The Trillionaire Paperboys is the first report from Future Media Intelligence, the new data and analysis unit of the Future Media Substack.

And it’s exclusive to paying subscribers.

The Rise And Fall Of The Trillionaire Paperboys

4.35MB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

It’s built on three years of investigative reporting, SEC filings, internal documents and half a trillion data points shared by Chartbeat.

It is packed with interviews and exc…

Read more

Sometimes you dive into what looks like a simple story only to find it has unexpected ups and downs and fascinating angles. This one on Snap’s rollercoaster is one of those.

The social platform that banks almost US$6 billion by hooking kids as young as 10 is in a whole bunch of trouble.

And now the investment firm that tried to force Rupert Murdoch to split his Aussie real estate business and The Dow Jones from the newspapers has joined the fray.

And it’s done something never before seen on Wall Street.

Welcome to new subs over the weekend from Netflix, streaming to 300 million subs, Google’s policy team in Brussels, Meta in Italy, the Research Centre for Justice and Governance in Portugal, The South China Morning Post in Hong Kong, racing publisher BloodHorse in Lexington, Kentucky, CRM giant HubSpot in Brazil, Gizmodo, the BBC and the actor who played Brian Fuller on TV show Gilmore Girls who now runs a fandom marketplace in Vegas. G’day there fella 👋

Let’s Snap to it…

Read more

Netflix just launched a standalone gaming app called Netflix Playground, designed for children aged eight and under.

It features Peppa Pig, Sesame Street, and Dr Seuss. Kids can play innocent games. It has no ads, no in-app purchases, and it works offline.

It’s included in the normal subscription, and it barely got a mention, but it’s one of the most strategically important things Netflix has done this year.

And almost nobody in publishing and the ad industry is talking about it. And they should. This is why.

Welcome to new subs over the past 24 hours from the tech reporting team at The Washington Post, the marketing team at Meta in San Francisco, The Guardian ad team, marketing at The Observer, the partnerships crew at Paramount Pictures (hello Hollywood), as well as BBC Wildlife Magazine and B2B adtech PR team at Bluestripe Group and the London Air Ambulance all in the UK. Hi all, great to have you.

Upgrade to paid

The Big Story: Netflix’s expanding ad universe

Read more

Elon Musk’s businesses are like a Russian matryoshka doll. SpaceX wraps around xAI. xAI wraps around X. Each layer bigger and more opaque than the last.

The world’s richest man and on-off President whisperer has built a corporate structure that makes accountability almost impossible.

X is private. xAI is private. SpaceX is private. The combined entity is valued at $1.25 trillion by investors who have every incentive to keep schtum.

That was how he was able to buy one of the world’s most important media companies without quarterly filings, public scrutiny, or obligations. Amazing.

But a jury in San Francisco has cracked the doll open and revealed the secrets. It also found Musk misled Twitter investors during the $44 billion acquisition.

It’s being described as the largest securities jury verdict in US history, and damages could reach $2.6 billion.

Musk’s matryoshka is cracked. Money’s the motive. X marks the spot. And today I’m going to reveal the secrets inside…

What paid subscribers get today:

The step-by-step timeline of how Musk secretly bought US$500 million of Twitter stock - the broker instructions, the five per cent threshold his team was told not to cross, and the 11 days where ordinary investors lost US$150 million because nobody knew he was buying.

The Barclays email that handed him the playbook to walk away from the deal.

The board member’s group text - reproduced from federal court filings, emoji and all - that shows insiders cheerfully discussing a takeover while the public traded blind.

How Russia’s invasion of Ukraine turned a US$44 billion deal into a financial trap.

And the real numbers inside X that Musk has buried by selling it to himself: US$12 billion in debt, US$1 billion a year in interest, and a subscription target missed by a factor of 35.

Condé Nast, The Financial Times, Adobe, AFP and The Trade Desk pay because this analysis doesn’t exist anywhere else. A$15/month. A$150/year.

Upgrade to paid

Welcome to new trial subs from WIRED, the team at Reuters, The Atlantic, The San Francisco Standard, UK’s online safety watchdog Ofcom, Bloomberg, Korean broadcaster SBS, Programmatic Spain, Civilio AI, and the sports team at Reach in Scotland, and many more.

And thanks to this week’s sponsor Cerby.

The world’s biggest event World Cup 2026 is just weeks away and it will run on social media. Are your brand accounts secure?

Five weeks of peak social media activity - on accounts your IT team can’t see. Lock down your social channels with Cerby before the opening match.

