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Location-Based Strategies for Social Media
by Jamie Crick, Managing Director, APAC
TL;DR
In a hurry? Here's our pick of the top news items of the week.
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Google Ads now supports importing fractional, cross-channel conversion credits from GA4 properties. (Search Engine Journal)
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Instagram has given users the ability to add up to five links in their bio. (Social Media Today)
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Google announced breakthrough advances in their AI search engine's attention to long-form language, improving the accuracy and specificity of its results. (NYT)
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AMC will roll out a less expensive ad-supported tier of AMC+ later this year. (THR)
Audiences
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Roughly half of US adults have listened to a podcast in the past year, including one-in-five who listen to podcasts at least a few times a week. (Pew)
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US remote workers are nearly twice as likely as office workers to order groceries online. (Morning Consult)
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Nearly two-thirds of US Millennial and Gen Z consumers have canceled a streaming subscription in the past six months. (Deloitte)
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British households cancelled almost 170K streaming service subscriptions in Q1. (Guardian)
Platforms
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Heardle is being dropped by Spotify less than a year after the music streamer acquired it. (AP)
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Meta is testing two new advertising tools to boost performance for retailers and e-commerce advertisers. (Modern Retail)
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Montana became the first state to approve a comprehensive ban of TikTok. (NPR)
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Samsung is considering dropping Google as the default search engine on its phones. (NYT)
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To promote its new limited series “The Last Thing He Told Me,” Apple has waived its “no free trial” policy and is offering a 2-month trial. (Apple)
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Netflix added 1.75M subscribers in Q1, including 1.46M subscribers in Asia-Pacific, 100K in the US and Canada, and 640K in EMEA. It lost 450K in Latin America. (Fortune)
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Meta opened its Horizon Worlds VR app to teenagers (ages 13-17), aiming to increase the number of metaverse users. (WSJ)
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Netflix delayed its password-sharing crackdown to sometime before July. (The Verge)
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Apple won't be introducing many features in iOS 17, but it will soon be putting in elements to enable the side-loading of apps. (Apple Insider)
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After failing to reach a new deal, HBO has pulled its entire content library off of Disney+ Hotstar, leaving Indians with no legal way to watch HBO content. (Rest of World)
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Finnish video game maker Rovio Entertainment has agreed to a $775M sale to Sega. (THR)
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AVOD and FAST advertising revenues reached €255M in the EU5 (France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom) last year. (Senal News)
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Netflix will shut down its DVD rental business in September. (Engadget)
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Disney has entirely sold out of advertising for the first day of the NFL Draft. (AdAge)
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Twitter began removing blue checkmarks from all legacy users on April 20th. (The Verge)
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Cookie deprivation has led to an 8% YoY increase in contextual targeting spend. (Performance Marketing World)
Content
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Lionsgate is developing a TV series based on the "Twilight" book series. (THR)
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AMC will be starting production on a third, currently unnamed full-length TV series in its “Anne Rice’s Immortal Universe." (Gizmodo)
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Peacock will debut "Love Island Games," a spinoff of the reality show series "Love Island." (THR)
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Late night shows hosted by Jimmy Fallon, Jimmy Kimmel and Stephen Colbert are seeing a decline in TV viewership. (Variety)
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“The Super Mario Bros. Movie” scored the best second weekend ever for an animated movie in North American theaters with $87M in ticket sales. (AP)
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Disney+ is adding the first wave of Spiderman movies to its US catalog in the next few weeks. (Engadget)
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Moonbug Entertainment Ltd. is working with DreamWorks Animation to create a CoComelon film and aims to release the picture in theaters. (Bloomberg)
Tech & AI
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A song that uses AI to clone the voices of Drake and The Weeknd went viral on social media, though the song has since been taken down. (BBC)
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Snapchat is partnering with Live Nation to present an AR concert series. (The Wrap)
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Reddit will charge companies and organizations to access its data given so much is being used to train AI chatbots. (Fortune)
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Snapchat's AI chatbot will now be able to respond to users' messages with a fully AI-generated image. (Reuters)
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An acclaimed photographer admitted that their prize-winning image was actually generated using AI. (Guardian)
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Google is experimenting with AI technology to optimize ad targeting without third-party cookies. (Media Post)
Location-based entertainment
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Blackpink released additional concert dates for their "Born Pink" Encore tour this year. (Billboard)
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Nightlife and dining brand Tao Group Hospitality will be sold to Mohari Hospitality Ltd. (Bloomberg)
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Frank Ocean canceled his Coachella Weekend 2 performance due to an injury. (Variety)
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Apple opened its first retail store in India, yet customers continued to face challenges due to limited services and pricing issues. (Tech Crunch)
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Disneyland’s Disneyland After Dark series has been set to host its first-ever Pride celebrations this June. (Deadline)
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WWE partnered with Fanatics to handle on-site retail at live events like WrestleMania and the Royal Rumble. (CNBC)
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Films directed by Chelsea Peretti, David Duchovny and Michael Shannon will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival. (AP)
