Xbox Builds a TV Ads Business; Meta Starts Charging for Links

Xbox confirmed this week that it has created a TV and film division, named XP, with advertising named as a formal investment area in a staff memo from Xbox CEO Asha Sharma sent Thursday. The division will be led by Kayleen Walters, currently head of Xbox-owned Mojang Studios. Maria Angelidou-Smith will take over as CEO of Minecraft and Mojang.

The announcement follows a bruising period for the business. Last month Xbox cut more than 260 positions from Halo Studios in the latest round of layoffs after the Activision Blizzard acquisition.

Why is Xbox chasing TV advertising?

The logic is margin. Sharma's memo described "formalizing" sponsorships and brand partnerships as a key investment area going forward. Gamers are notoriously hostile to advertising, but TV viewers tolerate it, and brands pay heavily to reach engaged users in TV environments.

What does this change for ad buyers? A new high-margin inventory stream inside a gaming ecosystem that previously resisted ads. One open question remains: Xbox has not said how it would split advertising revenue with content partners.

The move is not sudden. Xbox has been building toward an ads business for some time, and XP gives that effort a formal home.

What is Meta doing to external links?

Meta is testing Meta One, a new global subscription bundle, as part of a strategy it has executed for years: converting free ecosystem privileges into paid utilities. External traffic now comes with a toll.

Non-subscribed business and professional pages must pay to include more than two external links in their posts, according to Press Gazette. News pages are exempt, although that raises the separate problem of who counts as a news publisher.

Meta recently extended the restriction to comment sections, which the link rules had not previously covered. When pages exceed the limit, the URLs they post appear as nonclickable text.

The exceptions are telling. Pages can still include links in ads, Meta affiliate links and links to Meta's own services, including WhatsApp and Threads.

Are indie agencies consolidating?

Independents are merging into hybrid holding-company structures. Ad Age points to Wpromote's deal for Giant Spoon, Chemistry's acquisition of Colossus and Acadia's purchase of Crush.

Those deals remain small next to activity at the top of the market: the Omnicom-IPG combination, the Horizon Media-Havas joint venture Horizon Global launched last year, and 2025 marking the first full year of commerce agency Mars United under Publicis.

"It's going to be harder for [indie agencies] to compete," Mars CEO Rob Rivenburgh told AdExchanger. He led Mars for 23 years before the deal and stayed at Publicis for roughly a year afterward. Rivenburgh added that fewer marketers are willing to include indie agencies on their partner rosters.

The message for independents is blunt: staying independent may now require getting bigger.

Elsewhere, Apple replaced longtime M&A chief Adrian Perica with his lieutenant Steve Smith and promoted Carson Oliver to VP of the App Store. Skydance named Jay Askinasi head of ad sales, David Decker head of content sales and Ray Hopkins head of distribution. Smartly appointed Netflix veteran Kelly Uphoff as CTO, and McCann CEO Tyler Turnbull is set to become global CEO of WPP Creative.

Expect both stories — platform paywalls on organic reach and gaming's pivot to ad-funded video — to define how media budgets shift over the next year.