Lab Weekly - 12/06/2024
The Impact of Trump’s re-election on tech; New podcast episode on holiday shopping trends; Plus, the latest news on generative AI, shoppable content & more
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What the Incoming Trump Administration Means for Tech & Innovations
Everything from antitrust & AI regulations to trust in legacy media, this presidential election’s effects will be felt across every sector of the tech world.
In case you missed it…
The Battle is On for Control over the AI Narrative
So, is the AI bubble about to burst, or are we about to welcome our new AI overlord?
The Homebody Economy
The many reasons for young people to stay home, and how brands can cater to them at home and beyond
The AI Agents Are Coming — Is Your Brand Ready?
Exploring what moving on from AI chatbots to agentic AI systems might mean for brands
Episode 164: 2024 Holiday Shopping Trends
Tis the season again, and the Lab is here to discuss the latest shopping trends that we think brands should keep an eye out for this year. From a renewed emphasis on experiential in-store shopping to interesting loyalty plays, not to mention the new entrants like Amazon Haul and metaverse shopping, there’s no shortage of interesting things for Adam and Chelsea to talk about. Listen now to learn more about the latest trends in retail and shopper behaviors.
If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on LinkedIn and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!
Spotify Wrapped 2024 Adds An AI Podcast Powered by Google’s NotebookLM [TechCrunch]
Spotify Wrapped dropped yesterday, offering users a detailed and sharable recap of their listening habits. As the platform’s annual holiday marketing campaign, Spotify tapped into some AI features, most notably via a partnership with Google to create an AI-generated podcast personalized to users based on their listening data and powered by NotebookLM. Podcasts are a key testing ground for AI on Spotify. The company has tested AI translations of shows to expand their reach to foreign audiences. This hyper-personalized AI recap runs about 4 minutes each and features two AI “hosts” chatting in an NPR-adjacent style about the user’s music preferences.
User reactions to this new Wrapped offering has been decidedly mixed, underlining the divided public opinion towards AI content. Many cultural commentators were quick to denounce the feature as “joyless,” “weird,” and “creepier than you think.” But in a world where some people are forming intimate relationships with AI companion bots, one certainly can’t blame Spotify for trying out NotebookLM, which is quite remarkable at generating naturalistic-sounding, conversational audio. Perhaps the misalignment is happening at the type of content in this case — after all, few people would love hearing their own music taste being dissected by others, let alone two AI bots.
Related: Spotify unveils new features, including uninterrupted video podcasts, audience-driven payments, and the new Spotify for Creators platform [Spotify]
McDonald’s Is Trying To Bring Back NFTs [Gizmodo] &
Nike to Shut Down Virtual Sneaker Label RTFKT [Bloomberg]
By juxtaposing these two news stories next to each other, I hope to illustrate this confusing era of brands experimenting with NFTs, and digital goods at large, that we’ve found ourselves in. McDonald’s is partnering with Doodles, a web3 project, to put animated characters on its McCafe coffee cups for a limited time. Clearly, the QSR brand sees NFTs as a way to reignite engagement with younger audiences who are immersed in digital culture and more open to digital collectibles.
Meanwhile, Nike’s move suggests that even for major brands, the initial hype around NFTs may not always translate into sustainable business models. RTFKT was an early success story of digital collectibles, attracting both sneakerheads and Web3 enthusiasts. But the decision to shut it down could reflect broader concerns about profitability and scalability.
This turbulence in brand strategies is happening against the backdrop of a broader crypto revival. The re-election of Trump, with his administration's crypto-friendly cabinet appointments. is energizing the market. Speculations on a pro-crypto regulatory environment have led to Bitcoin reaching $100,000 in value for the first time this week. It’d seem that this bullish sentiment is starting to spill over into NFTs and digital goods, even as skepticism about their long-term value persists.
