Walmart’s $1.4B Bet & Miroma’s Audio Grab

Good Morning,

Miroma opened the week by acquiring a majority stake in Ad Results Media, the creator, audio, and performance agency behind campaigns for FanDuel, Molson Coors, and ZipRecruiter, pushing Miroma’s annual media investment past $750M in its largest US expansion since 2002.

Legacy media kept reshuffling. Comcast said it will split in two, spinning NBCUniversal and Sky (NBC, Peacock, Bravo, Universal Pictures, and the theme parks) into a standalone company under Mike Cavanagh while cable and broadband stay behind. And Sony Pictures put $100M into immersive-venue operator Cosm, leading its Series C and taking a board seat as it extends its franchises into shared-reality domes in Los Angeles, Dallas, and Atlanta.

The biggest check came from Walmart, which agreed to buy French connected-TV ad platform Vibe.co for up to $1.4B, folding its self-serve streaming-ad tech for small and mid-market advertisers into Walmart Connect.

Overseas, Australia’s Adventure Entertainment acquired outdoor publication We Are Explorers, folding it into a 20-plus title network that reaches more than 6M Australians a year.

Good news for the many of you who spoke at VidCon this year: it is moving to July next year so it finally stops clashing with Cannes Lions. Never mind that Informa owns both- turns out even a great conference can’t be in two places at once.

Quartermast Creator Economy Index:

Layoff Watch:

• Microsoft: Preparing to cut under 2.5% of its roughly 220,000 employees across Xbox, sales, and consulting in what has become an annual July restructuring, with Xbox studios expected to be among the hardest hit.

• Bungie (Sony): Cutting around 400 roles, roughly half its remaining staff, as it winds down Destiny 2 development- Sony’s third round of cuts at the studio since its $3.6B acquisition.

The Weekly Roundup

1. Meta’s Creator Hub: Meta will fold its Creator Marketplace and partnership-ads tools into a single Meta Creator Marketing Hub later this year and open the marketplace to Facebook creators for the first time, adding to the 5M-plus Instagram creators already listed (Net Influencer).

2. Starbucks’ Barista Creators: Starbucks became the first brand to pilot TikTok’s new custom Creator Networks, sharing creative briefs with select employee “Green Apron” creators and paying them through ad-revenue sharing (Marketing Dive).

3. Dentsu Plugs In CreatorIQ: Dentsu partnered with CreatorIQ to map its audience-targeting data against creator audiences, aiming to close the gap between how brands define audiences and pick creators as creator ad spend nears $44B (MediaPost).

4. TikTok and Strava Fund Runners: TikTok and Strava launched a Pan-European Local Movement Fund, a 100,000 euro pool split among 20 European running creators plus ad credits (Tubefilter).

5. Travel Like Speed: Expedia built a “Travel Like Speed” push around iShowSpeed with a dedicated Exspeedia map, after his April 15-hour Caribbean livestream spiked search traffic; Expedia data shows 57% of travelers want a local sporting or cultural experience on trips (Tubefilter).

6. Australia Doubles the Fine: Australia doubled the maximum penalty for breaching its under-16 social media ban to AUD 99M, about $68.2M (Engadget).

7. Meta’s Addiction Suit Advances: A judge denied Meta’s motion to dismiss claims that Facebook and Instagram were built to addict children, clearing states to pursue the case (Fox Business).

8. YouTube Owns Japan: YouTube now accounts for more than 65% of Japan’s video-on-demand watch hours, per AMPD Analytics (Deadline).

9. Agencies Race for Creators: The talent shops kept stockpiling creators- CAA signed Valkyrae and Betches, WME added Skinny Confidential’s Lauryn Bosstick, and management firm Fixated hired VPs from UTA, CAA, and Evolved (Hollywood Reporter).

Upcoming Events

CreatorFest 2026, London, UK: July 14-15, 2026
Open Sauce 2026, San Francisco, CA: July 17-19, 2026
Creator Economy Live East, New York, NY: July 29, 2026

De-Influence

Looking for M&A guidance?

At Quartermast, we help founders navigate every step of the M&A process and maximize their exit outcomes.