Lab Weekly - 09/12/2025
iPhone 17 event recap, Plus, the latest news about, Roblox, Amazon, Zoox, and more must-know news and stats
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What Marketers Need to Know about the iPhone 17 Event
Apple pitches creator-friendly camera features, new wearable health features, and live translation
In case you missed it…
On the Cultural Fatigue around AI
After years of breathless hype, the broader public is growing skeptical of the lofty promises of AI and increasingly critical of tech companies pushing AI without delivering tangible quality-of-life improvements. For brands, AI fatigue is starting to erode consumer trust.
Streaming Enters Its “Profitability Era” — What Comes Next?
Hollywood is finally figuring out how to make the streaming model work, and the numbers speak for themselves. Looking ahead, new bundling strategies and consolidations signal a new playbook for entertainment brands.
The Smart Home Ecosystem is Decaying — Can AI Save it?
Years of neglect, combined with the tech industry’s shifting focus to AI priorities, have left its smart home ecosystem crumbling. Looking ahead, both Google and Amazon plan to keep pushing more AI assistants into smart homes. Could AI be its savior?
Roblox Tests TikTok-Like App So Players Can Share Game Action [Bloomberg]
Roblox is rolling out Moments, a TikTok-style feed for 30-second vertical gameplay clips, with in-app editing, upcoming APIs and open-source code for discovery, plus an 8.5% payout raise for developers.
Embedding a short-video feed inside Roblox tightens the loop from playing to posting to discovery to spending. It gives developers lower-cost reach and opens the door to short-form ads, but success will depend on strong safety and moderation for minors and on whether Moments can capture attention from TikTok and YouTube Shorts rather than merely imitate them.
Related: Roblox increases its DevEx rate, letting creators earn 8.5% more when they convert their earned Robux into cash [Roblox]; Roblox launches text-to-speech and speech-to-text APIs, and AI tools [TechCrunch]
Amazon’s Zoox Enters Robotaxi Race with Las Vegas Rollout [Financial Times]
Amazon-owned Zoox is launching a limited public robotaxi service in Las Vegas, letting riders hail its self-driving shuttles between select stops along the 4.2-mile Vegas strip. Initial rides are free to seed adoption and gather feedback, with a broader San Francisco launch planned next.
The debut marks Zoox’s first public service and a milestone in its contest with Waymo and Tesla. Zoox received a federal exemption to operate its purpose-built vehicle with no steering wheel. The rollout comes as some legacy automakers have scaled back robotaxi efforts due to high costs. If successful, one could see Amazon can tackle things like last-mile delivery and Prime experiences through the Zoox fleet, potentially improving utilization and subsidizing consumer rides down the road.
Related: Uber will launch Blade helicopter rides next year through expanded Joby partnership [CNBC]; Amazon’s satellite internet venture signs up JetBlue as its first airline [WSJ]
Netflix, Amazon Set Alliance to Broaden Connected-TV Impressions for Ad Buyers [Variety]
Amazon and Netflix struck a deal to let brands buy Netflix ads through Amazon’s DSP starting in Q4 2025 across 11 markets—coming on the heels of Amazon’s Disney pact in June—and it lands as Netflix’s ad tier tops over 94 million global MAUs.
Connected-TV buying is consolidating around a handful of retail-media DSPs. By plugging into Amazon’s, Netflix gains self-serve demand and scale without building its own ad-tech stack, while independents such as The Trade Desk face added pressure. This should give Netflix a tailwind toward its 2025 goal of roughly doubling ad revenue, but cross-platform measurement and frequency management will remain to be solved.
Related: Disney, Amazon ink deal to expand advertising partnership [THR]; Class-action lawsuit over Amazon Prime Video ads tossed by judge [Variety]
Situational Awareness:
New OpenAI research says AI hallucinations are systemic, not a bug [PMNTS]
OpenAI just published a new paper arguing that AI systems hallucinate because standard training methods reward confident guessing over admitting uncertainty, potentially uncovering a path towards solving AI quality issues.
TikTok to launch in-app movie ticket purchasing with Fandango [Variety]
TikTok is adding in-app movie ticket purchases via a Fandango integration, debuting with Disney’s Tron: Ares. This upgrades #FilmTok from discovery to conversion, opening the door to creator-led ticket drops and new opening-weekend levers.
Microsoft and LG Are Bringing Xbox to Hyundai & Kia Cars [Gizmodo]
Microsoft announced a partnership with LG to bring its XboxCloud Gaming platform to cars that have LG-provided internet capabilities, which is currently available in Kia’s European electric vehicles, including the EV3, as well as in Hyundai Genesis models in LG’s home market of South Korea.
The global premium smartphone market’s unit sales grew 8% YoY in the first half of 2025, per data from Counterpoint Research. Most of the brands and regions grew in the segment, riding the “premiumization” trend. In particular, Apple grew 3% YoY, capturing over 62% of overall sales driven by gains in emerging markets.
YouTube’s coverage of the Brazil-set tilt between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Los Angeles Chargers drew an average-minute-audience of 17.3 million, according to data from Nielsen. By NFL standards, however, YouTube’s traffic was fairly pedestrian. The opening game of the 2025 slate, which took place the night before YouTube’s broadcast, hauled in a Nielsen rating of 28.3 million across NBC networks and Peacock.
The Wizard of Oz is drawing 4,000 to 5,000 fans to the Sphere in Las Vegas two or three times a day. Fans are paying an average of almost $200 apiece, according to Wolfe Research, Bloomberg reports. That means the movie is generating ticket sales of as much as $2 million a day from just the one location.
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 Ryan Miller, our Director of Partnerships, at ryan.miller@ipglab.com.
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