The deprecation of the third-party cookie in Chrome will be significantly disruptive for publishers that monetize their sites with advertising. Here’s how web publishers are preparing for a future without third-party cookies.

It’s also a region that has strong growth potential: In the Middle East and Africa, POS financing solutions accounted for 4.8% of all POS transactions last year, according to The 2021 Global Payments Report by Worldpay from FIS.

Long-time Olympics advertisers face controversy, waning viewership: Brands sponsoring the event are staying hushed to avoid upsetting domestic and international consumers.

Advertisers in the Middle East and North Africa spend more on social than on any other digital ad format. In 2020, $1.73 billion went to social advertising, more than double what the next biggest format, video, brought in.

In the Middle East and Africa, Messenger growth remains strong. Our first-ever forecast for the region shows the number of Messenger users will rise by 6.1% in 2021 to 131.0 million, making it the only region to register notable growth. (In North America, growth will be marginal at just 1.0%).

Nike files to trademark virtual goods as metaverse inches closer to reality: Many companies have already begun experimenting with branded digital items, but some are starting to take it more seriously as buzz around the metaverse intensifies.

eMarketer was pleased to moderate a Tech-Talk Webinar featuring AppsFlyer’s Chad Greenleaf, senior vice president, client services, and Barak Witkowski, vice president, product, along with Stash’s Tyler Pennell, vice president, growth. Together they shared valuable lessons learned throughout the iOS 14.5 readiness process, where the industry stands now, and best practices for a privacy-centric future.

Middle East and Africa. Outside of Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa represents the biggest growth engine for Snapchat, with impressive 28.4% growth slated for 2020—well up on our prior forecasts. However, penetration among internet users is much higher than in Asia-Pacific. Better-than-expected growth this year will see the Middle East and Africa outperform the global average of 16.1%.

Who’s winning the sprint to become a financial services super app: At Money20/20 USA, Insider Intelligence gave financial services executives an advance look at our upcoming matrix compiling some of the industry’s most comprehensive data about global financial services super apps.

With a $550M raise, the crypto as a service platform quadrupled its valuation to $8B as large companies increasingly seek out opportunities in digital currencies.

Middle East and Africa. Twitter penetration in the Middle East and Africa trails the worldwide average significantly and falls well short of other social platforms in the region. Twitter users amount to just 2.9% of internet users in the Middle East and Africa, well short of the worldwide average of 7.9%. A Fallen Social Star.