The pandemic ecommerce boom that drove online sales is over. But marketplaces will continue to expand their share of US retail ecommerce, contributing almost 40% of the $588 billion in US online sales growth that we forecast over the next five years.

Consumer packaged goods (CPG) brands have attempted to break into D2C ecommerce in recent years, to varying degrees of success. How can they avoid unprofitable strategies and develop a viable D2C ecommerce channel?

Heavy media consumption in Canada across digital and traditional channels has led to a range of effective ad formats for brands.

On today's episode, we discuss what AI-generated ads will look like, TikTok testing a new AI chatbot called Tako, Formula One finding a new way to advertise on its cars, ESPN offering its channel as a standalone streaming service, what using VR in a car will look like, visualizing the US workforce as 100 people, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our forecasting writer Ethan Cramer-Flood, director of forecasting Oscar Orozco, and analyst Max Willens.

BuzzFeed has created a commerce site for its lifestyle brand, Goodful, while Time has launched a platform for product recommendations and reviews. TikTok’s Pulse Premiere program offers publishers 50% of ad revenues and a brand safety guarantee.

Google put ads in its Search Generative Experience. YouTube has a new unskippable 30-second ad spot. HBO Max relaunched as Max. And The Kroger Co. is paving the way with in-store retail media. Here are what updates from these companies and more mean for advertisers.

YouTube is positioned to be an advertising powerhouse. It’s one of the original digital video players, courting advertisers at a time when connected TV advertising is climbing. The platform’s Google ties offer it a more trustworthy reputation in the US than TikTok. And use is already extremely high. But YouTube’s high standing also makes growth difficult. Here are five charts summarizing YouTube’s position and potential.

Social media and TV are the top channels that consumer packaged goods (CPG) consumers use to find new products, but in-store still plays an important role in product discovery. Meanwhile, Amazon and Walmart are fighting to capture share of CPG product searches, though in-store consumers are more likely to turn to Google for help.

On today's episode, we discuss what happens now that Montana has approved a ban on TikTok, what Amazon's AI chatbot might look like, why Meta got a record fine from the EU, what space advertising looks like, a Supreme Court ruling on an infamous internet law, how good humans are at multitasking, and more. Tune in to the discussion with our director of Briefings Jeremy Goldman, analyst Evelyn Mitchell, and vice president of Briefings Stephanie Taglianetti.

TikTok's privacy debacle deepens: Internal documents reveal ByteDance employees have been sharing user data on internal platform Lark, undermining the company's claims of robust security measures and stirring fresh concerns about potential security risks and ties to China

Alibaba and JD.com, China’s other ecommerce giants, never gained substantial traction in the US, partly due to their lack of spending to acquire customers. US-based Wish spent heavily on digital ads and rode the pandemic-driven ecommerce boom to an IPO—but has since lost its way.

Step one: Make sure you have the right data, said Chris Penn, co-founder and chief data scientist at Trust Insights. Also important is bringing in an attribution model to ensure a complete view of which marketing efforts are moving the needle. Lastly, be careful who you partner with—they may not be giving you the full story.

We slashed our 2023 US ad revenue estimates for almost every social platform. For Snapchat (revised down by $505.2 million), TikTok (down $649.0 million), and Twitter (down $991.0 million), the cuts are significant. For Pinterest (down $31.5 million) and Reddit (down $40.9 million), the cuts are smaller but still impactful—$40.9 million is nearly 10% of Reddit’s annual revenues.

Gen Zers are flocking to emerging payment methods, but card-based options, led by debit cards, remain supreme. Payment providers must align offerings with Gen Z’s preferences now as their spending power grows.

The rise of shopping apps selling ultralow-cost goods from China is drawing more value-driven US consumers. But are their strategies sustainable over the long term?

The US isn’t the only country with serious talks of TikTok bans. Japan, the UK, Germany, and France are all countries with over 15 million TikTok users each that could be left with a lot of time on their hands if TikTok bans succeed.

With user penetration nearly complete and time spent starting to plateau or decline on many platforms, social networks have run out of easy paths to incremental budget among their advertisers.

One-fourth of creators said they go live to their followers via YouTube, making it the most popular livestreaming app ahead of TikTok (18.7%), Facebook (17.4%), and Instagram (14.0%), per an April 2023 survey by The Influencer Marketing Factory.

On today's episode, we discuss the implications of Twitter's new CEO choice, what Tucker Carlson moving his show to the platform means for advertisers, and what to make of Twitter alternative Bluesky. "In Other News," we talk about the effect AI will have on social media and what to expect from TikTok's US shopping platform. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Jasmine Enberg.

The 2023 upfront market will likely be the last one transacted primarily on Nielsen’s legacy currency. A shift from traditional TV to digital video advertising is the main factor driving this change.