Daily Pulse: How Netflix Owns 1/3 of Internet Traffic, Pimco's All Star Team, China on Smog Alert

Netflix owns the Internet. More than a third of prime-time Internet traffic in North America is Netflix streaming alone. That adds a bit more context to ISP's complaints that the site is eating up bandwidth and should contribute, their main argument for killing Net neutrality. (Not saying they're right.) 

How do they manage it? Here it is. 

Pimco gets an all-star advisory board. The investment firm called on former Fed chair Ben Bernanke, former ECB chair Jean-Claude Trichet and former UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown to advise it on macroeconomic and geopolitical developments. They join other advisors like former State Department policy planning director Anne-Marie Slaughter and Nobel Prize-winning economist Michael Spence. Stars meeting a few times a year don't give investment bankers much more to go on that all the research they already pay for -- but the PR move heps rebuild PIMCO's reputation after Bill Gross's and Mohamed el-Erian's loud exits.

P&G is jumping ship. If you're like me, you can hardly think of any story more boring than an advertiser, Procter & Gamble, switching its North America budget to a new agency, from Publicis Groupe to Omnicom. But P&G is the world's biggest advertiser with a budget around $3 billion in the US alone. This means a loss of $50 to $100 million in annual revenue for Publicis.

“The entire ecosystem of media and advertising is transforming. We still want to get mass reach, but we also want to be able to do it with a greater degree of precision.”
Marc Pritchard, Procter & Gamble’s global brand officer, to The New York Times

Dropbox is killing Mailbox. That's the app that was supposed to reconcile us with email and that was so buzzy when Dropbox acquired it for $100 million that you still needed an invite to try out the app. (Remember Google Wave? I've never tried so hard to get an invite, yet done so little with the product. Same story.) Dropbox wants to refocus on its enterprise customers.  

These are the voices you need to follow on LinkedIn. We've just launched our list of the top 10 writers in eight different areas — finance, tech, marketing, healthcare, leadership, media, education, venture capital — who broke out from the crowd. Read more about how we put the list together and check it out here. 

Done laughing. After Donald Trump called for "a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States," Arianna Huffington writes that Trump's campaign for US president has gone from laughable to scary. So The Huffington Post, which had moved its coverage to the Entertainment section, is moving it back to the Politics section and promising to call it out on lies and bigotry.

Beerhemoth. (Not mine, I wish.) Anheuser Busch Inbev CEO Carlos Brito testifies before a US Senate subcommittee today over the brewer's proposed $110 billion acquisition of SABMiller. They'd be, by far, the largest beermaker in the world. Senators are concerned, but only the FTC could block the merger. 

Beijing has issued a red alert for smog for the first time since it initiated its pollution watch system in 2013. Schools are closed, car travel is limited, fireworks and barbecues are banned. PM2.5 concentration — a number Chinese city dwellers watch like the rest of us watch the weather forecast — stands at 173 micrograms/m3 — 7 times what the WHO considers dangerous. 

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What you may have missed — and really should read:

• "The starkest example of the disconnect between innate ability and opportunity can be found in Africa," write Jeremy Johnson and Iyinoluwa Aboyeji. 
• Forget employees and contractors. We need to create a new category for Uber drivers.
• Ben Horowitz says this one process can ruin your company.
• Looking for more great posts on LinkedIn? Check out LinkedIn's Top Voices: the top writers in tech, finance, media, and more. 

Cover art: Beijing today. GREG BAKER/AFP/Getty Images

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• Miss our last update? Not cool: 'The FTC vs Staples & Office Depot (Again), Oil at the Bottom of the Barrel, Keurig's German Sweetener'
• Not following us on Twitter and Facebook? You really should.