AGM _magic_

To celebrate 25 years of South Park, we produced a series of global pop-up shops that featured fully shoppable spaces with exclusive merchandise and interactive elements like a recreation of the Bijou Cinema where fans watched classic episodes.

TL;DR

In a hurry? Here's our pick of the top news items of the week.

Ads in Prime Video content will be introduced in the US, UK, Germany, and Canada in early 2024, followed by France, Italy, Spain, Mexico, and Australia later in the year, with the ad tier becoming the default option for Prime Video as part of the Amazon Prime membership. (Amazon)
Warner Bros. Discovery is adding a full, live sports component to Max that will be available October 5th. (Streamable)
Google announced a series of updates to Bard that will give the chatbot access to Google’s full suite of tools, including YouTube, Google Drive and Google Flights, to assist users in a wider variety of tasks. (CNN)
OpenAI released a new version of its DALL-E image generator to a small group of testers and folded the technology into ChatGPT. (NYT)
Disney plans to spend approximately $60B on theme parks expansion over the next decade. (The Wrap)

While older generations use social media for keeping in touch with friends and family, younger generations use it to fill spare time. (GWI)
More than 90% of US adults have reduced discretionary spending in the past six months and plan to do so throughout the holidays. (News3LV)
The shares of US Gen Zers and millennials who said they trust social media influencers grew from 51% in 2019 to 61% in 2023. (Morning Consult)
US consumers aged 18-40 are feeling more fatigued by tech and more concerned about the consequences of their device usage than older generations. (Deloitte)

X started using Google Ad Manager, letting publishers serve ads programmatically on the home feed. (Marketing Brew)
TikTok launched a new tool that will let creators label their AI-generated content and will begin testing other ways to label AI-generated content automatically. (Tech Crunch)
Instagram leads in influencer marketing spend, even as marketers spread budgets across social channels. (Insider)
A new free TV service, Freely, is launching in the UK and will be jointly owned by BBC, ITV, Channel 4 and Channel 5. (BBC)
Meta’s in-development edit button for Threads might let users edit posts within five minutes of publishing them. (The Verge)
TikTok is using the Seattle area as the base for an aggressive expansion into online shopping, requiring all new US e-commerce hires to be based there. (The Information)
YouTube announced a suite of creator tools, including a number of products that take advantage of AI. (THR)
Deezer raised the price of subscription for the second time in 12 months, this time to £19.99/mo in the UK. (Music Business Worldwide)
TikTok is testing Google results in its search pages, though it's making it clear that it "does not endorse or take responsibility for search results from Google.” (The Verge)

Netflix spent big at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival, picking up Anna Kendrick’s “Woman of the Hour” and Richard Linklater’s “Hit Man." (The Wrap)
ABC will air ten more Monday Night Football games than previously expected this season to bolster its content offering amid the ongoing WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. (Variety)
Accounts on TikTok are posting episodes of TV shows and full-length films in bite-sized clips that users can watch in a long continuous string. (WSJ)
To keep their “skip rate” as low as possible on streaming services, musical artists are increasingly moving a song’s hook or chorus to the first 30 seconds of the song. (WSJ)
The cost of NBA League Pass Premium increased to $150/yr, up from $130/yr, and subscribers now get more simultaneous streams. (Streamable)
Snap and News Corp Australia have partnered to launch content on Snapchat, bringing news.com.au and Vogue Australia content to Snapchat’s Stories. (Ad News)
Facebook will now let users create multiple profiles to explore different interests and share different content with different audiences. (Social Media Today)

Software company Digimarc will now let copyright owners add more information to their work to improve how AI models treat copyright in training data. (The Verge)
Thanks to new generative AI features from Amazon, customers can now ask Alexa more open-ended questions. (Streamable)
Capsule introduced its AI-powered video editor for enterprise teams after three years in production. (Tech Crunch)
Google is expanding its AI-powered tools for Google Ads and has already made improvements to the conversational experience. (SE RoundTable)
Microsoft Bing will gain more personalized answers, support for DALLE-E 3 and watermarked AI images. (Tech Crunch)

Luxury hotels are increasingly offering new baby amenities like child care, safety gates and cribs with mosquito nets to entice parents to relax there. (Axios)
Pro football leagues XFL and USFL are in advanced talks to merge before the 2024 season. (Axios)
The number of airport workspaces has nearly doubled in the past year, ranging from glorified phone booths to entire facilities with nap rooms and showers. (WSJ)
Bally’s is launching a free shuttle bus service starting October 1st as part of its takeover of the former Trump Golf Links at Ferry Point in NYC. (Yogonet)
Fontainebleau Las Vegas will open on December 13th after nearly two decades of construction. (Yogonet)
Macau recorded its highest monthly visitor count since 2019 with 3.2M arrivals in August. (Yogonet)
Fans of the Miami Marlins are now able to name their price for tickets to home games as part of a new ticket offering powered through a partnership with TicketRev. (Ticket News)
Olivia Rodrigo is heading out on a massive world tour to support her sophomore record, but the presale is already a disaster as Ticketmaster places fans on waitlists. (Ticket News)