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WHO WILL WIN 2026? · The Media Odyssey

• Evan Shapiro: [00:00:00] Welcome to the first episode of the Media Odyssey Podcast of 2026. That is Marion Ranchet. Marion Ranchet: And that is Evan Shapiro. Evan Shapiro: It's great to be back for our second year of the Media Odyssey Podcast, and we're gonna start as we did last year with our predictions for the year ahead. Marion Ranchet: Exciting. Evan Shapiro: So you wanna go first or you want me to go first? We each brought five to the table. Marion Ranchet: We did. Evan Shapiro: wanna flip a coin or you want me to go first? Marion Ranchet: You Nah, let's go. Evan Shapiro: Okay, I'll go first. Marion Ranchet: Old men first. Evan Shapiro: Age before beauty. Marion Ranchet: That's a nicer way of saying this. Not my style. Evan Shapiro: Instead of you just calling me old. Thanks. I just called you beautiful and you called me old. And that's our relationship in a nutshell. So my first prediction for 2026 [00:01:00] is something that I've been saying for a while but I think it's gonna culminate this year. So I've been calling AI a bit of a bubble for a while, and we've actually had a debate about this that you hosted a little while ago, but in the end, I believe that the AI bubble actually bursts in 2026. I think that the inflating of hyperbole around these valuations, particularly around OpenAI and some of these others is gonna pop this year. And I think we already started pop, seeing it pop in 2025. Peter Thiel sold his stocks in Nvidia. SoftBank dumped their stocks in Nvidia. They were one of the largest shareholders. Arc Investments trimmed back their AI investments. And then you've got Michael Berry, the guy who was, the guy who predicted the, he was the center of The Big Short. He predicted the big crash in 2008. He is seeing and predicting that the AI bubble's gonna burst, and there's a number of different reasons for this, but the center of it is there's one big [00:02:00] round trip happening in the AI industry. So Nvidia sells chips to OpenAI. OpenAI has investments from all of its clients and everybody's really just exchanging money from cloud providers to chip providers, to service providers. And all of this money just is creating one big circle. And if any of that starts to show chinks in the armor, it begins to fall apart. And mostly what you've got are the service providers who are relying on recurring revenue subscriptions as a kind of center of their business. Not all of them, but many of them. And I don't think that's pretty viable. I think you're gonna see churn happen on the direct to consumer products. I've talked about hallucinations in Chat GPT, other people. If you look at the McDonald's ad that just came out, or the Coca-Cola ad that came out using AI, first of all, it took 70,000 hours of prompting by huge teams of people to create these really shitty commercials that everybody hates and that are [00:03:00] absolute embarrassments. So these kind of sexy uses of AI are not really gonna come to fruition in the near term. And I would argue that maybe ever. I don't think Sora is gonna be a filmmaker. I don't think these AIs are gonna create the next works of art. AI is really an unsexy optimization tool. Google uses it incredibly well through Gemini. They use it in all of their ad targeting. Meta is using it in their ad targeting. So the big companies are using AI, but they're not using it in a way that necessarily generates immediate profits. So I think AI is gonna remain a massive and important technology. An influential force in media. But I think we're gonna see the bubble pop in 2026. Marion Ranchet: So what does that mean? The bubble popping, bursting. Are we saying that all of a sudden the valuation of those companies is going down or people, those companies are losing interest and [00:04:00] focusing on something else. Could you elaborate? Evan Shapiro: I think you'll see a number of different ramifications of this. The first is that I think big tech stocks will take a little bit of a hit because they're all investing tens and tens of billions of dollars. I don't think their revenues are gonna get hurt. Maybe Amazon Cloud, maybe some of the cloud services. You'll see start to see that growth slow a little bit. I do think you'll see Nvidia take a little bit of a hit, but still they're, they've got almost a monopoly in the chip business. But that second tier of companies that are getting massive investments I think you'll see a lot of valuations, yes, get depressed as a result of this, but crucially also think you're gonna see the whole stock market take a massive hit over the course of the year. And I think that's gonna be one of the contributing factors to a terrible economy in the United States in particular. But I think it's gonna have a global ramifications as well. One of my other predictions is around the job market tied to stagflation. And I think, I don't know that we'll enter full [00:05:00] recession, but I do think that the big tech world is so tied to AI futures right now, that when the bubble bursts, I think you're gonna see the whole market drop, and I think that's gonna have a larger follow on effect for the US economy and then the global economy. Marion Ranchet: I think 2026 is too soon. I don't think it's gonna burst. I think we're gonna have a bit of a correction. And if you look at the Gardner cycle, right? The fact that it's been a hype, I think we'll be more business as usual, right? So where I agree with you is I think only a few companies will still stand next year, right? So everyone who's tried to jump that train, only those with a lot of money and a flywheel doing other things, right? And so thinking Google is gonna power through. Evan Shapiro: Amazon Meta. Yep. Marion Ranchet: Meta hasn't done much. Just like Apple, they've been left out right when it comes to AI, but I think only Evan Shapiro: To a certain extent. They, again their stuff isn't really consumer facing. They are [00:06:00] using AI much more behind the scenes to target ads and keep stickiness. Marion Ranchet: This