Amazon’s net sales for Q4 were $170 billion, a 14 percent increase year-over-year. For the full year 2023, net sales were up by 12 percent to $574.8 billion. “This Q4 was a record-breaking holiday shopping season and closed out a robust 2023 for Amazon,” CEO Andy Jassy said in the recent earnings release. The results included October Prime Day and holiday season shopping. Outstanding Q4 performers included ad sales, up 27 percent to $14 billion, and Amazon Web Services, which brought in $24.2 billion, growing 13 percent.”What we’re most pleased with is the continued invention and customer experience improvements across our businesses,” Jassy added. Continue reading Growth in Ad Sales, AWS Drive Amazon Profit Up 200 Percent

Marching toward its goal of eliminating third-party cookies from its Chrome browser by the close of December 2024, Google has generally released its APIs for Privacy Sandbox, its privacy-oriented solution to cross-site consumer tracking cookies. The new system has begun shipping with the latest version of Chrome. The Privacy Sandbox tracks topics of interest based on browsing patterns and lets advertisers use that data to serve relevant ads. While clicking “got it” to close your first Sandbox pop-up activates the new system by default, it can be turned off by visiting the privacy settings. Continue reading Google Is Replacing Cookies with Privacy Sandbox in Chrome

Meta Platforms’ Instagram spin-off Threads has racked up more than 100 million users in just five days, making the Twitter challenger the fastest growing app in history, beating ChatGPT’s recent record of 100 million users in two months. Threads was launched in 100 countries on July 5, and surpassed 100 million sign-ups on Monday. On Friday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg wrote from his @zuck account on Threads that the app had already crossed the 70 million mark, performing “way beyond our expectations.” Ramping up the rivalry between Zuckerberg and Elon Musk, Twitter has threatened legal action against Meta due to similarities in the two microblogs. Continue reading Threads Breaks App Record with 100 Million Users in 5 Days

TikTok’s new Pulse Premiere will allow publishers to sell ads alongside their posts and keep half the revenue, a move to engage institutional creators in addition to the influencers and app-savvy individuals that have been the video-sharing platform’s mainstay. An offshoot of TikTok’s Pulse program revenue-sharing plan, available for the top 4 percent of creators’ posts, Pulse Premiere permits ads against all posts from publishers including Condé Nast, NBCUniversal and Vox Media. Advertisers have embraced TikTok to reach Gen Z. Sensor Tower predicts the ByteDance-owned company will secure 2.5 percent of the domestic digital ad market in 2023. Continue reading TikTok Pulse Premiere Gives Publishers a 50 Percent Ad Cut

Amazon is giving Alexa an AI update, with a “more generalized and capable” large language model in development to power the device, CEO Andy Jassy told investors on the company’s Q1 earnings call. While Jassy addressed updates to the company’s AI and machine learning tech that is now facing increased competition, it was actually advertising that gave the company bragging rights this quarter. Amazon’s ad products had 21 percent revenue growth year-over-year, totaling $9.5 billion. As many digital companies struggle to maintain ad momentum in a restrained market, the results are impressive. Continue reading Amazon Has Ad Surge, Looks to Better LLM to Power Alexa

Instagram will cease allowing product tags for live-stream shopping in the U.S. as of March 16, a functionality that has been available to creators and businesses since 2020. Although live-stream shopping is popular and profitable in Asian markets, it has been slow to take hold in the U.S. and Europe. Instagram says users will still be able to set up shops and leverage shopping opportunities across their feeds, stories and Reels, just not in live broadcasts. The company will “continue to invest in shopping experiences,” focusing on those “that provide the most value to our users.” Continue reading Instagram Will End Live-Stream Shopping and Focus on Ads

