Lab Weekly - 10/07/2022
Reassessing the cloud gaming space following Google shutting down Stadia; Plus, the latest news from xx, as well as must-know stats roundup
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Reassessing the Cloud Gaming Narrative
Decoding what the demise of Google Stadia means for the future of cloud gaming
In case you missed it…
Charting the U.S. Logistics Competitve Landscape
The U.S. logistics landscape is in a rather dynamic, fluid state, as seemingly every major retailer starts to realize the importance of owning a robust backend operation to implementing omnichannel strategies.
Roblox Opens for Ad Business
Here’s what marketers need to know about the metaverse-aspiring game and its new ad platform. Also, now that Roblox has opened the in-game ad floodgate, will its competitors follow suit?
The Future of On-Demand Commerce
From mobile wallet integration to automated delivery bot, to the micro-fulfilment centers that are powering ultra-fast local grocery delivery services, the innovations in on-demand delivery is key to meeting consumer expectations and future-proofing the brand experience you offer.
TikTok To Partner With TalkShopLive For U.S. Live Shopping [Financial Times]
TikTok has reportedly found a new partner to push live commerce into the U.S. market, which is significant news given earlier reports this summer that the company was abandoning its planned social commerce initiatives in the North American markets as the initial push of adding shopping features failed to gain traction in European test markets. Around the same time, Meta shut down Facebook’s live commerce shopping program one month after sister site Instagram axed its affiliate commerce program. This market shift, combined with the reports around Instagram’s troubled app reconfiguration, was generating a lot of doom and gloom around the future of social commerce at the time.
But as we noted in an article on this topic published in October last year, there is a robust crop of social commerce startups, including NTWRK, ShopShops, and yes, TalkShopLive, that are developing the infrastructure needed for live commerce to flourish in the U.S. So it is encouraging to see TikTok give live shopping another push by teaming up with one of the technical leaders in the space. Though adoption barriers on user behavior and mobile payment integration still persist, at least the user experience would be improved. And while fashion and beauty have the highest percentage of brands leveraging live commerce, emerging opportunities exist for brands in every industry vector.
Related: Walmart Connect Is offering closed-loop measurement on TikTok, Snapchat and Roku [AdExchange]; TikTok adds new editing tools to adjust clips, sounds, images and text [TechCrunch]
Lululemon Takes On Hybrid Workouts With New Fitness Membership [CNET]
This rebranding of The Mirror, which Lululemon acquired for $500 million back in June 2020, is a significant move of an athleisure apparel branding fully embracing a lifestyle-oriented brand extension through subscription-based digital services. Besides selling the Mirror (now renamed Lululemon Studio) at half the cost of a Peloton bike, Lululemon is also bundling in other perks into its digital workout subscription service, such as 10% off almost all Lululemon purchases and free in-person fitness classes at select Lululemon stores. Interestingly, the $39 per month subscription will also give Lululemon Studio users 20% off fitness classes at any of Lululemon’s eight new gym partners, which effectively make Lululemon Studio an aggregator and customer acquisition channel for these gyms, while also extending its offer into the offline world.
Related: Peloton loses lawsuit against Lululemon over new apparel line [Reuters]; SoulCycle is closing 25% of its studios [CNN]
Google Answers Meta’s Video-Generating AI With Imagen Video [TechCrunch]
Following OpenAI granting all users immediate access to Dall-E 2, and Meta unveiling its text-to-video AI generator Make-A-Video last week, the wave of synthetic media tools continues this week with Google unveiling its own video-generating tool, dubbed Imagen Video, which reportedly builds on its existing text-to-image program Imagen, but adding new components that can string together static images into a short video. Google claims that Imagen Video is a step toward a system with a “high degree of controllability” and world knowledge, including the ability to generate footage in a range of artistic styles. As the global market leader in AI research, it is unsurprising that Google would already have a functional text-to-video generator in the works. But as the recent analysis around Google’s decision to shut down Stadia has shown, finding the right market fit and the right business model to support its cutting-edge creations would be a far bigger challenge for the company.
Related: TikTok now offers a very basic text-to-image AI generator directly in the app [The Verge]; Meta’s Make-A-Video AI achieves a new, nightmarish state of the art [TechCrunch]
Trading volumes in nonfungible tokens -- digital art and collectibles recorded on blockchains -- have tumbled 97% from a record high in January this year. They slid to just $466 million in September from $17 billion at the start of 2022, according to data from Dune Analytics, Bloomberg reports. The fading NFT mania is part of a wider, $2 trillion wipeout in the crypto sector as rapidly tightening monetary policy starves speculative assets of investment flows.
Roughly two-thirds (65.3%) of EV-owning households that bought a new car in 2022 got another electric vehicle, according to the vehicle registration data from S&P Global Mobility, Axios reports. That's up sharply from the second quarter of 2021, when about 48% of EV-owning households in the market for a new car bought another EV, revealing a growing embrace of EVs in the U.S.
The youngest generation of adults is love tech companies, so ir’s unsurpising that YouTube, Google, Netflix and Amazon are among their four favorite corporate brands, a new Morning Consult survey finds.
Source: Morning Consult via Axios
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