is where I think we won't see a bubble bursting. I think we'll stop talking about this, making it headlines, et cetera, et cetera. And it will be business as usual and it will hopefully solve some specific pain points that companies actually have. I have to say Evan Shapiro: Lemme just disagree with you there for a second. First of all, when I say the bubble's gonna burst, it doesn't mean it's the end of AI. Yeah. The internet bubble burst a couple of times, and yet the internet is still a massive business. Marion Ranchet: It's still there, yeah. Evan Shapiro: Google is the third largest company in the world. Meta, so you, just because a bubble burst doesn't mean it's the end of that sector. It just means it's, to your point, there's a major correction coming in this space, so I don't know that we're necessarily violently disagreeing. I think we're finding nuances around the same thing. But a correction in this sector will have a massive effect on the stock market and therefore the economy as well. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, the job market for sure. If you [00:07:00] look at, job opportunity right now, it all revolves around AI or staff is being told whatever they're doing right now. Evan Shapiro: Use AI. Use AI. Marion Ranchet: Even if it's completely remote from tech. You gotta, and I've heard that again a couple of weeks ago, you have to take that train or there, they're just, out the door. Find a way to make that to use. Interesting what you're saying about D2C. I think D2C was the surprising. I think OpenAI, you look at what they put out, at the beginning of the company, they were not expecting to go into the D2C business. They thought it would be a B2B play. They were actually surprised by how much people took on those individual subscriptions. And a couple of days ago I put out some data from our friends at Bango and they've been asking, they've been surveying folks around their use and their subscription around AI and the data says that 61% of people are okay to cancel streaming just to keep that [00:08:00] AI tech stack and that they're spending around $60 a month, which means, they're getting on Evan Shapiro: On AI? Marion Ranchet: Gemini, OpenAI, Claude, et cetera. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I just don't think that's sustainable. I really don't think that's sustainable. Marion Ranchet: It's not sustainable. I think we're at a point in time where Charge GPT was leading, the market and so everyone took Chat GPT, but what's insane right now is, all of those AI gurus are saying, oh, you should use Chat GPT for this, Perplexity for that, et cetera. And a few people will perhaps have multiple subscription the same way that maybe we have multiple streaming subscription, but the regular Joe will have one if not zero. Evan Shapiro: Zero, right? Here, I'll challenge all the listeners or viewers right now, go to Google and type in a complex question in the Google search and you will get a very detailed answer with links. Yeah, from Gemini for free. Without paying for it. Now maybe Google will change that, but I don't [00:09:00] think so. They understand how much of a threat AI is to search. And so they're, they wanna replace their supremacy, they're 97% of the world's search. 97%. Yeah. They're not gonna wanna lose that. So they're gonna give away as much Gemini as they need to to retain that search advantage on the planet Earth. So I think that the free products will serve well enough for the average consumer without having to pay extra for it. All right. Let's move on to your first prediction. Marion Ranchet: Okay. So speaking of bubbles. There's one that I think you know is gonna burst or not gonna pan out is the micro drama, vertical content bubble. This has been the year where everyone in our industry started talking about that when I think very little of all of those people talking about it and hoping to work in that lane have actually used it as a consumer. So I think this is something that will stay, you know, what it is today. I [00:10:00] don't expect it to become a mainstream thing in the us. Or in Europe. One of the reasons being that I think it is a factory, right? The way that they do content, it's manufacturing content, they're gonna burn out the staff that are working on those. What you are hearing from people working on those projects just completely insane. So I don't think that's sustainable. And number two, we're gonna start seeing often media and entertainment. So big media trying to grasp that trend and turn it into something that's gonna kill what it was and why it worked, and then that's gonna be the end of it. It's my thing. I don't have any data, so it's more of a gut feel than, anything. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And the data that does surround this micro drama stuff, or micro television or pocket television is actually what I try to call it. I don't know where it's coming from. So there are a lot of people on LinkedIn, I'm not gonna name names, but they keep putting out like [00:11:00] it's $28 billion business. It's a $30 billion business. I don't know where those numbers are coming from who's reporting those numbers. None of these are publicly trade companies, so we have no idea what the revenue actually is. And it's like a snake eating its own tail when you look at the data. The second thing is it's a combination of porn and gaming, which is fine, and porn is a massive business still to this day, and so is gaming. So I do, I agree with a lot of what you're saying there. I think the nuance will be, so you're gonna see probably somewhere between 10 to 12 of these pocket television apps launched in 2026. I've heard of at least 10. So I think there'll be more than that. The second thing is they're not all gonna work, obviously, third of all this model of pay as you go, it's definitely a model for that in the world. Yeah. But three minute episodes I just it does boggle the mind. What I think you'll start to see though is a lot of this [00:12:00] content move out of these walled garden apps where you have to pay as you go and