The headlines are focused on Netflix, Warner Bros. Discovery, and now Skydance-Paramount. They should be. The industry is now riveted on which structure will win and how regulators will respond. The Myers Report view is that marketers should be focused on something else.
If advertisers do not extract the conditions and safeguards, we have outlined at The Myers Report, the ultimate winners of this disruption will not be Netflix, Warner, or Skydance-Paramount. The real winners will be the platforms that are not in the fight at all: Amazon, Google and YouTube, and Meta.
The proposed restructuring of Warner Bros. Discovery has evolved into far more than a deal discussion. It has become a rare stress test for the media economy itself — one that exposes who holds leverage, who bears risk, and whose interests ultimately shape outcomes across content, platforms, and advertising. Moments like this do not occur often. They surface only when entrenched structures are challenged and long-standing assumptions about power and value are forced into the open. That is why this analysis is being shared broadly, rather than reserved solely for subscribers.
Our intent is simple: to ensure that advertisers, agencies, and market leaders fully understand what is at stake, what could be gained or lost and how their collective voice could influence outcomes. If this perspective sharpens your strategic thinking, informs your decisions, or strengthens your leadership in a period of disruption, we invite you to support my work through an annual subscription and help sustain independent, industry-focused intelligence.
Netflix has agreed to acquire Warner’s studio and HBO Max assets in a deal valued at roughly 82 to 83 billion dollars, a mix of cash and stock that would give the streamer one of the largest premium content libraries on the planet. Within days, Skydance-Paramount answered with a $108.4-billion hostile all-cash bid, offering 30 dollars a share for the entirety of Warner Bros. Discovery, cable networks included, and triggering what is likely to be a twelve to eighteen month legal, financial, and political cage match.
Warner Bros. Discovery brings to either deal a valuable studio and Max streaming platform, but also more than $34 billion of debt and a strategic plan that already contemplated splitting the declining cable networks from the growth assets.
Context: A Consolidation Battle in a Market Already Owned by Digital
According to eMarketer, global ad spending is projected to reach about $1.17 trillion in 2025, up 7.4 percent year on year. Three quarters of that spend, roughly $777 billion, will already be digital, two years ahead of previous forecasts.
Within that digital pie, MarketingDive estimates that retail media is on track to hit $175 billion in 2026, or about 15 percent of global ad spend, with Amazon expected to control more than a third of that category on its own.
In other words, while the television and film community views the Netflix and Skydance bids as an existential battle for Hollywood, the advertising economy already lives in a world where the dominant gravitational centers are walled gardens: closed digital ecosystems that control data, measurement, and monetization.
Advertisers invest in those walled gardens because they offer scale, targeting, and some form of closed loop analytics. They also bring real costs and risks: reduced transparency, limits on independent measurement, data ownership concerns, fragmented journeys, and higher effective prices. Our surveys of agency professionals have repeatedly flagged a lack of transparency, particularly on Meta and YouTube, as a top reason for potential pullback, yet the share of spend those platforms command continues to rise.
That is the backdrop against which the Netflix and Skydance-Paramount bids must be understood.
Netflix And Warner: Powerful Content, Emerging Ad Business
Netflix today is a hybrid company: subscription at its core, with a fast-growing but still relatively small advertising business.
At its 2025 Upfront, Netflix told buyers its ad tier reached 94 million monthly active users globally, with United States ad members spending about 41 hours a month on the service. By November 2025, Netflix said its ads now reach 190 million monthly active viewers worldwide. Analysts estimate that advertising contributed roughly 662 million dollars in revenue in the third quarter of 2025, only about 6 percent of Netflix’s 11.5 billion dollar quarter.
Ad loads remain light, about four to five minutes per hour, which translates to 240 to 300 thirty-second ads a month for an average viewer, with CPMs estimated in the 20 to 30 dollar range. So, Netflix is important, but as an ad seller it is still early relative to the dominant digital platforms. The Warner studio and HBO Max assets would dramatically enhance Netflix’s content portfolio and negotiating leverage with talent, distributors, and advertisers. They would not instantly make Netflix the dominant ad platform in the world.
Which is exactly why the way advertisers respond now matters.
How A Distracted and Consolidating TV Market Benefits Amazon, Google, And Meta
From an advertiser lens, the next twelve to eighteen months will be defined by at least four forces:
- Strategic distraction inside premium TV sellers
Warner Bros. Discovery management, Netflix leadership, and Skydance-Paramount will devote enormous time and resources to deal defense, regulatory positioning, integration modeling, and internal politics. Regardless of which side you favor, there is no version of this battle that does not consume management bandwidth.
That distraction often shows up on the buyer side as slower responsiveness, uncertainty about long term commitments, and an inability to move fast on new measurement and data partnerships.
- Regulatory uncertainty around future supply
Regulators will examine both deals through antitrust and national security lenses. Analysts already expect extended reviews by the Department of Justice, FCC, and CFIUS because both proposals would concentrate significant market power in different ways.
Buyers may hesitate to make long-dated commitments around a portfolio whose final shape is unknown. That risk pushes incremental budget into environments that feel more predictable.
