The Current

Inside this edition of The Current: - The 2026 FIFA World Cup shattered U.S. viewership records. But can a blockbuster tournament turn casual viewers into lifelong soccer fans? - TV's next growth market isn't the biggest brands — it's small businesses. Why broadcasters and streamers see SMBs as advertising's next gold rush.

Retail media no more, Best Buy is moving onto calling it commerce media. Best Buy Ads' Lisa Valentino sees a massive opportunity going forward: https://bit.ly/4fjS5KQ

If you want to spread the word about your business, get on TV. But it’s easier said than done: TV advertising has historically been expensive and complicated to arrange. However, following Walmart's acquisition of Vibe.co and the launch of Comcast's Universal Ads in the UK, the barriers to entry for tv advertising have been lowered, expanding who can access premium inventory and how they buy it.

For this year’s World Cup, everybody ate. Fox and NBCUniversal boasted of record World Cup viewership, as other companies now reportedly vie for U.S. broadcast rights. But will that translate into increased soccer fandom? Learn more: https://bit.ly/4fffZXU

Disney is reinventing advertising across its streaming ecosystem. On this edition of The Big Impression, The Walt Disney Company’s Jamie Power explains how advertisers can now buy audiences seamlessly across Disney+, Hulu, ESPN and more — and why more brands are choosing biddable to transact their upfront commitments: https://bit.ly/44IrRvu

The biggest blind spot in advertising? Adsquare CEO Tom Laband says it's connecting online data to in-store data. The opportunity is rich to fix it.

14 years after first becoming an official sponsor of the World Cup, Hisense brought a new attitude to the 2026 tournament. And while the World Cup is now over, Hisense’s plans aren’t. It’s rolling out 10 episodes of its series with Terry Crews over the rest of the year. Hisense USA CMO Sarah Larsen explains its World Cup strategy on this episode of The Big Impression: https://bit.ly/45jU4sA

Most companies acquire to integrate. Scott Howe's rule is the opposite: "Think about the acquisition as a chance to pour fuel into the acquired company." He argues the worst thing you can do is break apart what made the company valuable in the first place. Listen to the full conversation on The Build, where Scott shares the acquisition philosophy that's shaped some of ad tech's biggest moves: https://bit.ly/4fQh33J

The streaming wars as we knew them may be over, but a new struggle is emerging, with AI at the center. But as platforms adopt AI to meet apparent consumer demand through content creation and personalization, what do viewers actually want, particularly Gen Z?

Economic uncertainty may be making some marketers more cautious, but it hasn’t brought consumer spending to a standstill. In fact, a recent Visa economic outlook found spending has remained resilient across much of Asia Pacific, with Australia and New Zealand even recording an uptick. We sat down with Visa Oceania’s Drew Perry who broke down how the ANZ data landscape is evolving, why better signals matter more than bigger datasets and how marketers can make smarter decisions in an increasingly uncertain environment.