Asking ChatGPT what it can do for marketers, and dissecting its answer — In our freshly published Outlook 2023 report, we highlighted the rise of synthetic media, aka media content generated by AI, as an emerging trend that has the potential to revolutionize digital content creation, reshape the landscape of the creator economy, and ultimately redefine our relationship to digital media. Among all…

How the cookie crumbles for cable TV as we knew it, and the budding forces trying to put the TV bundle back together — It has been quite a month in the land of cable TV. Following ten days of tense negotiations over carriage fees and ESPN content, Disney reached an agreement with Charter (owner of Spectrum and the second-largest cable provider in the United States) on Sep. 11, ending a prolonged blackout of…

Three takeaways for brands from Apple’s iPhone 15 Launch Event — Like clockwork, another September brings a new set of iPhones and Apple Watches. The Cupertino-based company refreshed its smartphone and smartwatch lineups with a “Wonderlust” media event on Tuesday. The topline announcements from Apple can be summed up with the following tweet: At a glance, it seems very business…

Three takeaways from the surprising Amazon-Shopify deal last week — In the U.S. ecommerce space, there is Amazon, and then there’s everybody else. The Jeff Bezos-owned ecommerce giant has been the undisputed market leader for nearly two decades now, with a U.S. market share of nearly 40% in 2022. …

What Is Llama 2 and what does it mean for the competitive landscape of generative AI — On the heels of a successful launch of Threads, Meta released another important product last week that has garnered much less attention by comparison, but one that could prove to have a huge impact on consumer technology down the road. The product in question? …

Some quick follow-up notes on the prospects of Meta’s “Twitter Killer” — Even though Thread is just over a week old, it sure has stirred quite a storm in social media. Following my article last week analyzing the broader context in which Meta launched its text-focused social networking app, this week, we’re following up on the sludge of developments that have happened…

It’s the end of social media as we know it, but the future remains unclear — What does it mean for brands and advertisers — Two months ago, I wrote about the “in-flux” state of social media and dove into the unique crisis that each of the major social platforms was facing at the time, which ranged from Meta’s employee morale crisis to the looming U.S. ban on TikTok. …

Hollywood is losing faith in the streaming model and scrambling for solutions to cut costs and raise ARPU. Four key aspects to consider in terms of what comes next — Don’t look now, but the era of the “streaming wars” might have come to a quiet end. In a rather anticlimactic fashion, there’s no clear winner; the wars have simply become too costly for all parties involved to carry on. In response to the post-pandemic slowing of paid subscriber growth…

What brand marketers need to know about Apple’s new “spatial computing” device, as well as other announcements from WWDC — Editor’s note: Part of this recap was first published in The Drum under the title “Apple sets a new vision for the future of computing — & opens new opportunities for brands”. Top-line summary: Apple announces Vision Pro headset — designed to replace Macs, iPads, monitors, and TVs with immersive screens.