go more the way of Roomies. Which is a micro comedy that was entirely sponsored by Built. On TikTok, Marion Ranchet: It's brand right? It's about roommates in New York, right? Evan Shapiro: Yeah. It's like the office, but about roommates. And, but it was all, all for free on TikTok and Instagram. That to me is a substantially better use case than, Hey, download yet another app. No. Does the world, does any consumer think they're waiting around, waiting for, looking for a new app? I'm not. I'm trying to get rid of apps on my phone. So I think there's a model where this does work, but I think it's on Instagram and on TikTok, not on a dozen pay as you go apps. Marion Ranchet: Which means that it is just, vertical video content like shorts and longer that we've seen these last few years already. So that trends. Evan Shapiro: But I think more in scripted and more in format and less in, there's a really good piece in the New York Times today [00:13:00] about the Track Star, I think it's called the show where the people get interviewed and have to name the, name the song and then there's the Subway Takes and there's a lot of really good format, short form out there that's working incredibly well. Hot Ones, Amelia Dimoldenberg's Chicken Shop Date, so like I think we'll see much more premium, short form, vertical content out there. I don't know that it's all gonna be a behind a paywall or pay as you go models. All right, Marion, here's a bonus prediction for 2026, sponsored by our friends at Spectrum Reach. In 2026, I think you agree with this, and likely forever, outcomes are going to be the new top priority for advertisers. Marion Ranchet: Agreed. Brands definitely still matter, but increasingly, agencies and marketers are focused on results, transactions, conversions, Evan Shapiro: Hands on cans, heads in beds. Marion Ranchet: You done? Evan Shapiro: Butts in trucks, Marion Ranchet: Done now? Evan Shapiro: Hearts in carts. Marion Ranchet: Unfortunately, the CTV advertising ecosystem doesn't always provide a kind of high [00:14:00] quality data needed to build a targeted audience of qualified buyers. Evan Shapiro: or the kind of deterministic data necessary to track the outcomes advertisers are looking for. Marion Ranchet: On the other end, the deterministic data proves you are reaching real humans who really wanna buy your products. Evan Shapiro: Spectrum Reach offers reliable privacy compliant deterministic data from over 30 million spectrum households, along with third party data from more than 70 data providers. So you know, you're reaching the right audience in the right context with the right message that's actually get this, relevant to the consumer's lives. It's addressable advertising with a match rate of 95%. That's way above the industry benchmark of about 60% match rate using just IP addresses. Marion Ranchet: Innovate conducted a study in 2025 that shows that more than 80% of CTV advertising is wasted. Evan Shapiro: That's due to programmatic ad fraud or inaccurate targeting that comes from building ad campaigns with [00:15:00] low grade data. Marion Ranchet: That bears repeating. More than 80% of connected TV and media winds up getting wasted, and most often the advertiser can't even tell which media is wasted because of lousy reporting on the backend. Evan Shapiro: Meanwhile, Spectrum's AI driven platform offers optimized audience targeting on the front end with show level insights, audience delivery, attribution, and transparent post-campaign analytics on the backend. Marion Ranchet: We talk about this a lot. Most CTV ad platforms are not nearly as transparent or effective as they should be, and that's because the industry suffers from a deficit of high quality data. Evan Shapiro: But deterministic data allows you to know with certainty who you are targeting and precisely how effective your ad campaigns are with the kind of addressable advertising Spectrum Reach offers nationwide. Marion Ranchet: So in 2026, let's finally get rid of that tired old cliche about knowing that half your ad money is being wasted. Evan Shapiro: Stop the [00:16:00] CTV waste. This year, let Spectrum improve your reach. Here in the United States, next year is a midterm election, and what's funny is that when I was growing up, the midterm elections were things that most people didn't pay attention to unless you were really engaged in politics. Now everybody, it's become the horse race. It's become the reality show that everybody wants to pay attention to. It's also become a massive business since the United States Supreme Court decided in Citizens United to allow basically unlimited funds to get into politics. And in the United States, these campaigns are just ongoing. They're just a constant campaign. There'll be somewhere between two and a half and $3 billion of advertising money put into the midterm elections just on connected television. That's not including radio or direct response through the mail or emails or any of that other kind of stuff. That's just TV advertising. And it's [00:17:00] going to be hyper, hyper, hyper hyperlocal and super, super targeted by mindset. So it's not just about zip codes, it's about head ends, it's about profiling the target audience and as a result, we know connected television data sucks. Yeah, I think you're gonna see, because of this flood of money, what happens in these massive campaigns is it really cleans the pipes of the advertising system and it reroutes the streams and it changes, basically at a DNA level, the way advertising works. Every two year, it used to be every four year cycle. Now it's every two year cycle does this. So with $3 billion in political advertising coming in. Most of it between June and November. So really just a six month period or even less. I think you're gonna see a massive shift in how connected television sells, tracks, and reports on its advertising, all for the better. On the one hand, I'm [00:18:00] really angry about the amount of money in politics in the United States. On the other hand, I'm really happy that this much money is going through the ecosystem next year. 