Meta is making a modest step into physical retail: Facebook’s parent company is opening a store on its Burlingame, California, campus to let consumers try its metaverse hardware products.

Brands and retailers prioritize sustainability for Earth Day, but actions speak louder than words: Amazon, Apple, and Coca-Cola are some of the brands touting their green initiatives this April amid growing consumer concern over the environment.

Ad impressions also grew by 27% on Roku, 27% on Samsung, 43% on LG, and 49% on Amazon. (Vizio and Roku make more profit from their advertising and data divisions than they do from their device sales.). CTV revenues grew 51% YoY in Q3 2021 for Magnite. In a June 2021 survey of US marketers by TVSquared, more than 7 in 10 respondents said that they bought CTV programmatically.

Brands accustomed to defending their search position and conquesting from their rivals on Google must now adapt these strategies to Amazon, if they aren’t already. Amazon will mount a stronger attack on Facebook’s display ad dominance.

The combined market capitalization of four big US tech companies—Apple, Google, Amazon, and Facebook—grew by much more, surging from $500 billion to $6.9 trillion. Banks’ share of mortgages originated crashed, dropping from 91% to only 32%. Meanwhile, nonbanks’ share surged from 9% to 68%.

Beyond the chart: The leader in this increasingly stagnant market is Amazon. Per our forecast, 19.4% of the US population will be monthly Amazon Echo users in 2022, and that figure will rise only slightly to reach 20.0% in 2025 as other brands like Apple grow in this space. Overall, consumers most commonly turn to smart speakers for simple tasks like playing music.

Another key for brands will be optimizing for the IoT experience, such as orienting websites to search by spoken question rather than typed terms. Smart home devices enable brands to lock in consumers through subscriptions and replenishment sales for products ranging from groceries to ink.

Internationally, there are four major destinations for digital ad revenues: Google, Facebook, and the retail ecommerce twosome of Alibaba and Amazon. The latter are somewhat less global: Alibaba gets most of its ad income from China, while Amazon gets most of its ad revenues from the US.

During a recent Insider Intelligence webinar about strategies for commerce success on TikTok, three questions rose to the top. Here, principal analysts Jasmine Enberg and Debbie Williamson weigh in on them.

TikTok is the social commerce platform of the moment, as brands and marketers look to cash in on the #TikTokMadeMeBuyIt phenomenon. While TikTok may not have as large a shopper base as Facebook or Instagram, its shoppers are highly active and engaged.

Netflix, Amazon, and other global players will strive to build on highly engaged audiences that emerged during the pandemic. New subscriber numbers are tailing off somewhat after booming in 2020, when penetration of paid-for video significantly closed the gap with TV in many countries.

Our exclusive primary research survey reveals which platforms US social media users feel most comfortable buying on, and why trust is essential for the future growth of social commerce.

Comcast and Amazon released their own smart TVs. Google revamped Chromecast and expanded its licensing deals with TV-makers. A few TV manufacturers became more active in building out their ad businesses. In the CTV device market, the heat is on. Prediction. More companies will build CTV operating systems. Most TV-makers have outsourced their operating systems to Amazon, Roku, and Google.

The news: The Matter smart home standard co-developed by Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung, and various other companies will be delayed. What this means: Smart home standards have been a tangled mess, with dozens of companies pushing their own protocols for a variety of IoT devices including smart lights, thermostats, locks, security cameras, and appliances.

Screenshop in Scan: At its annual partner summit in May, Snap announced it had added Screenshop to Scan, its visual search feature. That will help create more accurate visualizations of clothing while shopping in the app. AR try-on: Snapchat has introduced a slew of upgrades to its AR try-on feature, including:. Wrist-tracking technology for watch and jewelry brands.

Amazon plans to have a moderation team to review reports of bad actors and take action in real time. Amp plans to introduce many more capabilities in the future, including Alexa integrations and other search and discovery features that will connect listeners with creators.

The bigger picture: Although the overall share of union membership in the US has fallen in the past several decades, the labor movement is gaining steam in the tech industry with workers at companies like Apple, Amazon, and Tesla seeking membership, and workers at Google, Raven Software, and Activision Blizzard unionizing.

Amazon has offered its services to Ukraine, including logistics to help deliver needed supplies and cybersecurity support for the government and companies.

Amazon Halo comes with fewer features, and accordingly the lowest prices ($79.99 for the View, which includes a screen, and $99.99 for the Band). Adding more sophisticated sensors means added costs, presumably, and it will be a real test to see if consumers are willing to pay for them.

Advertising on Facebook has become more challenging due to Apple’s AppTrackingTransparency framework in iOS 14.5. Here’s how advertisers are adapting their strategies in the post-IDFA reality.