Start the 30 day clock

Now today’s big story…

The Big Story: Inside X’s US$10 million-a-day inferno

Read more

A sentence still haunts me from the antitrust trials. Google execs boasted in internal mails their ad tech was more addictive than heroin and took “an act of God” to leave.

Out of sight, those execs turned the screw to divert 92¢ on every dollar to Google’s search and YouTube knowing no-one would do a thing about it. And publishers bled.

I’ve made it my m…

Read more

Here’s a free post to tickle your brain over the weekend. Enjoy it and share with anyone who’ll find it useful - because it’s about the future of the world.

It also contains a very cool - and my very first interactive - to tell the story. Let me know what you think 🤷 :)

So let’s go…

Share

The boss of the most valuable company in human history just let me have …

Read more

In September 2025, Snap founder and Aussie supermodel handbag Evan Spiegel sent his team an admirably honest memo.

He declared that after years of choking in Meta’s exhaust, ad revenue had cratered, US usage was shrinking, and the stock price was DOA.

“Squeezed between the tech giants and smaller competitors, on the verge of greatness, we find ourselves in a crucible moment. It’s like being the middle child,” he wrote.

It’s a good line. Snap knows a lot about kids. Teens are the epicentre of its business. They’re the most engaged, and the very youngest are the most valuable.

But selling subs to addicted kids, and their data to advertisers, has a pong like a raw prawn in Australia’s midday sun. And now Evan and his pals are in a quandary.

Last week, Wall Street pressed Spiegel on whether underage kids were a sustainable business given Australia’s social ban and blockbuster legal battles on the way.

“Evan, I want to talk more about the risk caused by age verification policies and social media restrictions,” Dan Salmon from New Street Research asked.

Spiegel’s response was telling. “Global ad revenue from users under 18 is not material,” he replied. “We’re not overly concerned.”

But is that right?

I ask because Snap’s built a US$5.8 billion empire on what it calls the “rabid usage” of kids as young as 10, and that deserves some scrutiny.

Hi to new subs these past few days from Belgian media group Roularta Media, internet safety campaigners Enough Is Enough, and ad watchdog Check My Ads Institute, among others…

And to the investment arm of US$160 billion global luxury leader LVMH, home to Louis Vuitton, Dior, Tiffany, and distilleries Glenmorangie and Ardbeg (a personal fave).

When fans used social to track his private jet, billionaire LVMH owner Bernard Arnault sold it and invested US$800 million in Flexjet so he could fly any plane he liked. That’s class!

Share

The Big Story: Meta’s crucible, courtroom and kid problem

Read more

Meta passed $200.97 billion in revenue for the first time in 2025, up 22 per cent year-over-year - and $1 trillion since it listed back in 2012.

It did it the way Meta always does it: By turning human attention into performance advertising at industrial scale.

Today I am breaking it down, dollar by dollar, country by country, and overlaying the biggest risk of all - increasing legal scrutiny on its hero ad business.

The Big Story: Inside Meta’s 2025 accounts

Read more

Update: Bloomberg reported in late March that Apple is rolling out ads on Maps - copying Google Maps again.

Apple just posted record earnings, again, and Wall Street cheered. Again.

But buried inside the numbers is a story that should make every investor, regulator, publisher and consumer deeply uncomfortable.

Apple’s annual revenue now exceeds US$400 billion. More than half is concentrated in the iPhone, the most successful consumer product in history.

Its fastest-growing market? China. Greater China revenue jumped 38 per cent this quarter.

The chips that make it all work? Taiwan — which China is threatening war over.

The AI now being wired into every iPhone and Mac? Google.

Apple is a US$4 trillion American company that is, by almost every meaningful operational measure, dependent on a rival superpower, a disputed island and a surveillance competitor.

And the deeper you dig, the worse it gets.

Today:

 How Apple has quietly built a fast-growing advertising empire by hobbling its competitors while telling the world it’s a privacy company.

 What’s working and what’s not for the 450 publishers fuelling Apple News — in real revenue.

 The untold story of the deepening ties between Google and Apple, and what it means for competition and prices.

 And what Cupertino’s been hiding in its top secret earnings vault.

Welcome to paid subs from industry group Digital Content Next, FT Strategies, Deloitte, The Seattle Times and the UK’s Daily Mail. Thank you, you’re keeping the lights on 💡

Plus new subs from News Corp’s senior leadership in London, Schibsted in Sweden (where my weather app tells me it’s -12°C), New York audience data agency 7knots, media M&A movers and shakers CueBall in Colorado, CMS provider Labrador in New York, the founders at engagement specialists The Audiencers in Paris, Estonia’s largest news portal Delfi, among many others.

