The connected TV giant’s focus on ad revenue and interoperability could give it an advantage over competitors like Amazon and Google in the smart home space.

A new Nest update will make Google’s smart home devices compatible with the Matter smart home standard. The move could add momentum towards a push for a unified smart home ecosystem and presents Google with access to a quickly growing supply of smart devices.

Mobile proximity and peer-to-peer (P2P) payments have hit the mainstream, thanks to a pandemic-driven upswing in digital payments that is set to last. This trend is leading providers to diversify their offerings and compete for share of the market.

Google dives deeper into ecommerce with Shopify: The two companies have worked out an integration that will give Shopify's merchants easy access to Google's suite of features, contributing to its over 1 billion daily shopping journeys.

Google I/O Day One: Wear OS, quantum computing, and 3D video conferencing were highlighted on the first day of Google’s annual developer conference.

The ad market in the UK suffered during 2020, but the decline in spending was only marginal as digital investment took up much of the slack. Indeed, the resilience of digital formats has been palpable amid the pandemic.

The duopoly of Facebook and Google still dominates digital ad revenues worldwide, but a collective rival from the ecommerce industry is showing momentum.

Google’s update to Google Pay includes enhancements to its Google Plex bank account—as big tech companies dive into banking, it jeopardizes the value proposition of digital-only banks like Chime and Varo.

Search had a challenging time during the pandemic. Spend grew just 5.3% to £7.34 billion ($9.41 billion) in 2020, down from 17.7% the previous year and significantly down on our pre-pandemic estimate of 12.2% growth. However, this latest forecast is a reversal on our interim August 2020 estimate, when we expected a decline of 1.7% for the year.

An expected economic recovery in 2021 bodes well for Canada’s advertising market.

Total ad spending in France and Germany took a big hit in 2020, as a result of the pandemic. But digital advertising bucked that trend and will lead a strong double-digit recovery in ad outlays during 2021.

Digital advertising confounded the conditions of the past year or so and will attract more than three-quarters of total media ad spending in 2021—£19.23 billion ($24.66 billion). Video has been the biggest driver of digital spend during this time.

Last year, China was the only market to see overall ad spending growth, although digital ad spending performed well almost everywhere. This year, every country will see growth in almost every category.

Traditionally, travel advertisers including online travel agencies are among the biggest search ad spenders on Google. That business tanked last year, but ecommerce-related search advertising outperformed thanks to the supercharged digital retail environment.