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The company is appointing David Trencher, from Reddit’s US operations, the head of sales for UK, EMEA, and Australia with plans to grow the UK office’s headcount by 50% this year. Maria Purcell, Facebook’s former head of commercial partnerships for EMEA, will join him as head of growth partnerships.

We estimate that this year, the average US adult will spend almost 48% of their digital media time with mobile apps—more than a quarter of total media time. The rise of CTV has meant only more digital time spent in cookieless environments.

UK regulators prune Meta’s walled garden: Meta has been ordered to sell Giphy, and new ownership could bring back the GIF database’s popular ad program, without the antitrust concerns.

The merger immediately raised concerns from UK regulators who had ordered Facebook to pause plans to integrate Giphy, which led to a lengthy court battle. The CMA fined Facebook $67 million in October for failing to provide information on the merger. This is the first time a Big Tech company like Meta has been ordered to divest its ownership of a business.

(People tend to spend less time on digital media in the summer months and more time on outdoor activities, leading to a dip in social media usage in general.).

The company announced in June that it would block ads from state-controlled media outlets targeted to people in the US. The move followed the introduction of labels on content from state-controlled media outlets, an initiative the company first announced several months ago. Along the same vein, Facebook has also expanded its ID verification to profiles with large audiences in the US.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver, junior analyst Blake Droesch, vice president of content studio Paul Verna, and senior analyst at Insider Intelligence Sara M. Watson discuss how social media might (actually) be regulated, social commerce, the ceiling for Disney+, Snapchat rolling out TikTok competitor "Spotlight," Spotify testing Snapchat-like Stories, Facebook paying UK publishers for news in 2021, why you should never trust a raven, and more.

eMarketer senior analyst Bill Fisher hosts principal analyst Karin von Abrams, senior analyst Paul Briggs, and research analyst at Insider Intelligence Man-Chung Cheung to discuss internet regulations worldwide: how Brexit will change UK internet rules, major EU antitrust cases, Canada's Consumer Privacy Protection Act (CPPA), why the Chinese government has turned its attention to homegrown tech giants, and more.