AT&T’s reorg, Barstool’s ‘moronic’ admission, and Sinemia outrage

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It’s been another newsy week. No sooner did AT&T get the blessing to move ahead with its $85 billion merger with Time Warner than it restructured its media properties and named a new leader to oversee them, ex-NBC Entertainment chair Bob Greenblatt. The reorg combines parts of Turner and HBO in one unit, a sign that AT&T believes that fiefdoms aren’t the way to compete in a media landscape dominated by tech giants.

But the restructuring comes with fears for the future of the creative and ad sides of the business and is widely expected to come with massive layoffs, I reported last week.

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Here’s what else the advertising and media team has been busy with:

MoviePass competitor Sinemia is asking for tips of $1, $2, or $5, even as it faces criticism for a spree of account terminations
Here’s a case study in how not to run customer relations. The movie subscription service decided to test a tipping feature just as it’s been terminating users’ accounts. More than 50 users who had their accounts recently terminated have contacted Business Insider in the past week, claiming their accounts were unfairly canceled.

Barstool Sports founder admits company was ‘moronic’ in its spat with comedian
Miel Bredouw said Barstool posted a video clip of hers on Twitter without crediting her, then messaged her hundreds of times and offered her money to drop her complaint. The case also illustrates how Twitter’s policy for handling copyright claims can put an unfair burden on creators.

Dick’s Sporting Goods used Facebook to automatically serve different ads to different people — driving $10 million in incremental sales during the holiday season
Most purchases are still happening in physical stores, so Facebook is trying to show how it can help retailers drive in-store sales with dynamic ads and machine learning. It shared results of a Dick’s Sporting Goods campaign to show how its tools work.

Amazon is opening up ads in AmazonFresh, its Instacart killer, to win over big packaged-goods brands
Amazon’s move into advertising is aiming at grocery. The company said it was rolling out ads in AmazonFresh, its online grocery service that competes with companies like Instacart and Peapod. Packaged-goods brands that sell items on AmazonFresh can now run ads in search results and on product detail pages.

Kraft Heinz’s stock tumbled after its $15 billion write-down of its Kraft and Oscar Mayer brands. Here’s why the company’s global brand officer says he’s still bullish on them.
It’s hard for legacy brands to stand out these days. Kraft Heinz is trying to give Kraft new life by associating it with playfulness, while competing with disruptor brands by helping early-stage companies get off the ground.

Feel free to send tips or thoughts to me at lmoses@businessinsider.com.

Here are other good stories from tech, media, and entertainment:

Digital live TV has terrible margins, but Hulu has found a way around that with its live service

Salesforce will sell its employee training tools to other companies so they can be more like Salesforce

‘Leaving Neverland’ is one of the most watched HBO documentaries of the past decade

Ice-cream brand Halo Top grew up on the internet. Here’s why it’s launching its first national TV campaign.

In its annual wage-equity study, Google found that more men were underpaid than women

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