The world's most expensive sip of water

Every match at the 2026 FIFA World Cup now includes mandatory hydration breaks. Officially, they're there to protect players. Unofficially, they also create a few extra minutes that many broadcasters happily fill with commercials.

So we asked an unusual question: if those breaks have become advertising inventory, what is a single sip of water actually worth? The answer is less about football than it is about a world where almost every spare moment can be monetized through ads.

See the numbers

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Commercials used to interrupt what you were watching. Now they're starting to interrupt the simple act of turning on your TV. Roku's experiment suggests there is no "too early" when it comes to showing ads.

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A free TV sounds like a bargain until the business model becomes clear. Telly shows how connected screens can turn attention, data, and advertising into the real price of “free.”

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Netflix once promised to stay away from advertising. Now it's building a more advanced advertising machine, with targeting that looks increasingly familiar to anyone who has watched the web become more personalized, and more invasive.

Guess what’s next