Looking at the Charter Communications-Cox Communications massive merger, one wonders --why didn't this happen earlier -- like ten years ago?

Cord-cutting of cable TV bundles began its slow rise about two decades ago. Now it is much more prevalent. But that is not the main issue -- especially for one of the dominant pay cable TV players.

Charter is currently is the biggest pay TV provider, with 12.7 million cable subscribers -- slightly above that of Comcast Corp (12.5 million).

Analysts have been musing over a possible combination of Charter and Comcast -- even some company executives. Still, although streaming platforms (and streaming distributors) have made major headway -- regulatory concerns would no doubt be heightened.

For over a decade, Charter and Comcast focused on the necessary business strength around other communication businesses -- broadband and especially mobile. The latter seems to be the business with the most upside -- where the likes of Charter and Comcast specifically put a lot of emphasis.

Other parts of the pay TV industry have been rumored to see a possible merger -- that of DirecTV and Dish Network -- in the early 2000s, when both were major players.

In 2002, the two satellite pay TV providers were turned down by U.S. regulators -- the Federal Communications Commission. These days, the two companies carry much less marketplace dominance, making it much a more likely scenario.

Mobile communications businesses are another story. That is why Chris Marangi, co-CIO of Value at Gabelli Funds, muses that perhaps T-Mobile -- a mobile/broadband-first company -- might be thinking about a bid: “Don’t expect an overbid but if T-Mobile ever had a desire for Charter, now would be the time to express that.”

With regard to the Charter-Cox deal Marangi says -- “Cable is a scale business -- added size should help Charter compete better with the larger telcos, tech companies and Starlink.”

In this regard, Charter has been making some headway with better bundling of cable TV and streaming platforms, to compete with the likes of Roku and Amazon Channels.

It was the first to leverage deals from legacy, TV-networks based media companies in their efforts to maintain revenue from traditional linear TV network carriage deals -- like its deal with Wall Disney for ESPN and ABC, which also gave it the ability to sell Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+. Other legacy cable TV distributors have been doing similar agreements.

With the deal, Cox’s business will gain from Charter better’s cable TV/streaming business leverage for Cox’s 6.5 million overall customer base. But bigger gains appear to be with broadband and mobile in the long term.

"Speculation has swirled since Cox went private in 2004 whether it would participate in consolidation and with whom," Marangi says.

So.. who will be next?

Charter Communications and Cox Communications -- two of the biggest legacy cable TV-based companies -- are merging in a massive $34.5 billion deal. 

This comes as the industry has been shrinking over a number of years due to cord-cutting of traditional pay cable TV systems.

Both companies -- as well as other original cable-based TV companies -- have placed greater emphasis on residential broadband business for more than a decade now.

Charter’s Spectrum cable and broadband will continue to be the consumer-facing brand.

The corporate name will change to Cox Communications.

Chris Winfrey, president and CEO of Charter, will continue as president/CEO of the new combined company.

Charter has 12.7 million cable customers and 30 million broadband customers in 41 states.

Cox Communications --- a division of Cox Enterprises, a private company -- has about 6.5 million overall cable/broadband/mobile residential and commercial customers in 30 states.

Cox Enterprises will control 23% of the combined shares in the new company.

Charter posted 181,000 in cable TV subscribers losses during its most recent quarter. 

The deal will consist of $21.9 billion of equity and $12.6 billion of net debt and other obligations.

Jeffrey Wlodarczak, CEO/internet, media, sports and communications analyst of Pivotal Research Group, said in a note that Charter’s success comes in bundling its broadband, cable TV, as well as mobile businesses.

“[This has been] allowing them to outperform their peers... We believe these operating strategies are absolutely transferable to the Cox footprint and again [for] Charter shareholders.” 

The Independent is citing new Comscore data that shows a 9% increase YoY in March for a total of  30.9 million visitors even while U.S. digital newspaper traffic declined by 12%. 

The paper claims it now in the monthly rankings of the top 10 newspaper brands in the U.S. while surpassing the Daily Mail, the Sun  and the Guardian. 

In addition, it leads in average time spent per visit and a top-ten ranking in page views (168 million) across all U.S. news sites. 

