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Karen said “It is long overdue. With expensive spectrum auctions, costs of 5G upgrades, the additional costs of the Huawei ban, and their own costs inflating, the mobile operators can’t afford to be that generous indefinitely.”
Joseph said “18-24s spend something like three times as much time on YouTube as they do on TikTok. t’s a beast. The reach is really extraordinary. It’s the biggest site on the internet, with more than 90 per cent penetration in every age group we have data for, which is 18-plus.”
Abi said even after a busy stretch of M&A, media companies enter 2022 as hungry as they’ve ever been to make acquisitions, Future among them. In particular, Future’s proprietary tech stack enables the company “to drive almost instant revenue growth."
She added “It is highly likely that, in common with other magazine publishers, its revenues depend on a few key assets, and that there is a long-tail of underperforming businesses."
The CMA has provisionally found against the sale of CK Hutchison's (CKH's) UK towers rights to Cellnex.
Although the proposed deal increases towers competition relative to the status quo, the CMA appears to be concluding that it would prefer a deal that increases competition to an even greater extent.
The CMA should question whether it has come to the right decision given: the tenuous validity of its arguments; that its view is not shared by those that it is seeking to protect; and the potential significant implications for the mobile industry.
Karen described Vodafone’s decision as “inevitable”. She said the likely expectation was that rival operator Virgin Media O2, plus virtual network providers such as Tesco Mobile and Sky, would now follow suit on re-introducing roaming charges.
Joseph said “Advertisers and agencies have woken up to the potential of podcast advertising, and the money is pouring in. Podcast ad targeting and attribution has historically been pretty primitive, but it’s starting to catch up with other online ads.”
In turn, this has fed into advertisers seeing “value for money” in podcasts.
It comes as Times reported 8.3 million digital and print subscribers, and an ambitious goal of reaching 10 million subscribers by 2025.
According to PitchBook, The Athletic, which has more than 1.2 million subscribers, has raised around $145m (£107m) in venture funding since 2016. However, the company is yet to turn a profit, recording a $41m (£30m) loss in 2020.
François said it was nevertheless a “good move”, praising The New York Times’ shift into industry verticals.
Comparing the renowned publication to a tech company, he said: “As a tech company, they are doing what other tech companies are doing; they are buying promising young companies that will reinforce their market position.”
James said ‘Apple designed a user-friendly device that did a few useful things very well, rather than a mass of complicated-to-use features that only techies knew how to use properly."
Douglas said “We have entered a frenzied phase of media innovation, both from inside established businesses and start-ups."