Axios

Groups like Snapchat, Twitter, Amazon, Foursquare, LinkedIn and Pinterest were called out in a new Association of National Advertisers (ANA) report for not agreeing to third party measurement audits by the Media Rating Council. The Media Rating Council essentially acts as the media and advertising watchdog, and their audits of advertising metrics are considered the industry standard.

ANA claims the companies are "walled gardens" that restrict convenient access to vendors they don't approve that could independently verify the validity of their metrics. As a result, some of these companies could get away with reporting false advertising metrics, as Facebook and Twitter did in 2016. (Both companies later owned up to the false reporting.) Google and Facebook both and agreed to MRC audits earlier this year.

Why it matters: Ad buyer confidence falters without transparent metrics. For example, ad agencies and vendors said they and their clients were wary of buying Snap ads earlier this year, because they don't trust the metrics the company reports back to them. As a result, Snap has added more third-party measurement vendors to its roster, but ANA executives and industry professionals say an audit would ease concerns.

Former Hulu CEO Jason Kilar is a contender for the top job at Sony Pictures Entertainment, according to Hollywood Reporter.

Former Sony CEO Michael Lynton stepped down in January to focus full-time on his new job as chairman of Snap. Sony Corp. CEO Kaz Hirai is expected to meet with potential successors this week.

Kilar ran Hulu (a joint venture of ABC, NBC Universal and NewsCorp) for five years and grew the business to more than 5 million subscribers. He later founded a streaming video startup, Vessel, which Verizon purchased last fall.

Why it matters: Kilar is seen as a disruptor to traditional media and has first-hand knowledge of scaling digital video businesses. Sony management has been trying to reinvigorate its studio unit. The company earnings took a hit last year after major write-downs due, in part, to a weakening home entertainment market. It's TV production and global networks operations have performed well, but its film segment has faced challenges. And the company had to deal with a devastating email hack three years ago.

The UK government has removed its ads from YouTube out of concerns they were appearing alongside "inappropriate" material. The Guardian, Channel 4, and the BBC have followed suit. According to the BBC, the government made the move after ads had been attached to extremist content, potentially putting money in the pockets of extremists. The suspension is temporary, and Google (which owns YouTube) has said it will review its controls.

Context: Google has faced increased pressure to take ownership of the types of content that appears next to its ads, and it has been actively going after bad ads and hate sites for a while. Recall, in 2016 Google punished 340 sites and banned 200 permanently. Google told Axios in January that it has a team of over 1000 people regulating bad ads. But its scale makes it difficult to effectively regulate everything across its platform.

This is a trend: Executives from Facebook, Twitter, and Google appeared before the UK Commons Home Affairs Committee and were told they had a "terrible reputation" for monitoring their content given their revenues.