AGENCY WORK HIGHLIGHTS

• Our Brand Experience team worked with Chinese agency Little Creative to create, produce and manage the China Film Group Corporation experience at the Cannes International Film Festival. We created a stand at the Marche du Film event featuring Brand Ambassadors who educated 12.5K attendees on the Chinese film industry, the movies in which they're investing, and the technology they're using.

  

INDUSTRY UPDATES

Ad Vendors / Platforms / Data

• Google is rolling out six new features for Performance Max campaigns, including an optimization score, giving advertisers a way to identify areas for improvement before a campaign goes live. (Search Engine Journal)

• Google confirmed there’s a bug affecting reporting across Ads and Analytics products, though it did not say when the issue would be resolved. Users experiencing the bug are seeing no or incorrect data when checking reporting. (Search Engine Journal)

• Disney secured more than $9B in advertising commitments from this year's annual industry gathering. About 40% of total upfront dollars went to its streaming and digital platforms, including Disney+, ESPN+ and Hulu. (Reuters)

• The US ad market contracted 3% in June, marking the first decline since February 2021. (Media Post)

  

Awards / Festivals

• The Critics Choice Awards will take place on January 15th, 2023 at the Fairmont Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles. (Variety)

• Jane Millichip has been named CEO of the British Academy, replacing Amanda Berry, and will take up the role in October. (THR)

• Steph Curry won the award for Best NBA Player at the 2022 ESPYS. Other winners included Shohei Ohtani (Best Athlete, Men’s Sports), swimmer Katie Ledecky (Best Athlete, Women’s Sports), and skier Eileen Gu (Best Breakthrough Athlete). (THR)

• The Country Music Awards will be held on May 11th, 2023 at the Ford Center at the Star in Frisco, TX. It will also be live-streamed on Prime Video. (ABC)

Cinemas / Theatrical

• The cost of seeing a movie today is 2x the inflation-adjusted 1960 cost. Though ticket prices have increased 1,210%, popcorn prices have increased most substantially, with prices being 3,845% higher. (The Hustle)

  

• The newly released Mrs. Harris Goes To Paris hit a $1.9M weekend gross, with women 55 years of age and older accounting for 44% of total viewers. (Deadline)

• The theatrical release of “Thor: Love and Thunder” has been postponed in Malaysia, making it the country's second missing Disney movie this summer. In June, the release of Lightyear was canceled in Malaysia after the country’s censorship authority asked for cuts to the film to remove a same-sex kiss. (Variety)

Gambling / Casinos

• Due to a prolonged covid breakout, the shutdown of casino hub Macau was extended five days. The shutdown will cause the 41 casinos operating in Macao to lose a combined $1B. (Review Journal)

• AGM client Station Casinos has acquired 126 acres of land just south of the Las Vegas Strip. The site will likely become a destination resort. (Review Journal)

• Las Vegas Sands net revenue fell 10% YoY, totaling 1B at the end of Q2, while Sands China saw its revenue fall 57% to $368M during the same period. (Casino.org)

Live Events / Attractions

• The 2022 San Diego Comic-Con took place over the weekend. It offered fans a bevy of fandom activities as well as several studio and network showcases for upcoming films and shows. (Yahoo)

• Despite a rise in Covid cases across the country, Broadway theaters will continue their mask-optional policy for audiences, at least through August. (Deadline)

• Lollapalooza will take place in Chicago's Grant Park from July 28th-31st. The headliners include include Metallica, Dua Lipa, J. Cole, Green Day, and Machine Gun Kelly. (ABC)

Music / Audio / Podcasts

• Acast plans to acquire Podchaser, an IMDb-esque site that lets users search for everything and anything to do with podcasts. (Tech Crunch)

• Tidal is offering three months of its premium HiFi subscription for $3. The Hifi Plus plan gives members access to over 90M songs and videos ad-free and with unlimited skips. (Cnet)

• Spotify is expanding its Blend playlist creation tool to include more artists and will now allow fans to purchase artist merch through the feature. (Tech Crunch)

