When two companies become one, half the tools don’t make it.
Skydance officially closed its ~$110B deal for Warner Bros. Discovery on Tuesday. That puts Paramount+, HBO Max, CNN and CBS under one roof, and the plan is to merge the two streamers into one (Axios). Nobody’s said much about the tech stack yet (shocker). But somebody’s email platform, CDP and analytics tool is about to get a very awkward renewal call.
Candidly, we have a weird amount of data on this one. We’ve interviewed marketers on both sides of the deal, so we can actually see what’s about to get merged.
For this one we pulled our interviews with marketers at both companies from the past six months (a VP and two managers), plus a marketing director we talked to in the middle of Skydance’s first deal, back in May 2025.
Let’s get into it.
The two stacks already overlap in two places
Across three interviews at the two companies, the same two tools show up on both sides: the email platform and the workflow tool everyone builds on. Everything else is a choice somebody at Skydance now has to make.
| What it’s used for | One studio | The other |
|---|---|---|
| Email and SMS (same tool on both sides) | Braze 7/10 | Braze 8/10 and 9/10 (two interviews) |
| Workflow and project tracking (same tool on both sides) | Airtable 8/10, Jira 7/10, Monday 8/10 | Airtable 8/10 |
| Customer data and insights | Airtable as the data hub, built in-house | Amplitude 9/10, Databricks 9/10 |
| Reporting | Self-serve dashboards in Airtable | Looker 8/10 |
Ratings are the 1-10 satisfaction scores each marketer gave when we asked them to rate their stack.
The overlap tools have a real head start, since nobody has to migrate. One of those email teams only moved onto its current platform at the end of 2025, so a second migration would be a tough sell. Data and analytics is where the two sides look least alike, and that’s where the combined team has the most left to decide.
The headcount goes first. AI gets asked to fill the seats.
Mergers bring layoffs, and the work doesn’t leave with the people. One VP of Marketing at a $100B+ media company told us this in the spring, between one merger and the next. The team had already been through one acquisition, and they said there was “a pending merger on the horizon.”
The expectation from the top is that AI covers the gap. The team had just rolled out several AI assistants and was looking at agentic tools built on top of the workflow software it already ran.
“We’re being asked to run a marathon with a lot fewer resources while the ground is shifting underfoot. That’s the reality of the streaming industry right now… We’ve endured five rounds of layoffs in the last three years that I’ve been here… Expectations are high for how we’re leveraging LLMs, AI, agentic AI, and tools to subsidize the missing seats that are not going to be filled.”
VP Marketing, $100B+ media company
They were also honest that more tools isn’t the answer (or at least, not yet):
“Right now, it feels like there’s too much being thrown at us candidly. I think that the bottom line is we really need to hone in and understand and define the objective before we throw tools and solutions at things.”
VP Marketing, $100B+ media company
What leadership does want is AI built into the tools they already run:
“The focus is on agentic solutions. So the layers of integration with our existing tool sets and what these LLMs can unlock for us. That’s really of interest from senior leadership.”
VP Marketing, $100B+ media company
For vendors, that’s the opening and the trap at the same time. A smaller team needs help badly. But a smaller team also has no time to implement something new, so the pitch has to start with the problem rather than the AI feature.
Expect a tech freeze, then a long wait for IT
Skydance has done this before, and the first round shows what comes next. A marketing director at a $100B+ media company, interviewed in May 2025 while Skydance’s deal for Paramount was still pending, described the rules mid-merger. New tech was frozen unless it had been approved before the deal.
“Well, yes, officially yes [we’re in a tech freeze]. So I am implementing new tech, but that’s only because I got approved pre-merger… If it wasn’t approved by maybe a few months ago, six months ago, then yeah [it’s frozen].”
Director Marketing, $100B+ media company
Even approved projects slowed down, because the people who used to implement them were gone:
“Maybe previously pre-merger, pre-layoffs world, it maybe would’ve taken anywhere from two to four weeks to get something implemented from a technical perspective. Now we’re looking at three to six months.”
Director Marketing, $100B+ media company
This deal is bigger than the last one. Tools already approved and running keep moving. Everything else should plan for a freeze, and then a long line for IT.
With engineers cut, the easiest tool to adopt wins
For product marketers, this changes what a winning pitch looks like. The same VP explained why one workflow tool spread across their global marketing teams:
“We went with Airtable because we could build that out with very few engineering resources. Resourcing is definitely a big consideration for adoption. Flexibility is another one. How easily it is put together and changed with our changing workflows. It can’t be too brittle.”
VP Marketing, $100B+ media company
The director from the 2025 interview judged a tool they had set up themselves the same way. Asked whether the results were worth the setup effort:
“I feel that for me personally, it doesn’t [balance out]. I think if someone had more technical resources, then perhaps it would.”
Director Marketing, $100B+ media company
If your product needs their engineers before it delivers anything, that’s the first thing to fix in the pitch. Lead with how little setup it takes, then get to the features.
What to do when the next merger hits your pipeline
This deal is done. There will be another one in your accounts soon enough, and the Skydance playbook gives you the timeline.
- Get signed before the announcement. Last time, tools that weren’t approved months before the deal (up to six, per the buyer) got frozen. Once a merger is public, assume your open deal is on ice until it closes.
- Plan for the IT queue after close. Implementation went from 2–4 weeks to 3–6 months once the layoffs hit. Lead with the version of your product that needs the least engineering, and say so on the first call.
If you sell into either company, your next renewal is going to be harder than your last one. Better to hear it from us now than from their procurement team in Q1.
Jon
P.S. We’ve got a lot more from inside media and streaming (including both sides of this deal). If you sell into either, let us know and we’ll send over what we’re hearing. Best case, you get a head start on the renewal conversation. Worst case, you know what their marketing teams are dealing with. Your call!