'cause I think it's gonna improve the way we build audiences and track results. On the flip side, the second part of this prediction is the only qualification to be elected to an office in the United States will be, are you good at social media? There really, we don't seem to care about your policies, about your experience, about anything else. We just, are you good at TikTok? I. Do you have a good Instagram field at feed? And so I think you're gonna see the rise of the social media superstar politician. We have a president whose only qualification is he was great at Twitter and now he's good at basically screaming on social media. But here in New York, we elected somebody who I voted for by the way. But his main qualification was he had an awesome TikTok feed. Like he, he's not that experienced. He doesn't have [00:19:00] a tremendous amount of work history in politics. He was, a, an okay politician, but now he's mayor of inarguably, the most important city in the United States from a reputational standpoint and perhaps the world because he was great at TikTok and Instagram. So I think, you're gonna see the rise of the social media star politician. Marion Ranchet: Is it the only reason though? I think the reason why he was elected was 'cause he is, symbolizing, hope, right? And he was able to market that on social, but I don't think it is only social that got him elected, right? Evan Shapiro: His message was affordability, which was beautifully timed and incredibly well crafted. But he got outspent by a lot. And the only reason he won was because he found he got younger consumers to give a shit. And yes, you're right, he had the right message. But the right message in the forest if no one's around to hear it, does it make a [00:20:00] sound? Yeah, absolutely not. There are tons of politicians. I didn't vote in the primaries for this guy. I voted for someone else who had a very similar message, but he was just terrible at social media and Zohran Mamdani was just, he just, he was so good at it that his message landed better because he was really targeted and incredibly powerful on the platforms that younger voters care about. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. So it's about the way he shares that message. How anyone should, yeah. Okay. Evan Shapiro: The medium, Marsh McLuhan, the medium is the message. So yes, he had a great message, but he used the medium to tell it in a very effective way. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: All right. What's your next prediction? Marion Ranchet: Yeah, my next prediction is one that I actually I wrote about it early November when Clément Schwebig, today he's at Warner Bros Discovery. In May, 2026, he's gonna be the new CEO of RTL. That's a [00:21:00] big deal. That's a big deal because when I saw that news, I thought, okay, there's a new generation of CEOs in European media and particularly ad broadcasters. Then a couple of weeks later you have Priya Dogra, who was chosen to be the CEO of Channel 4. And there's a lot more seats, right? We're waiting to hear about the BBC. Arte, France Television, they want continuity. Both CEOs have been renewed for another five years, I think. But I think across the board it says that broadcasters are not looking for custodians of legacy media anymore. They want operators, they want people who understand M&A, partnerships, who have worked at streamers. So both Schwebig and Dogra were at Warner Bros Discovery at some point in time, right? She was most recently at Sky. But they understand streaming, they understand cross market growth and they've run portfolio globally, they're good deal makers, [00:22:00] et cetera, et cetera. And most likely those are the right CEOs for the next few years because they're gonna help broadcasters operate that transformation. So I'm very excited about that. It's almost, I had it and then it's already coming true. But I think that's gonna accelerate and I think this is gonna be the blueprint for any new media and entertainment CEO in the region. I dunno if it's something that you've seen in the states. Evan Shapiro: Not yet, unfortunately. We are still stuck on our old white dude legacy Hollywood, grasping for the straws of the last era leadership here in the United States. It's a shame unless you call David Ellison a next generation of leader. And when your daddy gives you a company, I don't know that you can call that a, Marion Ranchet: He's a nepo. He's a nepo baby. I know. Evan Shapiro: He's the worst kind of nepo baby. For many different reasons, but I wanna double down on what you said 'cause I could not agree more. You look at Dogra's experience and it [00:23:00] really, I think the reason she got that job was and by the way, she and I wound up direct messaging after I announced her, her selection on LinkedIn mostly, she thanked me for pronouncing her name correctly in my video. And as Shapiro I take that to heart. But I think she was chosen because of her M&A experience, because she knows how to target good acquisitions to integrate good acquisitions and then operate good acquisitions. Yeah, so Channel 4 in particular has a big transformation coming. They're gonna take a lot of their production in-house for the first time ever 'cause they're now legally allowed to do that. One of my predictions that we're not gonna cover today is that the rise of the public service media back to preeminence. For all the reasons you just talked about, but also because the commercial area is really, especially in the American media in such chaos and the big streamers and the big commercial publishers are pulling back on their investment in scripted and [00:24:00] entertainment programming to put it into sports. So that's gonna leave a vacuum that I think the big public broadcasters and media providers are gonna fill. So I could not agree with your prediction here more vehemently. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. And I mean that ties in nicely with what we did last year, right? We spoke to agents of change and I think those companies need people like that. Okay. So what's your next prediction? Evan Shapiro: It is actually segues really nicely. It's almost as if we planned it to my next prediction which is M&A, Mergers and acquisitions in media gets even more manic in the new year. The year ended with a real kind of like battle royale for Warner Brothers Discovery. That's still ongoing right now and I think is gonna continue through year end 2026 because while Netflix seems to have the current advantage that fight is far from over. And then there is the regulatory issues around that. Both in the White House and in Congress, and then there's gonna be state's attorneys General, and then [00:25:00] the EU is gonna have a say in whether or not the current bidders can buy Warner Brothers Discovery, AKA Disco Bros. So I think you're gonna see substantially more M&A, and I'm not the only one predicting this. There's a bunch of other, they're banks predicting a really big, vibrant year in, in mergers and acquisitions, specifically in media. But we've got just happened Versant just spun out officially. You're gonna see CNN get pulled out of the whole Warner Brothers Discovery ecosystem and probably get sold on its own. Then I think thinking gaming. EA was the subject of the largest leverage buyout in corporate history, $55 billion. And I think you're gonna see companies like Roblox and Take Two start to look around and think about how do we arm up for the looming battle that's ahead of us? And then, the Saudis just seem to wanna buy freaking everything. And so I think they're gonna wind up trying to put money into all of the big American streamers and [00:26:00] media companies, both from an investment standpoint, but also from an influence standpoint. And unfortunately, a lot of these mergers and acquisitions that are gonna come out the IPG, Omnicom one is a really good example of this. So this is the culling of Holdcos in the advertising ecosystem. And as a result, at the end of last year, 4,000 people lost their jobs and then they're closing down three, the most iconic creative shops in the history of advertising. And these merges and acquisitions aren't about building anything most of the time. Most of the time they're about taking out competition. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: Or they're bankers whispering in the ears of these moguls saying, Hey, we can make a lot of money from this as my asmr. But I just don't think that there's a lot of strategery around a lot of this M&A. It's mostly about bankers, convincing CEOs to do stuff so that the bankers can make money. Marion Ranchet: There's also the fact that [00:27:00] it's a defensive move, right? It's not just always about knocking out a competition, but it's out of ideas on how to grow next. The one thing I will say is that all of those companies, and that applies also to Netflix awhile now, they tend to overestimate the synergies. Evan Shapiro: That's right. Marion Ranchet: The great thing that are gonna be coming out of the merger. And the other thing is they tend to forget about the culture clash. And that may be between US companies, even there. Folks from Discovery, Netflix. Very different. Very different ways of doing business. If you then put on top of that, the fact that there's a lot of M&As between companies that are from different countries in Europe, we've subtle, right? So MFE, right? I'm agreeing with you. At the beginning of last year, first episode, we were saying we would have M&A, then we were a bit disappointed. And then H2, yeah. Completely blew up. And we've seen, MFE going after multi [00:28:00] territorial deals, et cetera, and here there's a big cultural gap that these companies are gonna need to fill. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. And I think you're right. Netflix, their viewership is flat or down in every territory that they play. We have no idea how many subscribers they have. Marion Ranchet: No. Evan Shapiro: And they just seem to be now doing. I don't disagree with the stuff that they're doing with Spotify and iHeart. I don't disagree with some of the moves that they're making. I think the TF1 deal was very smart, but they're just really adopting other people's business models, which to me says, you're right. They're out of some ideas. And so this Warner Brothers Discovery, this and the math I did, I wrote about this on my Substack, there's not a lot of logic behind the amount of money they're offering for this. There's no way that it's ever gonna return on the investment based on the amount of debt that they're gonna wind up. They're gonna have $84 billion in debt after this is all said and done, if they wind up with Warner Brothers Discovery. So I think that's really a sad [00:29:00] sign for the market leader in streaming. But there are some things like to your point, like the MFE, ProSieben.sat that deal was probably right for everybody. So there are some times where this does make sense, but I hope that we can. Add more strategy and vision to these deals as opposed to desperation. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. So that ties nicely back to having the right CEOs at those companies. Are they able to, 'cause MFE, the vision is to be a pan-European player? Kudos. That should be done somehow and, but the question is he making the right moves just going after, commercial broadcasters only, right? I think this is step one, but again, if you wanna transform your broadcasting business, you should look beyond that. So if you truly wanna be a pan-European player that is more than just the addition of four or five commercial local broadcasters is gonna need to look [00:30:00] outside. Yeah, Evan Shapiro: I think he's, here's a prediction for you. Bold prediction. I think he's gonna go after DAZN. Marion Ranchet: Oh, you think so? Evan Shapiro: Yeah. Marion Ranchet: Interesting. Evan Shapiro: I think MFE goes after DAZN for numerous reasons. Marion Ranchet: Interesting. That's a big one. That is an expensive one. I'm not sure. 'cause I, I have to say. Evan Shapiro: How expensive could it possibly be though? They're not making money. They're not profitable and they have no path to profitability. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, but then I wouldn't buy DAZN for those exact reasons. Evan Shapiro: Except that. Except that when you can amortize the rights that they have across many more properties, suddenly that becomes less of a thing. And then if you can, to what you've been saying for a year plus now, if you can then build a tech stack that amortizes across all these different properties. Suddenly you're lowering your costs. Plus, not everything is about making money on that one deal. There is an ego aspect of this as well, and there are a lot of good rights in DAZN.[00:31:00] Marion Ranchet: Oh, they do. But given that they're spending so much money and end up having to sublicense everything, I would just wait and leave the door open and get those, do those deals. Evan Shapiro: Get those rights after they fail? Yeah. I think it's, to say that's the thing is I think everybody's sitting around waiting for DAZN to fail, and it's just take, it's taking too long. Marion Ranchet: Someone is very wealthy in the background to make that happen. Evan Shapiro: That's true. That's true. Marion Ranchet: The tech point is very interesting because I agree with you, and this is also something that you know, is being a bit left out of the discussion on Netflix and WBD or MFE but that's a biggie, right? That is to be able to put everything on par on one platform that's gonna take years. Evan Shapiro: Yeah. The HBO Max is supposed to launch in all these territories in Europe and around the rest of the world in 2026. That's gonna cost them a shit ton of money in tech. Whereas Netflix is already there and they you're absolutely right. But the migration is gonna be incredibly painful. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. They're launching in Jan. They're launching in a couple of weeks. Evan Shapiro: They're supposed to. Yeah. Marion Ranchet: [00:32:00] And they will do it, it is ready to go. They've said that the day in Europe. Italy and I think it's sometime in Jan. Evan Shapiro: It's the end of this month. Yeah, it's the end of this month. Marion Ranchet: And and then the UK, which is a big one, is gonna be in March. So those are gonna happen. But imagine the time that is, and the money that is being wasted instead of doing other things. Anyway's, let's move on. Evan Shapiro: It's sad. Alright, to your next prediction. Marion Ranchet: Mine is, last year was the year of YouTube. In so many ways, YouTube is still not tv. No. Let's stop with that. Evan Shapiro: You wanna take that fight on? Do you wanna take that fight on? Marion Ranchet: No. What's fascinating is that clearly YouTube it's been on everyone's mind all year long and who was very quiet last year, TikTok, Insta, and others. And so I think broadcasters and streamers, everyone has tried to find a way to partner or challenge YouTube, et cetera. In the meantime, nothing has truly happened [00:33:00] from Insta, TikTok, and others in terms of we can be TV too. This could be our year. So I think that next year and just in December, we had an announcement from Instagram saying that they would be launching a CTV app on Amazon Fire TV devices. And so I think all of those social media apps are gonna be playing catch up to find a way to, again, be on par with YouTube, and that also means that they will focus more and more on long form because I don't know if you can succeed on the big screen with short form only. Evan Shapiro: Agree a hundred percent. Yeah, no I, last June I predicted Instagram would be on television by the end of 2026 and they announced that they're coming to television at the end of 2025. So check. TikTok is definitely next because the Ellisons are gonna control TikTok, they also control Paramount and CBS, so obviously that's where they're headed with that. But no, I don't think [00:34:00] people, I think short form will work on television, but I don't think you can be exclusively short form, as you just said. Vivo does incredibly well, both on YouTube and FAST on TVs. But if you look at the history of TikTok, ByteDance in particular, and Douyin and China, they've gone vertical. They've gone long form, they've gone to the television set, and everybody who is in social media, most especially Instagram and TikTok, have to be lamenting the amount of money that YouTube is printing by being on the television and being the only social video platform that has a major presence on television. Again, I vehemently and violently agree with this prediction of yours. Marion Ranchet: Okay, cool. So what do you have next? Evan Shapiro: My next prediction is, so it follows on my last prediction, which is the M&A mania is not always gonna be rational. Yeah. And Omnicom is gonna wind up shedding as many as additional 10,000 jobs in 2026 because of the [00:35:00] WBD merger and whatever happens there. Tens of thousands of jobs, if not tens of thousands of jobs will disappear. 2025 was a worse job market than 2024. I predicted that going into 2025. Yep. There's a number of different things, but at the center of it in 2026, I think we're gonna hit a major period of stagflation. And stagflation is a combination of very slow, if not negative growth, although maybe not recessionary. Very high inflation. Check. And very high unemployment. In December, we heard the highest unemployment number since COVID. And I think we're gonna see more very high unemployment, many more job losses, many more months of negative job growth. And when you combine those three factors, slow growth, high inflation, high unemployment, that is the definition of stagflation. And what happens in these periods is companies cut back [00:36:00] On employees. They slow hiring. They eliminate jobs that they were gonna hire. And I think there's a ton of people out there looking for jobs right now. I think it's gonna be harder for them to find jobs in 2026 than it was in 2025. And I think there's gonna be a ton more people out on the street by the end of this year, which is Not great news. And it goes back to something you and I have been saying over and over again. Look