• Warner Music Group will become the first label to adopt SoundCloud's Fan-Powered Royalties payout model thanks to a new licensing deal between the two companies. (Axios)

NFT / Blockchain / Crypto

• Kia teamed up with Dead Army Skeleton Klub to generate 10.1K Kia-themed NFTs, which will be available through QR codes in its upcoming commercials. (AdAge)

• Coinbase temporarily shut down its US affiliate program for influencers and publishers. The shutdown comes as Coinbase is reeling from the crypto crash. (Business Insider)

• The New York Yankees will allow workers to convert part of their paychecks into Bitcoin. About 36% of US workers under the age of thirty are interested in investing a percentage of their earnings in Bitcoin. (Finbold)

• Minecraft is banning the use of NFTs and blockchain technology on its servers and will prohibit the use of Minecraft imagery to create NFT projects. (Decrypt)

• US adults interested in the metaverse are most interested in entertainment activities (24%), followed by gaming and travel activities. (Morning Consult)

  

• Serbian artist Marina Abramović released her first NFT collection, The Hero 25FPS, on the energy-efficient Tezos blockchain. It's a digital reworking of her most personal and autobiographical works. (Wallpaper)

OTT / Streaming

• Hulu is turning Spotify’s most popular playlist, Rap Caviar, into a new docu-series called RapCaviar Presents. It aims to address “today’s most provocative issues” through stories of hip-hop artists like Tyler the Creator and Doja Cat. (Tech Crunch)

• Disney+ has announced a collaboration with Hybe, BTS’s label, to bring five new titles to the platform. At least three of those titles are confirmed to feature BTS in some form. (The Verge)

• Amazon is rolling out a new Prime Video design experience for Android and connected living room devices to make its display “less busy and overwhelming." The main navigation has been shifted to the left side of the screen and is now a vertical column of icons, and the Home section has sub-sections for movies, TV shows, and sports. (The Verge)

• NBCU is applying its ShoppableTV technology to dating show Love Island USA on Peacock, allowing viewers to scan on-screen QR codes to shop products used by the contestants. (Marketing Dive)

• New subscriptions to Hulu have outpaced those of Disney+ in 18 of the past 24 months, and total new subscriptions to Hulu have exceeded those to Disney+ in each of the last six quarters. (WSJ)

• In its opening 3 days, the US Senior Open drove a 75% increase in Peacock sign-ups, making it the service’s first significant content event since the Super Bowl. (Antenna)

• Crunchyroll is lowering prices in nearly 100 countries but not in the US, Canada, Australia, or New Zealand. The Mega Fan plan now costs £6 per month instead of £8 in the UK and $1.25 instead of $10 in India. (Engadget)

• YouTube is introducing new tools within its Studio’s Shopping tab so that creators can more easily manage how their products are tagged and appear on their channel. (Variety)

• Disney+ added its first R-rated movies to the US platform: “Deadpool,” “Deadpool 2,” and “Logan.” (Streamable)

• Streaming made up 34% of total TV viewing in June, up 24% YoY. Viewing to Prime Video was up 32% YoY, Disney+ was up 22%, and Netflix gained 18%. (Deadline)

• The average Australian household pays for 2.3 subscription TV services. Over 80% of households are expected to subscribe to a streaming service by the end of 2022. (The Guardian)

Since there was so much Netflix news this week, we've aggregated it into its own section.

• Netflix will ask customers in five LatAm countries to pay a $3 fee to use their account in an additional home. The new policy impacts customers in Argentina, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and the Dominican Republic. (Bloomberg)

• Netflix's M1 churn rate (users who cancelled in their first month) is +2pts higher than the Premium SVOD average for the last 3 months. (Antenna)

• Netflix spent $200M on The Gray Man in hopes that it can be the start of a blockbuster franchise that ultimately attracts subscribers. (NYT)

• Netflix will acquire Animal Logic, the animation studio responsible for “Happy Feet,” “The Lego Movie,” and “Peter Rabbit." The transaction is expected to close later this year. (Tech Crunch)

