered a formal bid, before Fox acquired it last week for $22 billion. Netflix also looked at Lionsgate, but has denied actually having any interest in buying the long-up-for-sale studio.

Netflix’s 8% haircut came despite it coming off a pretty solid viewership week. The debut of Sam Worthington-led crime drama I Will Find You generated Netflix’s best English-language series audience performance since the back-to-back bows of Season 4 of Bridgerton and Season 2 of One Piece back in late-February/early-March.

The debut of Korean drama Teach You a Lesson also produced outsized audience results last week. Of course, it’ll never generate more than half a billion hours of user engagement in a single week, as the also-Korean-spawned Squid Game did back in September-October 2021.

Where do hits like that even come anymore?

Netflix has pledged to spend around 10% more on content this year, up to $20 billion, to try to find out. But with younger audiences gobbling up microdramas and podcasts on social, the anxiety around Hastings’ departure may be getting mixed, on some level, with fears regarding the future of traditional, premium “series” and “movie” entertainment.

Gen Z is just … different. Things could change fast when you’re talking about one of video entertainment’s most innovative companies over the past three decades. But so far, Netflix hasn’t shown any standout aptitude in regard to any of Gen Z’s preferred formats.

Daily engagement per Netflix user was down 8% in 2025, according to MoffettNathanson. And while Netflix’s entry into podcasts last October ranks as the best effort by a premium SVOD service in that area so far, its pod usage is nothing like what YouTube receives on a global basis.

“Netflix’s share of streaming time is very stagnant,” Condon also told Barron’s. “They don’t have a ton of great intellectual property, which was the interesting thing about Warner Bros.”

Meanwhile, analysts have been openly critical about Netflix’s lack of innovation and boldness in regard to verticals and social video overall.

Whether it comes from inside or outside the organization, Netflix finds itself in a strange position, at least with investors — it needs a hit.

“To get sentiment as bullish as it was before, they really need to show more acceleration,” Dolgin added.

— Daniel Frankel

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The Five Spot
Some other things you oughta know…

Introduced back in 1999 by The Martin Agency in an effort to get consumers to stop confusing its client’s name with a well-known reptile species, the Geico Gecko counts for some enduringly inspired creative.

But these days, the insurance brand’s commercials are also among the most frequent CTV “frequency” offenders, repeating over and over again in the same streamed movie or TV show.

Frequency doesn’t just represent inefficient impressions, they count for “negative reach,” impacting consumer awareness of a brand in the wrong direction.

Advertising giant Omnicom took what appears to be a major step toward cutting the head of the ol’ frequency snake, introducing new capabilities into its clean room, which was built in collaboration with tech company Snowflake, along with many other content providers and technology vendors, and introduced back in 2023.

The added features enable measurement of a completed campaign’s reach, frequency and performance across multiple streaming and linear TV publishers. Omincom agencies can measure and compare advertising frequency for their clients across multiple platforms.

“The ability to understand creative frequency and performance across audiences and environments at a much deeper level helps us deliver advertising that feels more relevant, less repetitive and ultimately more valuable for viewers,” said Baldwin Cunningham, head of media and marketing intelligence at State Farm, an Omnicom client, to AdExchanger.

— D.F.

Flying into theaters this weekend, Warner Bros. Discovery’s latest DC Universe installment, Supergirl, is carrying a heavy load, trying to keep James Gunn’s approach to the original superhero universe a commercially viable one.

Remember that, though David Zaslav’s minions touted last summer’s Superman as one of a string of Warner hits in a great year, it didn’t actually make money. Turns out that $618 million global box office, split with exhibitors, probably doesn’t come close to covering $125 million in marketing and a $225 million production budget.

Early reviews of Supergirl have been middling, though star Millie Alcock’s performance is getting excellent reviews. Further complicating debut weekend, Alcock stirred up a conservative culture war with a string of controversial comments.

While Alcock might have been, at least directionally, spot on in her take, the snowflake right may prefer to stay home watching reruns of conservative actor Dean Cain’s Lois & Clark.

If Supergirl only bags, say, the $300 million suggested in current (and fading) box-office projections, it could be an uncomfortable next year for Gunn, awaiting both the new bosses in a Paramount Skydance takeover, and the reception for next installment Man of Tomorrow.

—D.B.

After shifting Fire TV’s binary underpinnings away from Google Android to Linux-based Vega OS, Amazon is now pouring some major water onto its connected TV platform.

That starts with trying to get consumers to spend more time on the Fire TV home screen. Earlier this month, Amazon launched, in partnership with Fox One, its FIFA 2026 World Cup Experience on Fire TV, an all-encompassing content hub for the global tournament, which culminates July 19.

With Omnicom and Roku jointly releasing a study earlier this month revealing just how much value home screen ads are generating for them, Amazon is using this week’s Cannes Lions event to hype Cup hub, along with some recent Fire TV homepage upgrades.

Separately but relatedly in Cannes, Amazon introduced a new creator hub for its TVOS platform, signaling that more than 120 popular creators are already available on Fire TV, including Dude Perfect, Jordan Matter and Ben Aselart, with their content appearing on the platform the same day it debuts on YouTube.

“Part of my job is waking up every morning and seeing what customers are doing on our devices — what kind of content matters to them, what they’re engaging with — and that informs the product choices and experiences we ultimately build for those customers,” Charlotte Maines, Amazon’s VP of devices, told the Penske showbiz trades.

Also, here Maines is again, this time speaking to AdExchanger at Cannes:

— D.F.

The streaming revolution dramatically re-oriented the power structure of the video entertainment business, juxtaposing Hollywood’s once dominant media conglomerates into subordinate positions relative to the now much larger tech giants.

So maybe not call the fast-proliferating set of legal battles between traditional media companies and Big Tech over AI an emerging “war,” as The Hollywood Reporter did Wednesday.

Their last stand? Maybe.

“As tech and AI companies push further into entertainment and media, their stewardship of that content (or lack thereof) is becoming a story unto itself,” THR’s Alex Weprin wrote.

The article comes after one of the movie business’ most vital studios, A24, accepted a $75 million investment from Google’s DeepMind. … And Amazon MGM Studios dropped a somewhat completed film about OpenAI Sam Altman.

And, of course, there are lots of lawsuits. THR’s feature coordinated nicely with this recent social posting from infographic guru David McCandless:

— D.F.

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It’s been a tough week at Alphabet, where a string of top AI researchers have left for competitors, sending shares down 8.5%. The departures roiled Silicon Valley, the latest in the big-dollar battle to corral the world’s greatest AI experts, no matter the cost.

The biggest and newest departures come just as the companies hiring them (Anthropic and OpenAI) race toward initial public offerings expected to create generational wealth for those employees with stock options (i.e, especially scientists such as the ones they just hired).

Among those departing:

— D.B.