“The Independent US continues to build on its values-led foundation, providing insightful reporting and diverse perspectives on the most important issues of the day,” says Geordie Greig, editor in chief of The Independent. “Our year-over-year growth in a challenging news environment speaks to the deep trust we’ve earned from American readers.”

U.S. readership metrics are based on the Comscore US MMX Multi-Platform Data for March 2025, showing Desktop 2+ and Total Mobile 18+

Google is integrating AI and Gemini into core mobile experiences that are customized for people who are vision- and hearing-impaired. The announcement was made Thursday, one day prior to Global Accessibility Awareness Day (GAAD).

Gemini's TalkBack capabilities came to Android's screen reader last year to provide people who are blind or have low vision, but today the company expanded Gemini allowing people to ask questions and get responses about the images.

The next time a friend texts a photo of their new guitar, the user can get a description and ask follow-up questions about the make and color, or even what else is in the image.

The feature should come in handy even for advertisers and marketers because consumers will have the ability to ask questions about the images and hear more about what is shown on the screen when they cannot see them.

In a blog post, Google explained that people can get descriptions and ask questions about what is on their entire screen. If someone is shopping for the latest sales on in a shopping app, they can ask Gemini about the material of an item or if a discount is available.

Between $8 trillion and $13 trillion in disposable income is controlled by people with disabilities and their families, according to Hostinger, a web hosting company that shared data which estimates 94.8% of websites have at least one accessibility issue, with an average of 51 errors per home page.

These errors include common but critical problems including low-contrast text, missing alt descriptions, and unlabeled buttons -- barriers that affect 1.3 billion people globally living with disabilities.

Six common issues make up 96% of all reported problems. Seventy-nine percent of pages have low-contrast text -- the most common issue, and 45% of pages have empty links that confuse screen readers.

Making it easier for consumers to see, Hostinger suggested companies use high-contrast text that stands out clearly, add alt text to all images so screen readers can describe them, label all forms properly so assistive technologies can identify them, and make sure buttons have clear labels -- not just icons or colo

The company also suggests that links have descriptive text so users know where they lead, and declare the primary language of the webpage to help screen readers.

Google also introduced Expressive Captions on Android phones for anything with sound across most apps. It created this feature using AI to not only capture what someone says, but how they say it, so the person can hear the inflections in the meaning of the sentences.

The features allowed users to hear the difference between when someone says “no” or “nooooo.”

The user also receives even more labels for sounds, so they know when someone is whistling or clearing their throat.

This new version is rolling out in English in the U.S., the U.K., Canada and Australia for devices running Android version 15 and above.

About 2 billion people use Chrome daily. Google said it's trying to make its browser easier to use and more accessible with features like Live Caption and image descriptions for screen reader users.

Optical Character Recognition (OCR) lets Chrome automatically recognize these types of PDFs, so users can highlight, copy and search for text like any other page and use your screen reader to read them.

Page Zoom, another feature, now lets you increase the size of the text you see in Chrome on Android without affecting the webpage layout or browsing experiences similar to how it works on the Chrome desktop.

Users can customize how much deep someone wants to get and apply the preference to all pages visited or just specific ones.

The United States once again had the dubious honor of being the leading country for email opt-outs in 2024. 

The U.S. accounted for 84.68% of the world’s unsubscribes, making 2023 -- when the opt-out rate declined by 8% -- look like an outlier, according to an infographic published by Optizmo Technologies, its seventh annual opt-out report.  

In contrast, Europe generated 9.78 of total opt-outs The U.K. contributed 2.33% and France contributed 2.03%. Most of the world’s regions were below 1%.  

Why did the U.S. stand out? Probably because of the size of the population and the sheer number of emails going out. It may also be that American consumers are more jaded from advertising of all types.  

An imposing. 71.12% of opt-outs are occurring on mobile devices, and 28.25% on desktop. 

Among ESPs, Yahoo! has the honor of being first in opt-outs, as shown here: 

1. Yahoo — 45.32% 
2. Gmail — 12.65%
3. AOL — 10.99% 
4. Hotmail — 5.65%
5. Comcast — 3.88%
6. Verizon.net — 1.44% 
7. iCloud — 1.34% 
8. ATT.net — 1.29% 
9. sbcglobal.net — 1.18%
10. charter.net — 1.04% 

“After seeing Gmail drop out of the top slot in 2023, we saw Yahoo! retain its position at number one in 2024, even widening that lead,” the infographic notes. “The rationale behind Yahoo’s jump is likely a combination of factors impacting how email marketers were reaching inboxes during the year.”