- Short-term inventory volatility
Warner Bros. Discovery is carrying a heavy debt load and has already missed earnings expectations. Financing structures for both bids involve complex leverage and asset dispositions. There is a real possibility that, amid cost cutting and integration, content pipelines or sports rights strategies get disrupted.
For national advertisers trying to plan 2026-2027, that uncertainty, combined with potential labor pushback and political crossfire, makes Netflix plus Warner or Skydance plus Warner feel like a less stable bet than the tech giants that are not in the headlines.
- Advertiser silence that defaults to the status quo
If advertisers do not articulate clear conditions for support, regulators will focus almost exclusively on consumer pricing, labor concerns, political considerations, and shareholder outcomes. The result is likely to be a merger approval, rejection, or divestiture pattern that is largely indifferent to advertising transparency, measurement interoperability, or market access.
And when the largest premium video sellers are distracted, uncertain, and inwardly focused, there is one category that almost always benefits:
The platforms that are already capturing most of the growth, are not involved in the battle, and can offer an apparently simpler story to brands.
That means Amazon, Google and YouTube, and Meta.
Why The Walled Gardens Win by Default When Advertisers Sit Out
Consider how the current environment looks from a CMO or media lead.
- Digital already accounts for three of every four dollars.
- Retail media is growing at double digits, with Amazon alone representing over a third of that rapidly expanding category.
- Privacy changes have made cross-site tracking harder, which increases the relative appeal of ecosystems with first-party identity at scale.
- Walled gardens are far from perfect, but they offer highly tuned automation, rich audiences, and a familiar measurement language that boardrooms and CFOs now understand.
Now layer on top a two-year battle over who controls Warner’s assets, with public political interventions, union opposition, court challenges, and potential foreign-investment reviews.
In that environment, every incremental dollar that feels hard to place in premium video has a natural alternative:
- A shoppable stream or display unit on Amazon tied directly to sales lift in retail media reporting.
- A full-funnel campaign in Google and YouTube that can be optimized to modeled conversions and media mix models.
- A social plus Reels or Shorts campaign on Meta or YouTube, where frequency, reach, and engagement metrics are baked into dashboards that teams already trust, even with their limitations.
If premium TV sellers are distracted, and if advertisers have not forced new rules around transparency and interoperability as a condition of consolidation, then the TV and studio consolidation will simply compress competition on that side of the market while digital platforms continue to expand unchecked.
The net effect is one more step toward a world in which:
- Walled gardens set the standards for attribution.
- Television behaves more like another closed ecosystem and less like an open marketplace.
- Advertisers pay more for less leverage, and the platforms that were never at the negotiating table quietly grow stronger.
What Advertisers Should Insist on Now?
In the earlier Myers Report commentary, we proposed four advertiser-centric conditions that should guide any regulatory approval of a Netflix and Warner deal or a Skydance Paramount outcome:
- Independent, interoperable measurement
Any combined entity should be required to support third-party currencies and cross-platform measurement, not rely solely on self-reported metrics. - Transparent access and pricing frameworks
Agencies and clients need defined routes to inventory, clear collaboration models, and avoidance of a “closed storefront” where premium content sits behind opaque deals. - Clarity around inventory and windowing
Advertisers must know how theatrical, streaming, and ad-supported windows relate, and what rules govern movement between them. - Non-discriminatory behavior and open competition
Regulators should ensure that a combined Netflix plus Warner or Skydance plus Warner does not use content control to foreclose access or preference its own ad products over others.
Those conditions are not anti-innovation. They are pro-market. And here is the key point. If advertisers win these protections here, they will have a template to push for comparable standards with the platforms that dominate their budgets already.
If they fail, the message to Amazon, Google, YouTube, and Meta will be simple. The industry had a rare chance to rebalance power and chose not to take it.
Strategic Takeaways for Brands, Agencies, And Sellers
- Use the disruption as leverage, not an excuse for inaction
Advertisers should be publicly clear that their support for any consolidation outcome is conditional on transparency and interoperable measurement. Trade bodies can coordinate positions so that regulators hear a common message. - Plan scenarios that account for distraction and potential delays
Media plans for 2026 and 2027 should model multiple futures: Netflix as a larger studio plus streamer, Skydance-Paramount as a combined studio and cable giant, and a status quo where neither deal is approved. That planning should not default on the budget to walled gardens by assumption. - Invest in open-garden capabilities
Brands should use this period to strengthen their own identity, analytics, and clean room strategies so that they are less dependent on any single platform’s black box. (AI Digital) - Ask every seller the same questions you wish you could ask Netflix and WBD
Whenever you spend meaningful money in a closed ecosystem, whether that is a streaming service or a commerce platform, demand clarity on data, measurement, and competitive behavior. The standards you set now will shape the leverage you have later.
The Myers Report Conclusion
The industry is about to spend a year or more arguing over which configuration of legacy and new-school media companies should control Warner Bros. Discovery. Lawyers, bankers, politicians, and commentators will dominate the conversation.
If the advertising community does not speak, the default winners will be the platforms that are already winning.
This moment is not just about who owns a studio. It is about whether advertisers use a rare fracture in the media landscape to demand a more transparent, competitive, and accountable marketplace, or whether they watch silently while even more power flows to Amazon, Google and YouTube, and Meta.
From our vantage point, this is very clearly an advertiser outcome, not just a shareholder one.
