The internet's biggest video platforms still don't agree on what constitutes a view.

📊 Why it matters: The lack of a common standard matters more as online video and creator content attract a greater share of viewing and ad budgets.

Driving the news: YouTube said Monday it's changing the way it counts public views to when a video starts, rather than after a certain amount of time or action taken.

• ▶️ The company said it's making the shift "to ensure consistency across the platform" and to ensure that "every moment of connection between creator and audience is captured."

Yes, but: YouTube hasn't altered how it counts ad views. While its new metric for general views is meant to capture exposure, ad views still focus on engagement.

• 💰An ad-supported view on YouTube means the video was watched for 30 seconds or resulted in a click.

State of play: The change aligns YouTube's view count with short-form video platforms, such as its own Shorts feature, as well as Instagram Reels and TikTok, which register views almost immediately.

• ⌛Others require viewers to watch for a minimum amount of time. Some impose additional requirements around how much of a video must be visible.

The big picture: Standardizing digital measurement has long been a challenge, and it's become more urgent as brands move spend away from the open web and into platforms with their own proprietary, often opaque measurement systems.

• 📱 The Media Rating Council, the industry's nonprofit measurement standards body, has sought to establish common standards. But platforms don't always align their viewership thresholds with the MRC's guidelines.
• 📺 That's in contrast to traditional TV, where most streamers have adopted a 60-second consecutive view as their standard.
• 🧩 Advertisers, publishers and creators need common currency metrics to transact. They also rely on separate attribution metrics that can better explain how certain media impressions drive business outcomes.

Reality check: Marketing + Media Alliance published a set of viewable ad impression measurement guidelines with MRC and the Interactive Advertising Bureau years ago.

• But adoption of guidelines from the MMA, which represents hundreds of companies across the marketing ecosystem, has remained inconsistent.

The bottom line: The misalignment of standard currency metrics with custom attribution metrics has caused a lot of confusion for the industry.

• Greg Stuart, CEO of MMA, says, "It is an industry that's not getting its shit together."

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Media-related lawsuits involving President Trump along with a broader set of Trump-related defamation cases have surged over the past two years compared with the decade prior, according to an Axios analysis.

Why it matters: Trump's efforts to target government-funded broadcasters and broadcasters regulated by the FCC have prompted many of those cases.

🔢 By the numbers: According to Axios' analysis, Trump, his businesses and his administration have been involved in 61 media and defamation lawsuits since 2015, including 16 in 2025 and nine so far in 2026.

• That's 25 cases in less than two years, compared with 36 cases during the decade from 2015 through 2024.

Driving the news: ABC's First Amendment lawsuit against the FCC filed today marks the sixth lawsuit between a press organization or outlet and the FCC since 2025.

• 🏛️ ABC argues the agency violated its First Amendment rights in ordering an accelerated review of its local station broadcast licenses, alleging it was retaliation over its editorial decisions.

Zoom out: The tally includes lawsuits by outlets such as the Associated Press and the New York Times alleging that the administration or its officials sought to penalize them in an effort to silence their reporting.

• 📡 The Trump administration's efforts to cut federal funding for public broadcasters also prompted a slew of lawsuits from networks like NPR and PBS, as well as international broadcast groups such as Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia and Middle East Broadcasting Networks.
• ✏️ Axios' count includes media cases involving news outlets, press freedom groups and various other entities.

Context: Trump has filed several of his own media and defamation lawsuits both as a private citizen and as president, as has his administration.

• 🇬🇧 The president sued the BBC last year for $10 billion, alleging defamation.
• 📣 FBI director Kash Patel filed a $250 million defamation lawsuit against The Atlantic in April.

The big picture: President Trump's efforts to target media organizations have moved more aggressively from name-calling and bullying to using his political power to set new legal and regulatory standards.

Disclosure: In 2023, TMTG sued 20 media organizations, including Axios, for defamation. Litigation is ongoing.

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The Motion Picture Association said yesterday it struck a global deal with TikTok parent ByteDance to strengthen copyright protections and AI guardrails used in Seedance and Seedream image and video generation products.

☮️ Why it matters: The deal marks a significant de-escalation of tensions between Hollywood and China.

• The MPA previously accused the tech giant of "pervasive and widespread infringement" of its members' intellectual property when it debuted its Seedance 2.0 generative AI video tool in February.
• MPA and its members — Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount Skydance, Netflix and Sony Pictures — sent cease-and-desist letters to the company alleging copyright infringement earlier this year.

🎥 Zoom in: In a statement, MPA chair and CEO Charles Rivkin said the memorandum of understanding "reflects our shared determination to continue our work together to further fortify those guardrails" around copyright.

• ByteDance general counsel John Rogovin said the MOU "establishes an important framework for continued collaboration as the technology evolves, across a variety of products and platforms."

📖 Zoom out: Hollywood has relied on U.S. copyright law to protect itself from IP theft by U.S. tech giants, but as Chinese models gain momentum, there's concern Beijing could try to set different standards around copyright.

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The following item is part of a special report on live events and experiences authored exclusively by me, Axios' Kerry Flynn and Axios' Christine Wang for Media Trends Executive members.

Live entertainment is booming and one of media's biggest growth bets. Wall Street has taken note.

Why it matters: A scarcity of events offers companies more leverage to upsell fans, especially in the AI era.

• 📈 Publicly traded companies focused on scarce events, such as sports, premium movies and live performances, have generally outpaced the S&P 500 over the past five years, according to an Axios analysis.

Yes, but: Firms that support evergreen activities, such as theme parks and social entertainment (i.e., bowling and arcades), have lagged the S&P 500 in the past five years.