When can a marketer expect opt-outs? The biggest day was Monday, the lightest day Saturday last year: 

Sunday — 13.47% 

Monday — 15.99%

Tuesday — 15.29% 

Wednesday — 14.91% 

Thursday — 14.40%

Friday — 13.30%

Saturday — 12.63% 

But these are not dramatic rates from prior years.  

“Opt-out activity by weekday continued its trend of flattening out in 2024. Notably, last year also saw the highest Saturday and Sunday volumes we’ve tracked in the infographic’s history, but shifts remain minor and gradual," the study said. 

December was the highest opt-out month last year, perhaps because of “an increase in holiday email volume, a higher opt-out rate, or a combination of both,” the study says. Either way, it was an exception. 

Among operating systems, iOS saw strong opt-out growth in 2024 (48.14%), followed by Android (22.98%), Windows (16.74%) and MacOS (10.63%).

All others made up 1.51%. 

The internet as Gen Z knows it doesn’t start with a search bar. It starts with a question.

“What’s the best skincare for sensitive skin?”
“Where should I go on a budget trip to Europe?”
“What’s a good alternative to Nike sneakers?”

Increasingly, these aren’t queries typed into a search engine. They’re prompts sent to ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, or Perplexity. For younger users, AI has become the go-to starting point — a place to get immediate, personalized answers that skip the noise of traditional browsing.

This trend is reshaping how brands are found, ranked, and trusted.

As marketers, we’ve spent decades optimizing for the search era: keywords, metadata, backlinks and ad placements. But AI-powered discovery doesn’t work that way. There are no pages of results. No bidding wars for blue links. Just one answer: curated, contextualized, and often final.

This is the AI shelf. And if your brand isn’t on it, you’re invisible.

The shift is already happening:

• 57% of Gen Z prefer platforms like TikTok and generative AI over traditional search engines to explore and discover (source: GWI).
• YouTube, Reddit, and AI chat interfaces are becoming default discovery layers, especially on mobile.
• AI tools are being integrated into everything from ecommerce experiences to voice assistants to in-store kiosks.

Gen Z and Gen Alpha grew up in a digital landscape shaped by personalization, instant gratification, and curated content. They expect answers that are tailored, conversational, and trusted. They don't "search and scroll" — they "prompt and decide."

For marketers, this signals a radical new paradigm.

Media strategies must evolve from targeting eyeballs to influencing algorithms.

AI systems aren’t just summarizing the internet — they’re reinterpreting it. And they’re making decisions on behalf of users who increasingly outsource early-stage research.

This changes everything:

• Brand visibility is no longer a function of ad budgets or SEO hacks. It's about whether your brand is being surfaced in AI-generated answers.
• Trust and relevance are inferred from patterns in language, structure, and sentiment across the web, not just performance metrics.
• Influence comes from the digital signals that AI models consume: product reviews, third-party content, structured data, and narrative consistency.

This shift challenges traditional media buying assumptions. Instead of asking, "Where do we place ads to reach this audience?" brands need to ask:

• What data is AI reading about us?
• How are we being positioned in comparison to our competitors?
• Are we visible in AI-generated responses to category-specific queries?

Media planners must now consider a different set of inputs:

• Structured content and schema markup that machines can parse, interpret, and prioritize.
• Distributed content strategies that seed trusted third-party ecosystems with accurate, compelling narratives.
• AI-centric content analysis that measures brand sentiment, topical authority, and recommendation frequency.
• Real-world prompt testing to evaluate how the brand appears in actual queries across leading LLMs.

This shift goes beyond tools and technology — it reflects a deeper change in behavior, expectations, and how people engage with information. Gen Z expects immediacy. They want credibility without friction. They trust recommendations that feel tailored and unbiased — and AI increasingly meets those expectations better than brands themselves.

As a result, marketing must pivot toward a new kind of literacy: algorithmic literacy.