Related: Viral influencer Haliey Welch's Hawk Tuah memecoin sparks outrage across social media as it briefly pumped to a peak market cap of $490 million and then dumped 90%+ [Cointelegraph]
Google’s New Generative AI Video Model Is Now Available [The Verge]
It’s interesting that Google has beat OpenAI’s Sora to market with Veo, its own generative AI video model, now available in a private preview via Google’s Vertex AI platform. Veo initially debuted in May, three months after OpenAI showed off Sora. This means that brands and creators with access to the Vertex AI program can now test Veo in their creative process with on-demand video generation based on text prompts. Already, we’re seeing AI-generated content popping up in ads like Coca-Cola’s recent holiday campaign.
Related: OpenAI’s ‘ship-mas’ starts with $200 ChatGPT Pro subscription [The Verge]; Google rolls out its Gemini AI-powered video presentation app [The Verge]
Situational Awareness:
Threads takes an important baby step toward true fediverse integration [The Verge]
A baby step in the right direction! If this keeps up and more social platforms join the fediverse, effectively making posts platform-agnostic in the process, soon we won’t be arguing over which social platform people will migrate to due to network effects, but rather which federated platform has the best user interface.
Walmart closes $2.3 billion acquisition of Vizio [Variety]
This acquisition is set to push Vizio TVs (and its ad business) into more households, thanks to Walmart’s unparalleled retail footprint. I’m curious to see how this might mean for Roku’s TV sales at Walmart locations, and how it might impact Roku’s ad business. Remember, choosing which smart TV brand to buy these days also means which platform’s ads you’ll have to deal with.
Walmart and Roku made a whole Christmas movie just to sell you stuff [The Verge]
This movie builds upon Walmart's previous experiment with "Add to Heart," a shoppable rom-com series released last year. Let’s be real, the true holiday spirit has always been consumerism. In an age of doom-spending and Chick-Fil-A launching a streaming service with original content, what’s the harm of one more shoppable holiday flick?
Perplexity introduces a shopping feature for Pro users in the US [TechCrunch]
Besides shoppable entertainment, AI answer machines are also trying to monetize with shopping recommendations and links. Perplexity is the first major AI startup to launch this AI shopping agent feature. While TechCrunch found that it might “take hours to process purchases,” it’s important to remember that we are still at the early stages of AI agent deployment.
Apple in talks to upgrade a sports stadium for live Vision Pro immersive video [9to5Mac]
They really could’ve done this a year ago before launching the Vision Pro, as it’d likely have produced compelling immersive content. Now the word on the street is that Apple is looking to discontinue Vision Pro production by the end of 2024, and instead pivoting to developing a cheaper headset. Still, as long as Apple is committed to its immersive video format, it’s “better later than never” for them to develop some must-see content.
The holiday shopping season is off to a booming start. Salesforce says online Thanksgiving day sales grew 6% YoY to $33.6 billion globally and 8% YoY to $8.1 billion in the US; Adobe says U.S. online sales grew 9% YoY to $6.1 billion, TechCrunch reports. Meanwhile, online Black Friday sales grew 5% YoY to $74.4 billion globally, including $17.5 billion in the US, up 7% YoY, per Salesforce tracking. Meanwhile, Adobe said that shoppers spent $13.3 billion online in the U.S. on Cyber Monday.
The social media landscape is shifting. Following Bluesky’s rapid growth to 24 million users since the U.S. election, Meta says Threads, its X alternative, saw 35 million new signups since November 1 and is now going on three months of 1 million signups per day; Threads had 275 million MAUs in Q3 2024, per Axios.
That viral LinkedIn post that you read could very well be written by AI, as research by AI detection startup Originality AI found that over 54% of longer English-language posts on LinkedIn are likely AI-generated, Wired reports.
Netflix’s entry into the live content business has been backed by another success — The streamer says 60 million households watched the Paul vs. Tyson boxing bout live around the world, peaking at 65 million concurrent streams, Bloomberg reports.
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 Chelsea Freitas, our VP of Strategy, at chelsea@ipglab.com.
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