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What you need to know in advertising today
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What you need to know in advertising today

Bob Bakish

Stuart Wilson/Getty Images

Viacom International Media Networks president and CEO Bob Bakish.

Viacom wants to become an ad tech company. And it wants to help the TV industry better compete with Facebook and Google.

The beleaguered media giant, which announced decent second quarter earnings results on Thursday, is looking to develop a new revenue stream by licensing its proprietary ad targeting tools to other media companies.

Initially, Fox has signed on to license Viacom Vantage, a three-year-old ad product designed to help marketers reach more precise audiences with linear TV ads.

To read more about Viacom and Fox's ad-tech deal, click here.

Speaking of Viacom, new details about Sumner Redstone's trust reveal restrictions in the potential merger of CBS and Viacom.

In other news:

GDPR was supposed to bury ad tech, but The Trade Desk is soaring - and it sees a new opportunity to attack Google. The Trade Desk reported revenue of $112.3 million in the second quarter of 2018, up 54% year-over-year.

A former hedge fund manager is bidding for newspaper company Tronc. Former hedge fund manager William Z. Wyatt is leading a group of investors that are close to a deal to acquire newspaper publisher Tronc.

An analyst shared an embarrassing piece of ad-industry gossip about Facebook, and it's another sign the firm is no longer an untouchable rocket ship of growth. Liberum has circulated a note saying Facebook's UK advertising revenue may have fallen recently for the first time.

People are threatening once again to boycott advertisers on Laura Ingraham's show after she blamed immigrants for the end of the 'America we know and love.' This is the third time Ingraham's show has been boycotted in the past six months.

A decision to allow the AT&T-Time Warner merger to go ahead (again) could depend on a random draw - and AT&T may have shot itself in the foot. Antitrust experts say the outcome of the Department of Justice's appeal seeking to block the AT&T-Time Warner merger may rest on the judges chosen at random.