• Netflix lost 970K subscribers during Q2, less than its expected 2M loss. It projects it will add 1M subscribers in Q3. (THR)

• Netflix has stopped using its Twitter customer-help account after 13 years and almost 1M tweets. (Variety)

• Netflix is aiming to launch an ad-supported tier in early 2023. Not all of its library will be available for the lower-priced option. (Marketing Dive)

• Netflix’s global demand share for streaming originals dropped to 14% 2020-2022 to 41.2%. Apple TV+, Disney+ and HBO Max saw a combined gain of 14% during the same period. (ToDoTVNews)

Retail / Lifestyle / Travel

• Amazon will soon begin testing its Prime Air delivery system, beginning in College Station, Texas before expanding to Lockeford, California. (HypeBeast)

• About 38% of US adults have already changed their discretionary spending. Recreation and entertainment are tied for second among the spending categories that consumers would cut back on in the event of a recession, just behind eating out. (Variety)

  

• Over 15K flights have been canceled by airlines across Europe for August, accounting for 60% of all global flight cancellations. (Forbes)

• Australian households spend A$4,500 ($3,200 USD) a year on entertainment, with streaming and gaming taking up the most money. Australians now have 6.5 subscriptions on average across VOD, audio, news and lifestyle content, gaming and other sources of entertainment. (The Guardian)

Social Media

• Instagram users in the US will soon be able to pay for products directly in messages. Buyers will also be able to ask questions about products and track orders in the same message thread with merchants. (The Verge)

• Snapchat is launching a new web app for desktop with features like snapping, chatting, and video calling. (The Verge)

• Twitch will soon add a "charity mode" with a new set of donation tools built into the platform itself, letting users donate in just a few clicks. (Tech Crunch)

• Microsoft announced Viva Engage, a new social app within Teams that allows employees to share Snapchat and Instagram-esque stories of their activities. (Morning Brew)

• Instagram updated its maps feature, letting users explore popular tagged nearby locations and filter by specific categories’ including cafes, hotels, and parks. (PetaPixel)

• Instagram will soon let businesses boost their Reels, turning them into ads to reach new audiences. Boosted Reels will appear in feed, Stories, the Reels tab and the explore page. (Tech Crunch)

• Facebook is rolling out two separate feeds on the app. “Home” is the new name for the tab you see when you first open the app and is designed for algorithm-based discovery, while the new “Feeds” tab contains recent posts from friends, groups, Facebook Pages, and favorites, with no “Suggested For You” posts in sight. (The Verge)

• Instagram videos that are shorter than 15 minutes will now be shared as Reels. Videos posted prior to the change will remain as feed videos. (Tech Crunch)

Video Games

• There were about 1.5B Tweets about gaming in the first half of 2022, up 36% YoY. Japan tweeted the most about gaming, followed by the US. (Tech Crunch)

• At the end of this month, Sims players will be able to choose their Sims’ sexual orientation and romantic / sexual attraction. (The Verge)

• Elden Ring is the best selling game of 2022, having sold 13.4M units in May (its first month on sale). It currently has approximately 40K people playing concurrently throughout the day. (NME)

• Compared to all Samsung smart TV users, gamers spend 42% less time with linear. About 75% of gamers rely mostly on streaming services for TV viewing, while 43% of gamers don’t have a pay-TV subscription. (NextTV)

• CBS comedy Ghosts has developed an experience in Decentraland where fans can take on an avatar from the show, enter Woodstone Mansion to solve puzzles, experience various adventures and land collectible NFTs. (Variety)

Interesting Campaigns / Creative

• To celebrate the release of Resident Evil, Netflix unveiled a 3D billboard in NYC that shows a monster breaking “out” of the ad. It appears to scale the wall of the building before lashing its tongue out at the passing crowd. (CBR)

  

• AGM client Cirque Du Soleil posted a summery video in partnership with Alix Croop showing the artist “keeping cool the #cirqueway." She does a variety of handstands while getting sprayed with a hose, leaving a series of impressions of her tricks. (Instagram)

  

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.