Even as the U.S. starts to open up again, consumers are still shopping online, and Shopify, a leading commerce platform that lets merchants manage their online retail operations in-house, is well positioned to capture the growing online market as it continues to strike new partnerships.

The return of live sports produced a flurry of licensing activity from broadcast networks and streaming services—including digital video, social, and ecommerce platforms. It also reignited concerns about the sustainability of pricing models for sports video and TV.

Judges toss New York’s fintech charter challenge: An appeals court panel overturned a ruling that let the state’s Department of Financial Services challenge the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s special-purpose charter—a credential that would permit tech giants to offer banking services.

On today's episode, we discuss Amazon's Q1 advertising performance, where its ad dollars are coming from, the retail media competitors to watch out for, and whether a fourth digital ad giant will emerge. We then talk about why TV networks aren’t prioritizing programmatic as they move into the world of streaming, Verizon's new digital out-of-home ads, and why Netflix might be preparing to venture into the video game universe. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer senior forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Eric Haggstrom.

Amazon's antitrust debut: DC's lawsuit marks the company's first formal complaint by the US government—but with several probes ongoing and with Amazon continuing its rapid expansion, more suits are certain to come soon.

Why Google is still feeling lucky

Google gets health data deal with a top dog provider: The Big Tech co linked up with HCA Healthcare to boost its health records—though this cracks open another chance for Google to lock in its hold in healthcare, it’ll still contend with patient privacy concerns.

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.