Knowing how your brand performs in search isn’t enough. You need to understand how it performs when AI is the one doing the choosing. This requires a rethinking of how visibility, reputation, and performance are measured.

The question isn’t whether consumers will adapt. They already have.

So here’s the real question: Is your brand prepared to be discovered in a world that no longer starts with search?

One of the interesting topics around the use of AI in marketing is synthetic data.    I’m not completely sure I’m comfortable with it, though.

Synthetic data is exactly what it sounds like: artificially generated data intended to accurately represent the ways real consumers interact with media and brands. But the fact is, it’s created using AI, and AI has inherent biases that cannot be accounted for.  Synthetic data is, at its absolute best, a highly educated guess.

AI, however incredible, is still rule-based and relatively linear in its ability to “think,”  unlike humans.   We are non-linear thinkers, and we have the inherent ability to go beyond the data and hypothesize things that may not seem logical. Thus, consumers are not always logical.  If you agree with that statement, then synthetic data is a good foundation from which to make an educated guess about the patterns of consumer behavior, but it is still a tool from which you must make your own final decisions. 

So, the question still remains whether synthetic data is a good tool for filling in the gaps from consumer opt-outs.

That leaves us in a predicament: Depending on the source, as much as 60% of consumers opt out of mobile tracking.  There was an existential threat of cookies going away, but that is no longer the case.  Some data suggests consumers are getting more comfortable with tracking and are simply opting back in, accepting that tracking is part of the industry.  So, the other question remains, do we even need to worry about synthetic data, or can we forecast a world where opt-in rates increase, and the industry does just fine?

This is where I end up.  The concept of synthetic data is, in my eyes, a stopgap.  It is a good trick the industry can use for predictive analytics to be more reliable, but it's still just predictive.  Good marketers need to build in leading, as well as lagging, indicators to help them understand a campaign’s performance -- and no forecast will ever be 100% reliable. 

I think the tools for synthetic data are good for now, and will likely carry us to a state where the data is reliable enough on its own.  I do predict we will get back to a place where opt-outs may drop down again to the 25%-30% range as consumers become more comfortable and, essentially, lazier.  There’s a point where they simply stop opting out because it’s a pain.  After all, consumers still share many things about their lives on social media, and they are fine with speaking to AI and having their phones listening in on conversations, so why would this be any different?

The fact is, society is OK with tracking if it gets what it wants: easier access to whatever makes it happy.  For better or for worse, this is how the world of data works.

Nissan has launched a video game that aims to honor Tokyo’s iconic gaming culture.

Nismo Electric Racer Tokyo was developed in an 8-bit visual style and is a retro-inspired game, the kind found in video arcades in the 1980s and 1990s. 

It was created in collaboration with Japanese Illustrator Kentaro Yoshida to mark the arrival of the FIA Formula E World Championship to Japan for the team's home race in Tokyo on May 17-18. 

All cars in the championship are powered by electricity, with the series acting as a competitive platform to test and develop the latest in electric technology.

Formula E promotes the adoption of sustainable mobility in city centers in a bid to combat air pollution and lessen the effects of climate change, according to the automaker.

In the video game, players take control of a stylized Nissan Formula E car racing through a Tokyo cityscape featuring Mount Fuji and cherry blossom trees.

Players can get behind the wheel on their PC or mobile and navigate a Tokyo street circuit at 200 mph (322 kph) to simulate the high-speed excitement of Formula E.  

The game is available to play at www.NismoElectricRacer.com and launches alongside a 90s-inspired video game advertisement, blending gameplay with real life race footage.The automaker is promoting the game on social media platforms including TikTok and Facebook. 

Nissan Formula E Team drivers Oliver Rowland and Norman Nato are set to register their highest scores ahead of the E-Prix, with fans able to test themselves against the professionals and post their own scores to the leaderboard.

Yoshida, the illustrator, is known for his pastel toned style, bold line-work and quirky characters. This is his first foray into designing within the gaming world.

His unique style will also debut on track at the Tokyo E-Prix. He designed the exterior of one of Nissan’s race cars. The unique design will be unveiled during an event on May 14 at Nissan's Global Headquarters in Yokohama and also across Nissan social channels.

Nissan made its all-electric racing debut in 2018, becoming the first and only Japanese manufacturer to enter the series.

