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“Owning the browser itself is one way of securing the place of your search product, and all the benefits that go with that (including to your ads business),” said Niamh Burns, senior research analyst at Enders Analysis. “And the data advantages are huge when you have that kind of access to a user’s journey.”
Regarding the potential of such deals mushrooming across Europe, Francois Godard at Enders Analysis predicts that more will follow, especially in Germany where Prime Video already launched linear channels from broadcasters ARD and ZDF several years ago. Godard says Max will likely be the next streamer to form a deal with a local TV group.
As for the U.S., there’s even less chances of pacts between TV groups and streamers, says Godard, because there are “fundamental differences” between those two markerts. “European free-to-air channels are genuinely free and possess substantial audience power, unlike their American counterparts which are typically part of a paid cable package,” says Godard.
Publishers are becoming less visible. Since 2019, publisher visibility on Google’s search results has diminished markedly—the Mail is less than half as visible in Google’s search results as it was five years ago.
Since March, publishers' keywords have become over three times more likely to trigger an AI Overview, now affecting around one-third of the Sun and Mirror’s keywords. These summaries mostly appear for entertainment and informational queries, which typically have high search volumes but lower click-through rates
The commercial impact is minimal—we estimate low-single digits—for now. The main threat is to discoverability, and the shrinkage of the top of the funnel
Karen Egan, head of telecoms at Enders Analysis said that CityFibre securing new funding was “absolutely central” to the future of the altnet sector.
She added it would give the company “the horsepower that they need to drive consolidation by acquiring smaller players in the sector and continue expanding their footprint”.
Claire Enders, founder of media and telecommunications research company Enders Analysis, said Rose "epitomizes the reasons women have increasingly succeeded to these roles."
"She's a peacemaker, she's very non-confrontational, very thoughtful, and she works very well in very large organizations," Enders added.
Moreover, Enders Analysis’ senior research analyst Claire Holubowskyj said she still believes Google’s promise of a new reporting line showing the impact of AI Max is little better than other black box reporting.
“While useful to identify an impact, the ‘how’ and ‘why’ have always been the more interesting (and difficult to identify) insights,” she said.
In Holubowskyj’s view, Google is providing the base level of visibility necessary in AI Max to build trust in the system among marketers. “But part of widespread AI adoption will be trusting the outputs and ceding limited control in some areas — the key questions are which areas, and how much oversight is required?,” she continued.
After four failed broadcast licence deals over five years, France’s top football league will launch its own subscription service in August.
In the short-term, consumer take up will critically depend on bundling arrangements with third-party platforms.
Longer-term, the league will need to establish lasting partnerships. Outdated competition rules are an obstacle, but the Dutch model is worth considering.
Sky has officially launched on CityFibre’s network, offering up to 5Gbps speeds, which may have more of a halo effect for Sky than driving direct adoption of these very high end packages.
Sky is critical to CityFibre’s wholesale model given its size, and it is a good sign that Sky is proving an enthusiastic wholesale customer, while it is likely to be wary of others.
CityFibre still needs to complete its planned financing round to kick off a wholesale-focused consolidation wave, which would ultimately be beneficial to all incumbents in ending irrational price competition from retail altnets.
Fixing an allocation quirk at BT pushed UK broadband revenue back into growth in Q1, albeit a very modest 0.8%, thanks to continued altnet growth and a very weak underlying market.
Broadband pricing is dipping down overall, but there is not yet evidence of pricing cuts targeted in altnet areas, a massive missed opportunity in our view.
The market will remain under pressure in the short term, but in the longer term altnet pressure will fall under all realistic consolidation scenarios.