Digital advertising will drive total media ad spending in Western Europe toward $150 billion in 2022, as brands scramble for advantage in a rapidly changing world.

Nearly every country in the world will see slower growth in total ad spending and digital ad spending than it did last year, but the comparison is an unfair one because 2021 was abnormal. The outlook is mostly bright.

How should businesses view these global trends and events? How are behaviors and spending changing? In this report, Insider Intelligence analysts weigh in on the questions they’re being asked by both clients and the media about the shifting landscape in key areas like digital advertising, retail and ecommerce, and financial services.

On today's episode, we discuss how many people are cryptocurrency owners, which direct-to-consumer companies are leading the category, and what Meta's overall ad revenues total up to. "In Other News," we talk about the number of people who aren't using the internet and whether consumer enthusiasm for DoorDash will remain high. Tune in to the discussion with our analysts Whitney Birdsall and Nazmul Islam.

Twitter has started a gentle decline in US users. The social media app peaked in 2021 with 57.8 million monthly US users. This year, that figure will flutter downward by 0.5%, hitting 57.5 million by year-end. But it's not all a decline for the platform.

While Instagram giveth, Facebook taketh away. The Meta-owned platforms face diverging futures. Instagram's US user base will increase by 4.0% this year to 128.3 million, while Facebook's will decline by 0.8% to 178.3 million.

Big Tech gets corrected: Tech industry stocks have taken a beating so far in 2022, but given the pandemic’s upheaval, it shouldn’t come as a surprise. Another reincarnation looms.

Payment provider innovation across remittances, B2B payments, and retail card and noncard payments is setting a long-term growth runway. In the short term, providers must navigate a host of obstacles to enable more crypto users to become crypto payers—and so far they’re succeeding.

Cost-cutting and layoffs could hurt employer branding: Companies risk losing their employer reputations as they scale back to protect profitability.

A wave of cost-cutting layoffs is coming: GoPuff, Thrasio, and Reef are among the companies rethinking their staffing levels as they shift focus to profitability.

US TikTok users will spend more time with the social media platform this year than YouTube users will spend on YouTube. This difference will be just about a fraction of a minute but will expand in years to come.

Two years in, Meta’s latest ecommerce effort fails to resonate: Ecommerce could soften the blow to its ad business, but it’s struggling to catch on.

Join our analysts Debra Aho Williamson and Andrew Lipsman as they analyze the three legs of Meta's advertising stool—usage, monetization, and commerce—in the wake of the social media giant's Q1 2022 earnings. Get their "Behind the Numbers" take on what's really going on with Meta's business and what it means for the company's future.

Two years in, Meta’s latest ecommerce effort fails to resonate: Retailers are frustrated by the lack of basic elements, such as the ability to display products in multiple colors.

On today's episode, we discuss what to make of Meta's turnaround user growth and slowing ad sales. "In Other News," we talk about the most important thing to pay attention to when it comes to influencers this year and whether Reels is Facebook's future. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Jasmine Enberg.

Meta earnings didn’t quite disappoint: After a particularly challenging prior quarter, Meta didn’t quite right the ship, but it did staunch the bleeding.

Meta released its Q1 2022 earnings, revealing the company's slowest revenue growth since going public, for a total of $27.91 billion. Daily active users bounced back by 30 million users to 1.96 billion, following the platform’s first-ever drop in Q4 2021.

Meta is making a modest step into physical retail: Facebook’s parent company is opening a store on its Burlingame, California, campus to let consumers try its metaverse hardware products.

Contractual issues have reportedly stalled its plans to let users send money to businesses via WhatsApp.

‘This is what we’ve always needed’: We talk with Delta CleanTech’s Lionel Kambeitz about what Big Tech’s plan to invest $925 million in carbon removal technologies means for his industry.