Lab Weekly - 04/15/2022
Elon Musk wants to buy Twitter — will he get it? And what brand marketers can learn from the meme lord? News analysis on Horizon Worlds, WhatsApp, and Twitch to follow
Hey hi hello, welcome to an all new edition of Lab Weekly! It finally started to feel like spring in NYC this week, but the news focus on metaverse developments and the ongoing “Elon vs. Twitter” saga has not changed with the seasons. After all, we are all at the mercy of the beast named market hype; but hey, dear reader, at least we’ll have each other. Let’s dive in.
Elon Musk vs. Twitter — What Brand Marketers Can Learn from It
Ten days after becoming the biggest shareholder of Twitter, the billionaire provocateur is now offering an unsolicited bid to buy the whole company for $43.4 billion. Elon Musk wants to be perceived as an activist investor who is going to solve the “free speech issue” on Twitter, but upon a closer look, this may just be his greatest troll job as a meme-wielding business influencer. This ongoing saga of Elon vs. Twitter is a fascinating case study of the “cults of personality” that are gaining traction in today’s consumer culture.
Outlook 2022: Canadian POV
How the four Outlook trends are playing out in our neighbor up north. Written by Kelvin Mak, Director, Digital Strategy and Partnerships, UM Canada, with contributions from team members Erica Kokiw, EVP, Digital Cory Peters, VP, Digital; and Juan Panlilio, VP, Decision Sciences.
In case you missed it…
The Metaverse ≠ Web3: What Brands Need To Know
The metaverse discourse is being muddled by crypto startups and getting lost amid web3 hype, but innovation-forward brands should not lose sight on why it truly matters
The State of In-Game Advertising: a Recap of IAB PlayFront
A recap on the key trends in video game ads & where the space is heading, including shifting audience segments and gaming ads in the metaverse, as witnessed at the inaugural IAB PlayFront conference.
How Brands Can Find the Right Entry Points to the Metaverse
From in-game experiences to connected communities, brands should carefully weigh the pros and cons of each emerging option as they prepare to enter the metaverse.
Meta To Let Horizon Creators Sell Virtual Items [The Verge]
An important component of the metaverse will be creator-generated content. From 3D objects to native experiences, the metaverse will be fueled by a creator-driven economy, much like the social platforms of today. Meta recognizes the importance of fostering a self-sustaining ecosystem on its metaverse platform, which is why it has started letting a select group of users sell virtual items they created in Horizon Worlds.
While that is certainly the first step to building out a monetizable platform to attract 3D creators, Meta caught some flack for their decision to take a big cut off the sales. For these Horizon purchases, Meta is taking a 25% cut of the percentage that’s left after a platform fee. For platforms with a 30% fee, like Meta’s own Quest Store for VR titles, the creator will be left with a little over 50% of the original price. That hardly seems encouraging or fair for creators who would choose a platform that has only 300,000 users over a competing platform like Minecraft or Roblox, each with millions of active users.
Companies are set to spend billions on building the metaverse in the next decade, and Meta understandably wants to take a cut from virtual item sales to supplement its spending. But as Casey Newton puts it in his Platformer newsletter: the terms of the deal are generally at least as favorable to next-generation platforms as they are to today’s giants, and at a time of declining trust between creators and platforms, tech companies could earn a lot of goodwill by taking a little less than the market can bear.
Related: Over 14,000 Etsy sellers are going on strike to protest increased transaction fees [TechCrunch]; Apple criticized Meta for double-taxing creators at a higher rate than its own App Store [Market Watch]; Epic announces $2 billion in funding for its metaverse efforts [The Verge]
The Recount Debuts Streaming News Show On Twitch [Digiday]
Launching alternative content on Twitch is not exactly a novel idea, but it is still interesting to see a young, video-oriented digital news publication try their hands at reinventing the live news broadcast on Twitch, where viewers can interact with the news anchors in real time via comments and emotes. The show will air live exclusively on Twitch, with clips from the show distributed on other platforms like YouTube. Twitch will reportedly take a 50% cut of the ad revenue generated from the live show, but the publisher could earn revenue directly from fans via donations and gifts.
Now, The Recount could easily do the same live show on YouTube, but they obviously choose Twitch for a reason. Either Twitch paid the publisher to launch the news show on its platform to diversify its programming, or The Recount decided the audience profile on Twitch could be perhaps more engaged than your average YouTube viewer. Regardless, the publisher reportedly wants to secure deals with brands to sponsor the show, such as in “an open” before the live conversations or for product placement in the live streams. If your brand wants to reach the Twitch audience but is somehow hesitant about appearing next to gaming content, this potentially opens up a new opportunity for reaching the younger, ad-averse audiences.
Related: Spotify will reportedly integrate live audio into its main app [Engadget]; Twitch has paused its Boost Train feature, which launched last month and let people pay to promote streams, after being used to put NSFW content on users’ homepages [The Verge]
WhatsApp To launch Larger Discussion Groups Called “Communities” [TechCrunch]
Facebook finally brought Groups to its arguably least monetized property, WhatsApp. Beginning this week, WhatsApp is substantially expanding its services with a new tab that enables thousands of participants in a Community to host multiple sub-group chats — in a bid to help institutions and firms communicate on WhatsApp with a more structured format. CEO Mark Zuckerberg also noted in a Facebook post that users will be able to bring different groups together into one community -- for example, in addition to individual groups for different classes, you might have one overall community for parents at a school with a central place for announcements.
WhatsApp has always been a popular messaging app of choice for many global markets, and this new feature will further evolve how billions of users connect and engage with each other, especially with people they don’t know in real life but share a common interest with. It is not going to turn WhatsApp into a community-driven app like Discord or Reddit overnight, but it should open up an interesting new venue for brands to build a community and engage with their best customers.
Related: WhatsApp is getting emoji reactions [The Verge]; New social media app BeReal is trending at colleges as ‘casual Instagram’ [Bloomberg]
“In the three months through March, TikTok got more revenue from in-app payments than any app ever has.” Users spent $847 million — an increase of 184% from a year ago, Bloomberg, reports. Insider Intelligence estimates that TikTok’s ad revenue will combine that of Snap and Twitter combined this year,
Number of users opting in to App Tracking on iOS has grown significantly since last year, new research from Adjust shows. In May 2021, opt-in rates were at around 16%. Now that number has grown to 25%. When it comes to games, the number is even higher – 30% of users have allowed developers to collect their data for advertisements. Adjust notes that while consent rates vary from app to app, overall more users are seeing the value of receiving personalized advertisements.
CNN+ is reportedly struggling to gain viewers just two weeks out from its launch, according to a report from CNBC. People familiar with the matter told the outlet the platform is only raking in fewer than 10,000 viewers per day.
If you find our insights valuable and would like to have a deeper conversation on technology and media innovations, or need to sound smarter in a client meeting or a pitch, please feel free to reach out to our Group Director Josh Mallalieu!
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