Verizon announced the sale of Verizon Media this week, with private equity firm Apollo Global Management Inc. for US$5 billion. The company will go forward under the name Yahoo with Verizon retaining a 10% stake in the company. The team looks at how the deal may affect the company's Australian outpost, led by Paul Sigaloff, as well as what it means for the future of telcos trying to become media companies, and vice versa.

Things are looking up for the Australian ad industry, with Standard Media Index reporting an upward turn in spend for the month of March and a surge in forward bookings for April. So which sectors are looking rosy going into the rest of the year, and how do you measure ad spend year-on-year when looking at a lockdown-punctuated 2020?

Also this week, Seven West Media became the latest publisher to ink payment deals with Google and Facebook, thanks to the introduction of the News Media Bargaining code. The team analyses the ins and outs of the agreements, and other recent deals, and Tim Burrowes provides an update on the state of Mumbrella's own potential deals.