Following a banner year, US ad spending in 2022 will be shaped by three key trends: Linear TV crossing the Rubicon, a billionaires’ club emerging in connected TV (CTV), and ecommerce ad spending enriching Google, Amazon, and a crop of newcomers in search and retail media.

This year’s highly anticipated Google I/O developer’s conference kicked off yesterday and all eyes were on the announcement of the new Pixel 6a, Pixel Watch, and Android 13, which were all covered along with updates to various Google Search, Maps, and Translate services.

Search advertising is the oldest form of digital promotion, with roots in Google’s rise during the late 1990s. Search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) were disciplines that brought legitimacy to digital marketing departments. The sustained performance of search to this day is a big part of why Google remains such a powerful digital ad platform.

Google, Meta to get boost from Western Europe digital ad spending: Total category expenditures to exceed $90 billion this year, fueled by appeal of search and display formats.

Google pushing search marketers toward next-gen measurement: Expected 2023 sunset of Universal Analytics draws social media boos, but signals need to adopt GA4.

US consumers pined for pre-pandemic pleasures in Q4 2021, with the delta wave receding and omicron just entering the frame—and it showed in their search behavior. Organic Google search visits to travel sites increased 41% year over year that quarter. Meanwhile, retail and consumer goods took a hit: Visits to those sites decreased 14% as the prospects of in-store shopping improved.

Google’s EU antitrust woes multiply: Sweden’s PriceRunner sues Google for skewing search results toward its own shopping service. The move could prompt more legal action from European shopping services.

On today's episode, we discuss when cable households will dip below 50%, an alternative search engine to Google, clickable podcast ads on Spotify, what the "superest" super app is in the West, the biggest takeaways from CES 2022, some uncommon knowledge about sustainability, where sunglasses originally came from, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst Paul Verna, analyst Blake Droesch, and director of reports editing at Insider Intelligence Rahul Chadha.

Did Google pay Apple to stay out of the search game? A new lawsuit claims so: Antitrust scrutiny heats up on Big Tech ballooning unchecked into trillion-dollar firms.

Doctor search and booking company Sesame Health raised $27M as patients lose loyalty to physicians—especially if they have lousy ratings online.

Big Tech post-Roe: As tech giants like Google respond to abortion rights loss, they face a quagmire of choices about strengthening digital privacy, censorship, and where to do business.

Consumers want control over their ad experiences: Google is taking steps toward greater personalization, but new data suggests that personalization experiences don’t always yield better results for advertisers.

Bipartisan anti-Google bill doesn’t bode well: The measure may not become law, but support for it could be a sign that tech regulation may eventually materialize.

Deepfake AI training blocked at Google: Some face-altering AI models are being refused but others can still run in Google’s Colaboratory, revealing a porous approach to AI self-regulation.

On today's episode, in our "Retail Me This, Retail Me That" segment, we discuss how shoppers and retailers use Google and why the company's previous investments in the ecommerce space haven't worked out so well. Then for "Pop-Up Rankings," we rank the top three winning Google shopping features and discuss one feature we expect to fizzle out. Join our analyst Sara Lebow as she hosts analysts Sky Canaves and Yory Wurmser.

Google encroaches on Apple in wearable-based clinical research: A study in partnership with the University of Oregon hopes to learn how smartphone use impacts wellbeing. We detail how it helps Google make inroads into health studies.

An underdog’s cloud effort: Google gives expanding its cloud market share another try with its AlloyDB database service that’s priced to sell. Its other cloud products could reap benefits too.