In today’s Digest, we look at China fining Trip.com US$765m for monopolistic conduct, WBD taking Amazon to court over alleged executive poaching, and a podcast industry coalition proposing new standards for measurement and attribution.

China fines Trip.com $765 million for monopolistic conduct

China's market regulator has imposed a 5.2bn yuan (£562m) penalty on Trip.com Group, the country's largest online travel services provider, ruling the company engaged in "monopolistic conduct." The State Administration for Market Regulation said Saturday that Trip.com which runs its namesake platform alongside China-focused sister brands Ctrip and Qunar, plus global site Skyscanner had abused its dominant market position. The penalty splits into a confiscation of 1.658bn yuan (£179m) in illegal gains and a separate fine of 3.521 billion yuan (£391m), the latter equal to 7.5% of the company's 46.958bn yuan (£5.22bn) in domestic sales last year. 

According to the regulator's announcement, Trip.com's anticompetitive behavior dated back to 2020, when the company allegedly used its traffic-allocation algorithms, platform rules, and technology to push certain hotel partners into exclusive arrangements and pressure others into offering their lowest available rates exclusively through Trip.com. 

WBD takes Amazon to court over alleged executive poaching

Warner Bros Discovery has taken legal action against Amazon, alleging the tech giant moved swiftly to lure away staff bound by employment contracts across multiple divisions of the company. Filed on 21st July, 2026 in California Superior Court, the suit zeroes in on Amazon MGM Studios' decision to bring on Pia Barlown in a new role as VP and Head of Series Marketing. Amazon publicly confirmed the hire only three days after WBD had already filed its complaint. 

The legal filing raises claims of contractual interference, breach of contract, and unfair competition, with Barlow's situation highlighted as an example given that her term contract wasn't due to lapse until 31st October, 2027. WBD contends that Amazon knew full well about the contract's existence and terms, having received written notice beforehand, yet pushed ahead with the hire anyway reportedly even pledging to shield Barlow from legal consequences and cover her defense. 

Podcast industry coalition proposes new standards

A coalition of industry players, including Spotify, brands, creators, agencies, and other platforms, has released a whitepaper through the Alliance of Measurement in Podcasting (AMP) calling for a unified definition of podcasts and fresh metrics to gauge audience exposure and ad attribution. The group, brought together by ad agency Oxford Road in July 2025 under CEO Dan Granger, is pushing for consistency in a format that now blends audio and video and gets distributed everywhere from RSS feeds to platforms like Spotify and YouTube. 

Central to the proposal is an intentionally flexible definition of what counts as a podcast: "If it works with your eyes closed, it's a podcast"  a description built to cover video and RSS distribution without mandating either.

The whitepaper's biggest structural change is ditching downloads as the go-to measure of exposure, replacing it with a "podcast play" that only counts once someone has engaged with at least 30 consecutive seconds of content, whether audio or video. Hannah Putnam, head of publishing and audio at Wavemaker UK, praised the initiative as "vital," arguing that grounding the definition in actual experience and shifting focus to real consumption via the 30-second play brings much-needed clarity to podcasting.