And thank you to fellow Substackers recommending Future Media this week, including Press and Democracy by Peter Vandermeersch from European news publishing group Mediahuis in Antwerp, and The Open Access Blogs by Pablo B. Markin promising “education for individuals who aspire to go beyond the headlines”.

This one has been exhausting, but fun - and very insightful. Cheers 🥃

The Big Story: Inside Apple’s secret service

Read more

Update February 27, 2026: Netflix pulled the plug on the deal after Paramount hiked its offer, Joe Flint at The Wall Street Journal reported.

“We’ve always been disciplined, and at the price to match Paramount’s offer, the deal is no longer financially attractive,” Netflix Co-CEOs Ted Sarandos said.

“This transaction was always a nice to have at the right price, not a must have at any price.”

Big Tech’s financial results are rolling in and Netflix - always the first cab off the rank - just dropped its numbers. Google, Meta, et al follow later this week.

Netflix’s 2025 revenue soared 16 per cent to US$45.18 billion and the 29.5 per cent profit margin is enough to make most CEOs weep with joy. How’d your personal finances go last year? Yeah, I thought so. 🙄

Where the publishing sector needs to pay attention is to its expanding ads division. It’s morphed from a false start into a rocket ship.

Ad sales hit US$1.5 billion, up 250 per cent, and its forward guidance is to double again in 2026.

CPMs (revealed later) are 10x that of publishers. The ad load is a quarter of broadcast. Sell through’s just 45 per cent, and it’s only launched ads in 40 of its 190 markets.

That makes it a rival to every ad-funded company, and with games, podcasts, its own ad tech and CDN, it’s tracking to become a platform all of its own.

To break it down, I’m joined by from the Business of TV Substack, who advises broadcasters across the world after a top flight career in TV and tech.

Quickly, let’s say hi to new paid subs from Reuters, The Daily Mail, Channel 4 in the UK, Yahoo in the US, and Google in Mountain View. Thank you 🤟

Also, hello to new free subs from Our Media in Bristol, Ontario’s public broadcaster TFO, the ad team at Mediahuis Nederland, the content leg-ends (get it) at Footballco, the streaming rights team at Sky, New York’s Taboola crew, Apple News partner FlatPlan, the radio and mag folks at Bauer Media, privacy-first browser DuckDuckGo, and Kelsey Media, the indie publisher with 60 specialist titles from tractors to triathlon, among others. 👋

If you have friends who you think would value these insights and are missing out, please share.

Share

And for the full experience, including access to all the data, insights and expert analysis within Future Media Intelligence, don’t be shy. Sign up for a paid sub.

Let’s go…

The Big Story: In four minutes Netflix could change everything

Read more

Update: This post sparked a lively debate on LinkedIn as readers challenged the data arguing that China’s billion smartphone users must have a larger impact.

It sent us all down a data rabbit hole. Discover what we learned together…

Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll have heard that Apple is jumping into bed with Google to embed its Gemini AI as the brain in its best-selling iPhone.

Apple will pay its deadliest smartphone rival $1 billion-a-year to power Siri and bring a slew of long-promised Apple Intelligence tools to market later this year.

The deal raises enormous questions about privacy, competition and consumer choice, given the pair carve up 99.7 per cent of the global smartphone market.

To get the inside info, I invited someone in the know - Reuters’ tech correspondent Stephen Nellis who covers Apple and Silicon Valley - to break it down.

How will Apple, which markets itself as privacy first, work with Google which has built a $4 trillion monopoly by harvesting the world’s data?

And won’t the deal create a new monopoly in smartphones just as regulators are trying to decide how to dismantle Google’s other three in search, ads and app stores?

I kicked off by asking Stephen why Apple’s doing the deal. “Basically, it’s because Siri sucks, and Apple has to,” he replied.

It’s a cracking chat that unravels 20 years of rivalry, missteps, and multi-billion dollar backroom deals - that’s now putting Apple on a new path. Enjoy…

Read more

Good morning. I had a big response over the holidays to my interview with the architects of South Africa’s negotiated truce with Google and other tech platforms.

It’s given me a sense that the year ahead will be one of deals, fuelled by AI, FOMO and a (late) realisation that premium content delivers premium AI outcomes. 🤞

Its why an AI content licens…

Read more