I have to admit, this week, reading the press releases was depressing.

So I made the mistake of visiting some of the big adtech sites—no names, but you know the ones that still publish words like “omnichannel” without irony — and alcohol. My AI embedded into Grammarly suggested I change that “and without a hint of humor.” No, really.

And wow. It was actually more depressing.

OK, I know I can be verbose and a bit overboard in my explanations, but I don’t actually believe I’m saving the world.

Meanwhile, half the industry is out here writing columns like figuring out SPO is going to solve climate change and teach your kids to read Swahili.

Most of the news this week boiled down to companies meeting to sign an agreement to meet more and issue another press release about it.

The press release ouroboros. You know, the snake that eats itself?

Some PR teams have given up on me entirely—likely because I make snide comments about their dumber announcements—but a few brave souls still hit send.

Bless you. And you’re children.

I’m planning a PR agency ranking eventually, but I’m also trying to have a life, so let’s call that a Q4 maybe.

Also, the kids are finally back in school, which means my Fridays just opened up a little. I’m going to start using that space for more personal columns — the kind where I can step away from the stats, charts, and press releases and just write about whatever’s rattling around in my head, ad wise.

Consider it a weekly breather from the industry noise, a little space to stretch out and dig into things that don’t always fit the Monday-to-Thursday grind.

Anyway, here’s what actually mattered this week: Elon’s AI chatbot is leaking bomb recipes, the IAB is screaming “THEFT!”, PubMatic made money but less of it, WPP is still alive but no one cares, Match got fined for catfishing its own users, and the NFL reminded everyone it still owns every eyeball in America—especially on streamers.

Turns out Grok’s "share" button was more like a megaphone. Over 370,000 user chats—some involving casual requests for business tips, others straight-up Googling how to make fentanyl or blow things up—have been indexed by search engines thanks to xAI’s utterly brilliant idea of making shared conversations public by default. Even better? Those spicy little URLs are still live and crawling around Google like ants on a dropped hotdog. Between chats about suicide and WMDs, Grok might’ve just redefined "context collapse" for the AI age. Privacy who?

Anthony Katsur of the IAB Tech Lab just dropped the mic in Nashville, telling publishers what they’ve wanted to hear since ChatGPT’s first headline-stealing poem: AI scraping your content without a check is theft. Full stop. He’s building a working group to fight for compensation, and he’s even schmoozing with lawmakers. It’s bold, it’s loud, and it’s about damn time—though we’ll believe it’s real when publishers actually start getting paid instead of just applauding like it's open mic night.

PubMatic processed 78 trillion impressions last quarter—because nothing screams growth like blasting more ads into the void. But despite the volume, margins are sliding. EBITDA dropped from a cushy 31% to a tighter 20%. The adtech arms race continues, but when your reward for hustling harder is earning less, maybe the business model’s as bloated as a CTV buy during Shark Week.

Publicis is crushing it. Havas is hanging in. WPP? It’s that company people squint at and say, “Didn’t they used to be big?” With margins shrinking, shares sagging, and interest from suitors nonexistent, WPP is still somehow winning pitches—snagging Mastercard’s $186M global media account this week—but even that win feels like a sympathy date. Add in a CEO exit and a legacy brand portfolio now Frankensteined by too many mergers, and it’s less “comeback story” and more “someone call private equity.”

Match Group settled with the FTC over a little thing called deceptive advertising, like promising free subscriptions that came with hidden asterisks and punishing users who dared to dispute billing charges. The company coughed up $14 million but admits no wrongdoing, of course. Meanwhile, their apps are bleeding users faster than your last Hinge date ghosted you. Romance might be dead, but at least the fine print is getting clearer.

The NFL isn’t just the king of TV anymore — it’s the steroid-fueled demigod of streaming too. According to EDO, ads in exclusive streaming NFL games are a whopping 66% more effective than your standard TV buy. Translation: those spots aren’t just hitting eyeballs, they’re punching straight into consumer intent.