• 📉 Macroeconomic factors are likely to blame, with companies like Dave & Buster's and Comcast/NBCUniversal citing higher fuel prices and airfare among factors impacting their most recent quarterly earnings.
• 🧒 Disney has become a theme park outlier by focusing discounts on families with young kids.

⭐ Zoom out: Stars are proving to be huge drivers in turning online fandom into IRL crowds.

• 🎙️ "Smartless," "New Heights" and "Giggly Squad" are the top-selling live podcast events in the country, according to data from SeatGeek. (Full chart.)

🎟️ The big picture: Admission prices in the U.S. have jumped more than 41% since 2016... and that's just the ticket. (See data.)

• 🍿 Events are piling on premium experiences to juice margins. (Go deeper.)

🥅 This is especially true for sports, where media revenues now outpace ticketing.

• ♀️The maturity of men's sports has made the growth across women's sports an increasingly efficient bet for advertisers and investors. (See data.)

Go deeper: Access the full report here.

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Ad tech giant Taboola has struck a deal with NBC News to exclusively power all of its programmatic, or automated, display advertising sales, CEO Adam Singolda tells Axios.

🎯 Why it matters: It's a major milestone for Taboola as it looks to expand its business beyond native ads to powering any display ad on the open web.

• The company, which works with around 13,000 advertisers across 9,000 publisher sites, has inked major deals to sell display ads for big companies, including Microsoft.
• It's also inked several exclusive native ad deals with companies such as Apple and Yahoo.

🤝 Zoom in: NBC News will leverage Taboola's Realize performance ad platform to sell all of its global programmatic display advertising on NBC News digital properties, including NBCNews.com and TODAY.com.

• The deal allows NBC News' ad sales team to continue its direct sales efforts on its premium video and other display offerings. Taboola will handle its programmatic display ad sales as the only outside vendor, in addition to the native ad placements it already powers.

👀 How it works: NBC News' display units, which include placements such as high-impact homepage banners, will be accessible to Taboola to sell moving forward, in addition to its own teams.

• That effectively consolidates NBC News' automated ad sales efforts to one vendor, instead of multiple demand- and supply-side platforms.
• If other ad tech vendors want to access NBC News' inventory in the future, they would need to go through Taboola.

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Editor's note: This story has been corrected to clarify the terms of Taboola's deal with NBC News and remove a reference to vertical video.

Paramount Skydance yesterday asked the court presiding over the two lawsuits filed to block its merger with Warner Bros. Discovery to order plaintiffs to cover the losses of its merger delay.

Why it matters: The $1.9 billion bond Paramount is seeking would put an enormous financial strain on the 12 states that have joined together to sue to block the deal, as well as the Writers Guild of America, which has filed its own lawsuit to stop the merger.

⏪ Catch up quick: Last month, a dozen state attorneys general sued to block Paramount Skydance's $110 billion takeover of WBD.

• A federal judge issued a temporary restraining order shortly after, forcing Paramount to pause its takeover of WBD.

⏸️ Reality check: Paramount later agreed to postpone closing its merger for even longer to avoid having to litigate and possibly lose a preliminary injunction requested by both parties suing to block the takeover.

• 💨 That tactic, it believed, was the fastest way to close its deal, although it almost certainly guaranteed the company would owe WBD shareholders money, unless it settled the lawsuits quickly.
• 🪙 Paramount has promised WBD shareholders a ticking fee of 25 cents a share for every quarter the deal doesn't close after Sept. 30, totaling around $650 million per quarter.

Zoom in: In a statement yesterday, Paramount said federal law "expressly provide that plaintiffs are required to post a bond covering the potential harm from halting a transaction to litigate, so that if they lose, the injured party has a source of recovery for the damage caused."

• 🧮 It says it's determined the bond based on the calculation of the maximum potential ticking fee and financing costs from the litigation.

The other side: California Attorney General Rob Bonta said: "Paramount and Warner Bros. are two sophisticated companies who willfully decided to include a costly ticking fee as a provision in their merger contract. What's more, Paramount itself agreed to the timing it is now protesting."

• ⬛ "It's Blackmail: The Sequel, and we remain unmoved," he added.

What's next: It will be up to the judge overseeing the cases to decide whether the plaintiffs do owe Paramount any financial security and, if so, how much.

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"Spider-Man: Brand New Day" became the eighth film in history over the weekend to surpass $2 billion in box office sales worldwide.

💸 Why it matters: The film, which is officially Sony's highest-grossing movie ever, could very well become the first $1 billion earner at the domestic box office, said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak.

• The current record holder is "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," which has generated $936.6 million in unadjusted dollars at the domestic box office, per Rentrak.
• "Brand New Day" has so far grossed $786.5 million in North America.

🤔 Zoom out: Although movie buffs are wondering whether "Brand New Day" could become the first film to cross the $3 billion global sales mark, experts say it's a stretch.

• While it would be "unwise" to underestimate the box office power of "Brand New Day," getting to the $3 billion mark "is akin to breaking the sound barrier, the 6-minute mile, the perfect 300 game in bowling, or any other impossible-dream-style analogy you want to choose," said Dergarabedian.

🎞️ Context: The only movie that's come close is "Avatar," which has been re-released in theaters several times since its 2009 debut.

• That film took over 45 days to surpass the $2 billion mark fifteen years ago, compared with 11 days for "Avengers: Endgame" ten years later and 17 days for "Brand New Day."

🏃 The bottom line: Dergarabedian notes that the first part of the movie record race — getting to $1 billion in domestic sales — "has been a sprint; the final leg of that race to a potential $3 billion box office is going to be a marathon."