Hasta La Creative!

Ad Age “Media Guy” columnist Simon Dumenco’s media roundup for the morning of Thursday, July 13:

1. I just want to note that when I went to the Chicago Sun-Times’ website to get the story (from the horse’s mouth) about its change of ownership — “Union group led by Eisendrath outduels Trib owner to acquire Sun-Times” — the site threw up an interstitial labeled “Answer a survey question to continue reading this content.” And the first question was:

Question 1 of 7 or fewer:

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I’m back! And I survived (and – dare I say – enjoyed) my first trip to Cannes. A big thank you to my fellow Ad Agers for filling in on Agency Briefs while I gallivanted around Europe.

Before we get into this week’s Agency Brief, here’s a quick reminder: Ad Age’s Small Agency Conference and Awards in Nashville is next week, July 18 -19. Hope to see you all there. Now onto this week’s happenings.

Accenture must be bananas about The Monkeys

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Every weekday, we bring you the Ad Age/iSpot Hot Spots, new and trending TV commercials tracked by iSpot.tv, the real-time TV ad measurement company with attention and conversion analytics from 10 million smart TVs. The New Releases here ran on TV for the first time yesterday. The Most Engaging ads are ranked by digital activity (including online views and social shares) over the past week.

Among the new releases, Lexus highlights the “advanced safety technology” of its vehicles while also hyping its Golden Opportunity Sales Event. Esurance once again deploys a familiar voice — that of actor John Krasinski (Jim from “The Office”) — to tout itself as “The Smarter Way” to get insured. And York Peppermint Pattie suggest that biting into one of its treats will make you feel like a powerful Viking king — more or less.

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Rupert Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox won’t offer further compromise to overcome the U.K. government’s resistance to its $15.2 billion bid for full control of Sky, betting it can hold out for a more straightforward approval from a nonpartisan regulator.

The media giant is turning down U.K. Culture Secretary Karen Bradley’s proposal to add stronger assurances that the Sky News service will remain editorially independent, assurances that could have won her approval without additional review, according to people familiar with the matter.

The decision means Bradley is likely to refer the deal to the Competition and Markets Authority for a probe that could last as long as six months.

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(TrendHunter.com) Hot on the heel of Starbucks’ widely popular Unicorn Frappuccino, a pastry chef working in New York City has created a colorful new dessert known as the Unicornnoli. Made with a homemade…