Food and grocery delivery has spiked during the pandemic. Apps like SkipTheDishes, Uber Eats, and Instacart have gained new users who turned to delivery out of necessity. For marketers, these apps present a new opportunity to reach consumers with ad products rich in intent and location data.

This report summarizes our forecasts for nine countries—the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, China, India, Japan, and South Korea—and offers comparative analyses of the major time spent numbers for each.

Word of mouth trumps advertising: Intuit’s TurboTax massive deceptive ad settlement reflects a growing lack of trust consumers have in advertising.

Analysts expected ad revenue of $28.3 billion for Q1 2022, up more than 8% from a disappointing final quarter of 2021. It came close but, at $27.91 billion, fell short. Facebook is still reeling from the impact of Apple’s iOS anti-ad-tracking functionality which negates targeted ad tracking systems.

Workers at Canada-based Bioware—which itself is owned by Electronic Arts—have begun organizing with a Canadian labor group. Montreal-based Ubisoft is also facing internal strife and high-level departures over its workplace culture and focus on NFTs.

It’s unknown what percentage breakdown Meta is looking for between creator fees and advertising. Horizon recently announced Wendy’s as its first advertiser. The big takeaway: Meta sees its nascent metaverse delivering greater revenues as time passes. The question remains how long until it can account for a not-insignificant percentage of revenues.

Canada ramps up 5G security: Huawei and ZTE solutions are banned. Critics say the move comes a little too late as telecoms bear the burden of replacing without disruption by June 2024.

The number of social network users in Canada continues to climb, as a wider variety of platforms become available that can satisfy user appetites for information, entertainment, and personal expression.

As social network user counts reach new milestones, brand marketers can’t ignore this massive audience, its behaviors on different platforms, and the enhanced targeting capabilities now available from ad products.

Social network user numbers are still rising in the US, UK, and Canada—albeit slowly. This is to be expected as the social media market matures. But the user makeup of the main platforms is changing, and there’s more competition.