For Ben Woods, a specialist in the "creator economy" at Enders Analysis, these deals mark a new stage in the ruthless battle for attention. "Streaming services are realizing they're no longer an exception and that they, too, must fight for screen time like everyone else," he explains. Meanwhile, Netflix, Disney+, and Prime Video have all introduced ad-supported offerings : the number of users and the time spent watching ads are therefore being scrutinized more closely than ever.

Faced with an ecosystem more competitive than ever, content creators are emerging as a particularly attractive solution. "YouTubers are masters at producing content at low cost, on a regular basis, while adapting it to retain their audience as much as possible," adds Ben Woods.

Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said investors had also been buoyed by Kirkby’s commitment to delivering £2bn in normalised free cash in fiscal year 2027, with £3bn by the end of the decade.  

“The market has been sceptical that BT could deliver on its cash flow recovery plans in such a tough environment, but its razor-sharp focus on operational delivery in the challenging UK market is really paying off,” she said. 

This could play to Openreach’s advantage as the challenger networks limit their expansion, Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis, said. “They’re definitely hitting ceilings in their current footprint,” she said. 

“BT will of course endeavour to stabilise the TalkTalk subscriber base but they tend to be customers with a high propensity to churn, and the takeover disruption will probably make things worse before they get better,” Egan said.

The shift is also changing how advertisers value publisher-made social, aid Abi Watson, head of publishing for Enders Analysis. “The last year has really seen an acceleration in the recognition and professionalisation of the creator industry, coinciding with the decline in referral traffic,” she said. The growth in social-only briefs at DMG suggests that advertisers increasingly see value in these formats as “destinations in their own right,” rather than simply as extensions of existing publishing brands,” she added.

Apple’s ads business matters more than its size suggests because it sits inside services, the part of Apple that now does a lot of the heavy lifting on profit. In 2018, services brought in 24% of Apple’s growth profit, with hardware such as the iPhone delivering the other 76%, according to Enders Analysis. Today services account for 43% and products 57%. Apple doesn’t say how much of that comes from ads but every dollar it makes there adds to the side of the business it most wants to grow. 

However, the high cost of building out fibre broadband networks has saddled altnets with more than £9bn of net debt, according to estimates from Enders Analysis. The sector posted £1.5bn in losses in 2024, Enders said, as consumer uptake of services also fell short of expectations.  

“I think they will go for a strategy of optimising their revenue, which is probably to keep premium pricing where they don’t have fibre competition, rather than bringing down pricing to maximise the take-up,” Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis said.