for opportunities where you haven't looked before. Whether that means going out on your own and selling your skillsets in bottles rather than cases, or looking in sectors like gaming, like retail media, like the Creator economy, where jobs are actually being added, but whatever. Stop looking for the same job that you had in the last era 'cause there's a good chance it will no longer exist. Marion Ranchet: I think well one of my prediction is that next year we'll see a new age of discovery and distribution because of [00:37:00] AI, because of LLMs, and I think a lot of people in the industry have the right skills to do partnership work for companies like OpenAI and others to either, do deals like the one we had at the end of last year with Disney to feed IP, et cetera. But I think there's a lot of companies who are gonna be in need of understanding how will they be surfaced within a GEO world versus an SEO world. And this is where I'd be looking for opportunities to recycle our experience, what we've done, and and make it to work for something that is, you said it, it's a bubble, but at the end of the day, as I think it's gonna take a bit more time, I think there's gonna be, this is where there's gonna be cool opportunities. I know that very often people ask me, if you had to stop doing what you're doing right now, where would you go? What would be your next gig? Often, more often than not, I have no clue, [00:38:00] but sometimes I'm thinking, not that I wanna work with OpenAI specifically, somehow finding a way to put, my distribution partnership expertise to work for AI, for LM companies would be of interest because I feel it's a blank page and over again in my career, I've always loved that. It's the business model doesn't exist. Even the deal terms. What does it look like? What should you do? So I think this is a great direction for people in need of a new, Evan Shapiro: and I wouldn't, I don't wanna go work at those companies mostly 'cause it's just not my head space. Not 'cause I don't believe in those companies, but in my mind you look at things like Under Armour starting a studio. Yeah. Dick's Sporting Goods starting a content machine. Walmart and Vizio coming together. There's a tremendous amount of opportunity in the content economy that isn't at content companies. But it's at companies who do content, who make content in the form of advertising and marketing, but are now going to shift and go direct to consumer with [00:39:00] content rather than marketing. And I think there's gonna be a enormous opportunity at brands at platforms that have not normally worked in content. Marion Ranchet: So I actually have like you many more predictions that, I've put out on Streaming Made Easy. It's on Substack. And another one that I had was the birth of the Corporate Storyteller. I feel Evan Shapiro: We share that prediction actually. Yeah. I'm calling it the affinity economy, but Yes, absolutely. I agree with you. Marion Ranchet: But so it's interesting because, so people who are out the door, so to say, have that freedom, right? To learn that skill, reinvent themselves, and they could be that person for a lot of companies, and you are starting to see job descriptions for someone to be chief of Substack and whatever, but what it says underneath is not so much, be the chief of Substack. There's gonna be something else, in a year or two years time. It's more you know how to tell a corporate story and that wins every time. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, I [00:40:00] agree. And that's what, that's actually, when you look at what hiring managers are most looking for right now, it isn't somebody who knows how to use AI. It's storytellers. People who know how to take complex ideas and sets of information and turn it into a narrative. And now I think, to your point, the corporate storyteller, I'm calling them the corporate creator as part of the affinity economy. I agree. We completely agree on that. All right. My last prediction is, and this is one I'm stealing from Roku. So Roku made a bunch of predictions at the end of last year. One of them I wish I had made myself first, but I'm taking it and running with it, which is the extinction of the ad-free viewer. I think that by the end of 2026, so from during the course of 2025 the amount of ad-free viewing on streaming dropped dramatically. That's because people are introducing new ad tiers. That's because sports is moving to streaming, and [00:41:00] so while I do believe there will be very high-end, very rich viewers who choose to pay for ad-free experiences, I'm an ad-free subscriber on Netflix, and I don't believe I'm gonna change anytime soon. But during the course of every week, I see ads, I see lots of ads for many different reasons, whether it's I'm on Peacock and I refuse to pay for the ad free tier, or I'm watching sports. Even on Amazon where I don't necessarily spend a lot of time, when I watch the NFL, I can't avoid the ads. Yeah. When I'm on other platforms, on Christmas Day, there were ads inside Netflix's NFL games because that's just the way the NFL works. So while you can avoid ads on certain platforms, I think it's almost impossible, if not absolutely impossible, by year end that as a regular television viewer. If you are watching, think of the screen start ad on Roku, on Samsung, on the rest. That's gonna become incredibly valuable to reach the ad free viewer. But then again, [00:42:00] that ad free viewer is no longer ad free. They're turning on the television set and the first thing they're gonna see is an ad. So I do think we're gonna see the absolute extinction of the totally ad free viewer by the end of this year. Marion Ranchet: No, I don't agree with that. Not in, extinction is very, it's a very strong word and I love Roku, but when they're putting a prediction like that, they're just, preaching to their own choir. And I get it. Evan Shapiro: I don't, I agree with you and there was a reason why they put that out there, but I also think there's a point to it. Marion Ranchet: I think, so again, could be that this is a US thing only. Because