Alphabet is touting artificial intelligence advances as it faces disappointing Q4 earnings, with CEO Sundar Pichai, who is also CEO of Google, telling analysts the company will soon share its own generative AI system with the public, competing head-on with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DALL-E. “In the coming weeks and months, we’ll make these language models available, starting with LaMDA, so that people can engage directly with them,” Pichai said. Google’s parent company reported a 3.6 percent decline in core ad revenue, at $59 billion in Q4, while overall revenue was up 1 percent to $76 billion. Continue reading Alphabet Reveals Major AI Push, Plans to Take On ChatGPT

Insider Intelligence forecasts that 2023 will mark the first time since 2014 that the combined digital advertising market share for Meta Platforms and Alphabet will fall below 50 percent, indicating erosion of their “duopoly.” Projection of a 2.5 percent drop due to increased competition from rivals including Amazon, Apple, TikTok and Microsoft will put the pair at a projected 48.4 percent this year, according to the research group. While the trajectory is likely to garner negative media and investor attention, it is a plus from the perspective of fending off global antitrust attacks. Continue reading Digital Ad Share for Meta, Alphabet to Drop Below 50 Percent

TikTok is closing in on its downward revised 2022 ad revenue target of $10 billion, according to research firm Insider Intelligence. The ByteDance company had initially projected $12 billion but adjusted the forecast due to a digital advertising downturn that’s affected everyone from Alphabet to Meta Platforms. Despite the hedge, TikTok’s ad haul this year will nearly double that of 2021, and is expected to surpass the performance of Twitter and Snap. However, it still trails advertising on Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, which generated more than $84 billion in the first nine months of 2022 (essentially flat). Continue reading After Doubling Ad Revenue, TikTok Turns to In-App Shopping

As Netflix strategizes its rollout of a cheaper, ad-supported subscription tier, industry analysts are citing HBO Max data to predict the plan will be a win for the streaming service. A survey by Insider Intelligence says that 67 percent of HBO Max subscribers are opting for the $14.99 per month ad-free streaming tier, while 28 percent have chosen the $9.99 ad-supported tier. Launched in June 2021, the economy tier offers access to the same movie and series content, but is capped at 1080p and without the convenience of downloading for offline viewing. Continue reading HBO Max Ad-Supported Tier Bodes Well for Netflix Ad Plans

TikTok had its first official presence at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity on the French Riviera, where the ByteDance mobile video platform competed with the likes of Amazon, Netflix, Activision Blizzard, Spotify, Reddit and Meta Platforms for the attention of the world’s biggest brands and top advertising agencies. Touting its viral appeal and popularity among key demographics including Gen Z, millennials and social influencers, the company hosted a cabana on the beach with dedicated space to make TikTok videos, held meetings in a nearby suite and participated onstage at the Palais des Festivals. Continue reading TikTok Expected to Triple Ad Revenue to $12 Billion in 2022

Meta and Snap both appear to have re-focused their social media strategies on video, leading to speculation they’re chasing TikTok, famously the U.S.’s “most downloaded app of 2021,” which at 94 million handily topped the 64 million of the second most popular, Meta’s Instagram. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told analysts last week that even though Instagram’s Reels is the company’s most rapidly growing format, “we also have a competitor that is compounding at a pretty quick rate, too.” ByteDance’s TikTok, Zuckerberg said, “continues to grow at quite a fast rate off of a very large base.” Continue reading Video Emerges as Killer Social App, Everyone Chasing TikTok

Snap Inc. ended 2021 with its first net profit on quarterly results since going public in 2017, with Q4 earnings of $22.5 million versus last year’s net loss of $113 million during the same period. The company’s Q4 revenue of $1.3 billion marked a 42 percent increase year-over-year, while Snapchat’s daily active users rose 20 percent to 319 million, beating analyst estimates on both counts, which sent Snap stock soaring last week. In 2022, Snap has to contend with Apple’s iOS privacy changes, something Meta Platforms forecasts will take a $10 billion bite out of its own earnings.  Continue reading Snap Notches First Quarterly Profits on $1.3 Billion Revenue