INDUSTRY UPDATES

Ad Vendors / Platforms / Data

• Ad revenues for TikTok and Chinese sister app Douyin will hit almost $32B this year, accounting for 5.3% of the global digital ad market. TikTok alone will reach almost $12B, making up 1.9% of worldwide digital ad spend. (eMarketer)

• Roku has introduced a “clean room," offering advertisers and agencies the ability to compare their own aggregated data with the audience and linear-TV data that Roku collects across its devices and platforms. (Morning Brew)

Awards / Festivals

• The 2022 Tribeca Festival revealed its lineup of feature and short narrative, documentary and animated films. The lineup includes 110 films from 151 filmmakers across 40 countries. (THR)

• The Tony Awards has a new policy for how it will handle potential violence during the live show. In the event of an incident, any perpetrator of violence will be removed from the event immediately. (THR)

Cinemas / Theatrical

• Everything Everywhere All At once, an R-rated movie about a mom taking on dark forces, posted the highest per-screen average of any movie this year. It's grossed $18M to date. (Bloomberg)

• The AMC mobile app for US theaters now accepts Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and other cryptocurrencies. AMC started accepting crypto in November 2021 which allowed customers to purchase movie tickets online using Bitcoin Ether, Bitcoin Cash, and Litecoin. (Tech Crunch)

• About 68% of Americans believed theatrical titles are higher in quality than films released directly on streaming platforms, and 93% plan to see various genres of movies in theaters this year. (Forbes)

Gambling / Casinos

• OpenSea has suspended the trading of "Gambling Apes" NFTs from the Sands Vegas Casino Club after regulators in Texas and Alabama ordered trading to halt as they were categorized as unregistered securities. The main issue with the NFTs is that there was an explicit expectation of profit sharing which is against regulation. (Coindesk)

• Users of PokerStars now have the ability to create their own sports bets through a new peer-to-peer betting exchange. The PokerStars Exchange is now available in both of the company’s .com and .eu portals in the PokerStars Sport section. (Casino.org)

Live Events / Attractions

• K-Pop band BTS averaged more than $8M per night during a Los Angeles stint late last year, selling $33M worth of tickets in four nights. That's more than all but 10 tours made during the entirety of 2021. (Bloomberg)

• Broadway theaters are keeping mask requirements for audience members through May 31st, but will leave vaccination checks up to the theater owners beginning May 1st. (Broadway News)

Music / Audio / Podcasts

• TIDAL officially has a Siri integration. Subscribers can now ask Siri to play songs, playlists, albums, and more from Tidal. (9To5Mac)

• Apple Music launched a series of DJ mixes mixed with their Spatial Audio technology, including 15 Boiler Room Sessions and an exclusive mix from Jeff Mills called “Outer to Inner Atmosphere: The Escape Velocity Mix.” (Pitchfork)

• Creators in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand can now upload video podcasts to Spotify via Anchor, its podcast creation tool. Spotify is also offering video-specific analytics for creators. (The Verge)

• Higher Ground, the Obamas’ production company, will not renew their exclusive partnership with Spotify. They're in the middle of negotiations with several potential partners, including Audible and iHeartMedia and expect to decide on a partner in the next few weeks. (AdWeek)

NFT / Blockchain / Crypto

• An NFT of Twitter founder Jack Dorsey’s first-ever tweet could sell for just under $10K. The current owner of the NFT, crypto entrepreneur Sina Estav purchased the NFT for $2.9 million in March 2021. (Economic Times)

• Meta is working on a web version of its Horizon Worlds metaverse platform. It’s also working on bringing Horizon to mobile later this year and is in “early discussions” about bringing it to game consoles. (The Verge)

• Over half of Black and Hispanic adults are interested in entering the metaverse while only 34% of white people say the same. (Morning Consult)

  

• About 35% of adults have major concerns about the mental health impacts of entering the metaverse, while 29% are worried about motion sickness from virtual reality technology. (Morning Consult)

• Trust in cryptocurrency remains negative overall and lower than at the beginning of the year. More consumers say they don’t trust cryptocurrency than say that they do. (Morning Consult)

• “Coinbase NFT” launched its beta mode with collections of NFTs on the Ethereum blockchain such as Doodles, World of Women, and Azuki. (Tech Crunch)

• Amazon is hiring for a number of roles to work with an unannounced AR/VR product. One job listing states that these hires will be part of “a greenfield development effort” that will include “developing code for early prototypes through mass production.” (Protocol)

• Rappi, one of the leading deliveries company in Latin America, will accept crypto payments to complete a field test in Mexico. (Cryptopolitan)

OTT / Streaming

• Netflix lost 200K subscribers during Q1, falling short of its own low expectations of 2.5M subscriber adds for the start of 2022. It lost subscribers in nearly every region except for APAC, where it saw an addition of 1M subscribers. (THR)

• Netflix is planning to offer cheaper, ad-supported tiers to consumers over the next year or two. The ad-supported plans will give customers more choice, and Netflix hopes it will boost subscribers. (Tech Crunch)

• In the UK, a total of 1.5M subscriptions to SVOD services were cancelled in Q1, up from 1M in the previous quarter and from 1.2M a year ago. More than 500K of the cancellations were attributed to saving money. (Deadline)

• Only 4% of US Gen Z doesn't subscribe to a streaming service, compared to 44% of Gen Z in China. (Morning Consult)