you do see that you guys are going heavy on ads per hour, right? The ad load in the US is nothing compared to us. We have what, eight 10 max on commercial tv. Streamers we're looking at four to six, depending on who we're talking about. So I agree that in sub shape or form, you are always subjected to advertising somehow. And that could be to your point, the home page. This could be in the [00:43:00] video, et cetera, et cetera. But I think people will wanna keep a safe, uninterrupted experience somehow. And you are not, you are never far from the moment where people get sick of advertising and go back to premium and ad free, this is what happened, right? When Netflix came in, there was very much no ads. It's free. You can do what whatever you want, we won't bother you. But now, and all sudden. Evan Shapiro: I think 30% of their subscribers have ads. And then if, even if you're an ad free viewer, if you watch the football games on their platform. Yeah. And by the way, my prediction is a US centric prediction. It isn't about Europe like you are watching the BBC, but even in Europe, increasingly with more, with YouTube becoming the number one channel on TV sets, and ITV has ads, Channel 4 has ads, I. So yeah, in Europe there is Marion Ranchet: France Television as ads even, in the UK Evan Shapiro: You're making my point Marion. Marion Ranchet: So they're saying that perhaps the BBC could be putting ads. So I agree with you that we're in a world where there's more and more ads, we'll [00:44:00] still have pockets of subscribers who will want none. And I think, we're never far from the moment where people get sick of it and actually revert back. Evan Shapiro: I agree. I agree with you. I just think it's gonna be even for those high-end consumers who choose the ad free options. They're gonna wind up watching something every week. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Evan Shapiro: That has ads in it, whether it's news or sports or just their home screen popping up in front of them. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Out, out of all the subscription that I have, there's one where I have ads, but I'm this close to actually going ad free. 'cause it's it's getting on my nerves. The one thing I will say that is scary about this prediction. Is, I think in 2025, what we've seen right, is that there was way more supply than demand. And so if you're saying that everyone is going ad-supported, we're gonna have a big problem. And this is where I think that at some point in time we'll go back. Evan Shapiro: And that goes back to the M&A prediction because Marion Ranchet: So there's, Evan Shapiro: we can't have all these platforms. You're absolutely right. We don't need as many platforms as we have. Marion Ranchet: You [00:45:00] don't need as many platforms. There's too many ads, not enough money and advertisers ready to invest. And so actually a lot of platforms, fast channels and others, it, they're gonna call it quick and they're gonna go back to ad free or they're gonna, so because Evan Shapiro: Yeah. The thing I would say about this is television in the United States started as a totally advertising supporting product. There was no ad free option Yeah. At all. And people didn't mind it. And there are a number of different reasons for that. The ad load wasn't crazy. The over frequency wasn't nuts. And the advertising was good. Marion Ranchet: Yeah, Evan Shapiro: It was well produced and it fit in context of the show that it lived in. At, we go back to one of my earlier predictions with the political advertising dollars that are gonna flood the US market, I do think you're gonna see better targeting, substantially better personalization of the ads themselves. So if I'm a 58-year-old man like myself, I'm not gonna see diaper [00:46:00] commercials. Yeah. It's just not what I'm looking for. But I am gonna see car commercials and insurance commercials and pharma commercials because they're targeted specifically to my household and to the viewer that's actually watching. And so that deterministic data that we've talked about in this episode, that I think is gonna have a major influence by the end of this year, I think we're gonna see a substantially better set of. Personalization tools using ai. That's a great example. Meta talked about their increase in ad revenue by better targeting using AI, and I think those are the things that are gonna influence a better ad environment, hopefully by the end of this year. And therefore consumers carrying a little bit less because I'm not over frequented. Yeah. Not seeing the wrong ads. And by the way, the ad matches the content that I'm watching. Marion Ranchet: Yeah. Let's see. Let's check it. Let's check in year time. Evan Shapiro: Yeah, we'll check it in year's end. Yeah. And it's gonna be hard to measure that one. This is why I picked it. Marion Ranchet: That's an interesting one. Okay, so we've done we've done, most of [00:47:00] our prediction. But there's much more on our Substack. So go to our Substack. So we were just in Vegas for CES and we brought in a special guest to actually have a discussion on some additional predictions for 2026. Can we tell who our guest is? Evan Shapiro: Yeah, it's your, I am pissed off about it 'cause it's your other podcast husband Alan Wolk my second Marion Ranchet: Husband, Evan Shapiro: So yeah, no, we had a thruple in Vegas where we talked to Alan about our predictions from our sub stacks that we put out this week and his predictions for 2026. And Alan is obviously a brilliant friend of ours who also coined the phrase FAST. And so it was a great conversation and that episode comes out next week. So that was our first episode of 2026. It's also our one year anniversary together. Marion, happy anniversary, Marion Ranchet: Happy birthday. Evan Shapiro: It's been great doing this with you. I look forward to a whole other year. I'm really entering this year energized. So thanks everybody out there for tuning in or [00:48:00] watching this episode of the Media Odyssey podcast. We will see you next week with our special guest, Alan Wolk.