Netflix’s Christmas Day doubleheader? A pharma marketer’s dream diary come true. Prime Video’s Black Friday game? It didn’t just outpace Thanksgiving — it body-slammed it.

With every platform clawing for NFL exclusives like it’s a fantasy draft gone feral, football has become both the future of media and the only thing still duct-taping linear TV together with nostalgia and beer commercials.

Ok, here’s one that’s too good to pass up, so I had to write about it.

And no, it’s not advertising, but I don’t care.

My column, my rules. You’re here, you’re reading, deal with it.

So Match Group — the proud owner of Tinder, Match.com, OkCupid, Plenty of Fish, and essentially every digital meat market where romance goes to die — just got dinged for $14 million. Not because they broke hearts, but because they broke the most basic rules of not being entirely awful to their customers.

And let me say this up front: $14 million is nothing. That’s the petty cash they use to stock kombucha and pot in the office fridge. It’s the “cost of doing business” fee, just like Uber pretends fines for breaking local laws are just part of their growth strategy. A line item. A shrug. A check they cut before lunch.

Fake “free” subscriptions. You know the move — scream FREE in big neon letters, then bury an asterisk so small you need a magnifying glass and three lawyers to read it. Spoiler: not free. Ever. Never. Uh huh.

Fake messages from bots. Yes, bots pretending to be women. Because it’s never bots pretending to be men. No one’s getting scammed by “Gary, 47, enjoys taxidermy and IPA flights.” It’s always the femmebots. That’s the business model: lonely (read: horny) guys opening their wallets because “Sophia_93” winked at them. We are literally paying to talk to robots now.

Punishing users for disputing charges. Imagine catching someone with their hand in your wallet and when you call them out, they slam your door shut. That’s what Match did — locked accounts, cut off services. Basically: “Oh, you don’t want us double-billing you? Guess you also don’t get fake love notes from our bodacious code monkeys.”

Making cancellation like, totally, nearly impossible. This part almost makes me laugh. Ever try canceling cable or a bad relationship? That’s a light jog compared to this. With Match, you thought you canceled? Cute. Almost adorable. They kept charging anyway. Because the business model isn’t “finding love,” it’s “making cancellation more painful than your last relationship, so you’d rather just keep paying.”

We actually need the federal government to step in and say: “Hey, billion-dollar dating company, maybe don’t scam the sad and lonely?”

That’s where we are now.

Common decency outsourced to the FTC.

Meanwhile, Match’s apps are bleeding users faster than your last Bumble date disappeared after texting “so what are you looking for?” And yet they’ll survive, because people keep swiping.

People keep hoping the Russian blonde loves them.

People keep believing that the next profile is different.

Spoiler: it’s not. It’s just another business model designed to squeeze you dry while pretending to offer companionship and intimacy.

This isn’t just about $14 million.

It’s about living in a world where companies create empires based on loneliness and then treat their users like junk. Because someone had to be that person.

And when they get caught? They cut a tiny check, never admit guilt, and move on. Because why stop? The swipes don’t stop. The dopamine loop doesn’t stop. And no one wants to admit that maybe — just maybe — love shouldn’t be an in-app purchase.

So yes, congrats, Match Group. You’ve managed to make finding love much worse than it already is. You’ve turned human connection into a regulatory settlement.

-Pesach

Because honesty — I do some serious deep dives with some of the toughest, baddest folks in the industry every single week. You think you know what’s going on? You don’t know what’s behind Door #2 until we kick it open.

If you’ve read how Publicis ate the whole restaurant or how Netflix turned nostalgia into an adtech money printer, you know the drill: no fluff, no PR spin, just the stuff the trades are too scared (or too cozy) to print.

Next up: WPP: The Giant That Keeps Tripping Over Its Own Feet. Yeah… you’ll want to see this one.

Stay bold. Stay curious. Know more than you did yesterday.