Chinese companies can learn much about metaverse from US counterparts: Heavy tech regulations in the country have slowed tech firm’s ventures into the virtual world.

Brands test new marketing strategies ahead of Valentine’s Day surge: Spending on the romantic holiday will increase thanks to single and coupled consumers.

On today's episode, we discuss the reasons the metaverse will get held back and why it might not end up being the next version of the internet. Then for "In Other News," we talk about the main reason shoppers abandon their carts and why people buy things on Amazon. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Andrew Lipsman.

Meta’s future is muddled by declining Facebook users, slow metaverse adoption and a beleaguered ad model: In response to TikTok's success, Meta will shift focus to video, but will the reactionary move be enough to recover losses?

Meta’s earnings miss shows the vulnerability of its ad revenue model: The company could be in for a $10 billion hit from Apple’s privacy changes, and the rise of TikTok isn’t helping.

AR, VR, and video games present opportunities that marketers can tap into right now.

On today's episode, we discuss how buy now, pay later (BNPL) adoption will continue to evolve and what's next for these services. We then talk about what retailers' first step into the metaverse should look like and what retailers should be doing with their avalanche of returns. Tune in to the discussion with our analyst Sky Canaves.

Veriff’s $100M round follows several other similar players’ mega-rounds. But digital ID regtechs will find differentiation increasingly hard.

Read the latest Insider Intelligence stories about the metaverse.

ES: Pricing, performance, and ease of use dictated who owned the market in the early days of personal computing. Today, VR ecosystems and platforms continue that trend as the metaverse takes shape: Consumers, developers, and content producers will eventually decide the future of the metaverse, but they will be limited by hardware’s capabilities. We look at the state of VR hardware, the key players, and how gaming could serve as a gateway to VR/AR adoption.

Retail ventures into the metaverse: Sentiment at annual industry show suggests the metaverse may already be too big to fail.

Leaders from Pandora, Roblox, Riot Games, and more are banding together to make the metaverse safer: Lack of Big Tech support could make implementation impossible.

We break down the metaverse and how it can define the future of computing, gaming, finance, social media, and business: AR and VR technologies, expanding virtual platforms and ecosystems, as well as an appetite for more immersive experiences are pushing the boundaries of reality into the virtual world.

The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2022 featured a reimagined world of commerce and marketing: The products displayed in Las Vegas last week revealed new ways for marketers to blend the physical and virtual worlds.

Meta could have created its own AR/VR OS but chose to use a modified version of Google’s Android: Short-term convenience could lead to long-term problems in the metaverse.

Facebook, now Meta, has pushed the idea of the metaverse into the mainstream. Investment into the still-novel concept, which has seen resources poured into augmented reality and virtual reality devices, is driving the top five tech trends for the year ahead.

Rounding up news from the last days of 2021: The news cycle didn’t stop over the holidays. These are some of the most notable stories from the last two weeks.