  

• Netflix Brazil has revealed a slate of new content including its first action movie in Brazil, “Carga Máxima,” from Gullane Entertainment, a flagship Brazilian producer. (Variety)

• Netflix will be expanding its crackdown on password sharing following a tough quarter. Netflix cited “the large number of households sharing accounts” as a critical factor “creating revenue growth headwinds.” (THR)

• About 26% of US and Canadian consumers who have a pay-TV subscription used to be cord-cutters. 35% came back to cable because they couldn't get the entertainment they wanted without pay-TV service. (Streamable)

• Genre is the differentiating factor for 62% of people when making choices of what service to sign up for. Because of its genre content, Disney+ is estimated to have a 30% higher value than an average video streaming service. (Deadline)

• Streamers in Russia, South Korea and China are the biggest binge watchers. About 1 in 5 adults in each country try to watch every episode of a show in one day when a streaming platform releases all of a series’ episodes at once. (Morning Consult)

• HBO Max and HBO hit 76.8 Million subscribers in their final quarter under WarnerMedia. The platforms significantly increased their subscriber numbers in the beginning of the year. (AdWeek)

• One-third of streaming subscribers would pay a fee to continue to share their password with others. Roughly half (52%) of current password sharers would consider signing up for their own subscription if they could no longer share an account or password with another person. (Morning Consult)

• When it comes to the most important features in a streaming service, 83% of Americans say pricing options are important. More than half of consumers in all countries say it's important for a streaming service to have a user-friendly interface. (Morning Consult)

• CNN+ will shut down at the end of April after launching just weeks ago. Subscription numbers did not live up to expectations, and its demise makes it the shortest lived subscription streaming venture. (Deadline)

• The US and India lead the world in terms of streaming sign-ups with 91% of Indians and 85% of Americans subscribing to at least one streaming service. (Morning Consult)

Retail / Lifestyle / Travel

• When it comes to retail in the metaverse, one-third of Gen Z would like to see brands develop virtual stores while 30% are receptive to brands selling skins to outfit their digital avatars. (Marketing Dive)

• After the TSA announced it would stop enforcing wearing of masks, Delta, American, United, Southwest, and other major carriers have made masks optional for passengers and crew on domestic flights. (USA Today)

• About 35% of Americans have canceled a monthly subscription in the past six months due to inflation. Another 36% will cancel a subscription if prices continue to rise. (CNBC)

• The secondhand retail market is booming as consumers budget and work around supply chain issues. In the past three months, 44% of U.S. adults bought a secondhand item and 24% sold one, with clothing, books, games and furniture being the most common resale categories. (Morning Consult)

Social Media

• WhatsApp is soon adding emoji reactions which will be available in all chats. The feature will be relatively limited to start, with only six emojis available including “thumbs up" and “heart.” (The Verge)

• Among all US adults, 43% feel they can speak freely on social media. About 2 in 5 U.S. adults said they believe censorship is a major threat to free speech. (Morning Consult)

• Instagram is introducing changes to make sure creators get credit for their content. Product tags are now available to everyone, and Instagram will heavily promote original content as opposed to content reposted from TikTok. (The Verge)

• TikTok is testing a dislike feature for video comments, allowing users to flag comments they find “irrelevant or inappropriate” without the dislike being visible to others. (The Verge)

• Instagram has removed the “recent” tab for some users for a test. Though users can look up all sorts of recent Instagram posts via a particular hashtag, only posts with the most likes or short videos called “Reels” related to the hashtag will be shown. (Tech Crunch)

Video Games

• Coachella collaborated with Fortnite to release Coachella-themed skins and in-game features. There was also a Coachella takeover of the in-game Icon Radio where players will be able to listen to music by over 30 artists from this year’s festival lineup. (The Verge)

• Netflix is adapting the Exploding Kittens card game into an animated TV series and a mobile game. The mobile game will launch sometime in May while an "adult animated series" will follow in 2023. (Yahoo)

• Sony is planning to incorporate ads to free-to-play games on Playstation. It wants the ads to fit in with the rest of the game, with advertisers putting real-life ads on billboards in virtual sports stadiums. (IGN)

• Among Us is coming to VR on the Oculus Quest later this year. The trailer for the game shows crewmates running around their spaceship in a first-person perspective. (Games Radar)

Interesting Campaigns / Creative

• Jameson collaborated with Pinterest to introduce its new Jameson Orange whiskey. To boost product awareness, Jameson will own the keyword "orange" when people conduct searches on the site. (Marketing Dive)

  

• This spring, the University of Central Florida’s (UCF) football team will don QR codes instead of numbers on the back of their jerseys. When scanned, the QR codes reveal players' biographies. (The Verge)

  

AND NOW THE GOOD STUFF

• The UK government published its national AI strategy, which outlines its long-term vision for the technology and its impact on society.

• Rodney Brooks, the creator of the Roomba, throws cold water on the idea that AI will surpass human intelligence in the near future.

• A unique look behind the curtain at how one VC fund increased returns.

• How Peloton uses design and gamification to keep people on the exercise platform.

• If you think gentrification is about new coffee shops and high rents, you are missing an essential aesthetic element.

• Watch out for the Trisolarians! Scientists might have found the first-known planet orbiting three stars at once.