In March 2024, the automaker announced its long term commitment to Formula E, becoming the first manufacturer to sign on to race through 2030, reinforcing its pledge to its Ambition 2030 electrification targets.

As part of its goal to achieve carbon neutrality across its operations and the life cycle of its products by 2050, Nissan intends to electrify every all-new vehicle offering by the early 2030s in key markets. 

Consumers can read more about the automaker’s history with video games on the Nissan Stories page.

When Presearch could not guarantee user privacy with known advertising units, the decentralized engine designed a takeover ad to give advertisers insights on impressions, clickthrough rates, device types, and geography.

Presearch Takeover Ads (PTAs), which launched in February, now offer advertisers a dashboard that details mobile and desktop — home pages and search pages — as well as device type, country of origin, total searches, registered and unregistered users.

There are links to preview where the ad served, for desktop and mobile. A map color-codes conversions, and areas that received impressions, but without conversions.

NordVPN and TradingView signed up as early test partners for the PTA and metrics dashboard.

Unlike traditional search engines that track and share user data, Presearch’s dashboard supports targeted advertising via its PTAs.

The startup has more than 400,00 daily searches, 13 million monthly impressions, and a growing crypto-native audience.

There is nothing typical about this search engine, from its ad units and data to its CEO Tim Enneking.

Enneking, a venture capitalist, spends most of his time working with Presearch, but also runs a company called Crypto Asset Fund, now referred to as CAF 2017, along with a management company, Digital Capital Management (DCM). DCM owns many Presearch tokens, and also runs many of the company’s nodes.

“The fund runs itself, basically, but there's a significant portion that depends on Presearch,” he said.

Another VC fund, Salion (“the P is silent, P-S-A-L-I-O-N, which is ancient Greek for chain) owns a little more than half of Presearch.

“All roads lead to Presearch in this case, and I'm the one who runs the place for my sins,” he said.

Presearch began using artificial intelligence (AI) in 2020, after launching in 2017.

“You do an AI search, you'll get AI results, but we still don't know your URL because that AI search goes through one of the 40,000 global nodes we have,” Enneking said. “We don't have any statistics about you. If you haven't registered, two-thirds of our users don't register, we don't even have your email address.”

He adds that unless someone enters their name, email address or phone number or something in their email address or their name, the company knows nothing about them.

The search company is built on community members who operate the nodes. They earn a few tokens a month to do this, but it is completely decentralized.

Presearch doesn’t know who operates the nodes until they have problems and report it to the company.

The searches are routed through the computers. Someone could be the first or 40,000 nodes after downloading a small piece of software on their computer.

Digital adtech firm PubMatic has upgraded its tool for ad buyers in a bid to streamline the buying process to help both advertisers and publishers.

The goal is to “give media buyers a smarter, faster path to campaign performance,” says Kyle Dozeman, PubMatic's chief revenue officer, Americas.

The platform is now in beta testing with some of Pubmatic’s long-term partners. 

This enhanced platform marks a step in PubMatic’s transition from a traditional SSP into an end-to-end technology company powering programmatic advertising on the open internet, the firm says.

Publishers can leverage machine learning and curated deals to maximize yield, increase fill rates, and maintain control over inventory quality and pricing, the company claims.

According to Pubmatic, the new capabilities include:

• AI Efficiency—Buyers can describe their campaign goals, audience strategy, or inventory needs using natural language; the platform will surface curated deals while forecasting tools recommend budgets and bid CPMs.
• Activation—Buyers can activate curated deals through PubMatic’s Activate platform or their DSP of choice.
• Omnichannel Scale— Buyers can tap into premium inventory across connected TVs, mobile apps and browsers, supported by audience data from PubMatic’s Connect platform.
• Optimization—PubMatic’s generative AI monitoring agent will track campaign and deal performance 24/7.
• Privacy-Based Approach—The platform will ensure compliance with privacy regulations while leveraging first-party data for precision targeting.

One client that has tried the upgraded tool is GroupM.

“PubMatic’s new unified platform will help us deliver smarter, more efficient campaigns for our clients, bringing together discovery, curation and activation in a single easy-to-use solution,” says Andrew Meaden, global head of investment at GroupM.