WarnerMedia

Major U.S. media conglomerate and premium advertising platform under AT&T ownership; retired brand upon formation of Warner Bros. Discovery in 2022

WarnerMedia was the name given to the collection of Time Warner assets following AT&T's $85 billion acquisition of Time Warner, which closed in June 2018. Under the WarnerMedia banner, AT&T consolidated some of the most valuable media properties in the world, including HBO, Warner Bros. film and television studios, CNN, TNT, TBS, Cartoon Network, and the Turner broadcasting portfolio. The company also launched HBO Max in May 2020, a direct-to-consumer streaming platform designed to compete with Netflix and Disney+, representing a major strategic push into the streaming wars. In the AdTech and advertising ecosystem, WarnerMedia was a significant player through its Xandr division (formerly AppNexus, acquired by AT&T in 2018), which provided programmatic advertising technology, a demand-side platform, and a data-driven TV advertising marketplace. WarnerMedia's vast portfolio of premium content and audience data made it an attractive partner for advertisers seeking brand-safe, high-reach environments across linear TV, digital, and streaming. The company operated one of the largest addressable TV advertising businesses in the United States. On April 8, 2022, AT&T completed the spin-off of WarnerMedia and its merger with Discovery, Inc. to form Warner Bros. Discovery (WBD), a standalone publicly traded media company. The WarnerMedia brand was retired at that point. Warner Bros. Discovery trades on Nasdaq under the ticker WBD and continues to operate HBO Max (later rebranded as Max), Warner Bros., CNN, Discovery Channel, and the broader combined portfolio. The Xandr advertising technology business was sold to Microsoft in 2022.