eMarketer principal analyst Andrew Lipsman and vice president of content studio Paul Verna discuss the best and worst Super Bowl ads and whether they achieved their marketing objectives. They also talk about how many people tuned in to the game, how much advertisers spent and the most popular halftime show ever. They then examine Quibi's launch campaign, solo TV viewing and how much returns are costing retail.

The rise of digitally native, direct-to-consumer (D2C) businesses is one of the most transformative movements shaping the ecommerce landscape. In the coming years, many consumers intend to make a significant percentage of purchases with D2C brands, but there may be a ceiling.

An increasingly important part of companies’ messaging efforts is content marketing, which they rely on to build brand awareness and engagement, provide thought leadership, and tap into cultural conversations around particular trends and topics.

For years, advertisers and their partners have complained about a lack of transparency in programmatic transactions, leaving them open to a number of problems including outright fraud. Jeremy Steinberg, global head of ecosystem at MediaMath, joins host Nicole Perrin to discuss why accountability is still a challenge and how the supply chain can come together to create better, more mature programmatic markets.

While some US consumers are warming to the idea of making voice-based purchases via smart speakers, the number of those doing so is smaller than initially estimated. In our latest forecast on smart speaker users, we lowered our outlook for the number of smart speaker buyers (people making a purchase via a smart speaker) as well as the number of smart speaker users (people who use smart speakers for any purpose).

We estimate that slightly more than half of marketers (50.3%) will use LinkedIn for marketing and advertising purposes by 2021. This year, 49.6% of companies with 100+ employees will use the professional social media platform.

eMarketer junior analyst Blake Droesch and principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson discuss what to make of Facebook's Q4 2019 earnings. They also talk about Twitter's new threaded replies, Byte offering to share all its revenues with creators and YouTube's adjusted stance on political misinformation.

UK consumers continue to spend. However, as the realities of Brexit finally hit in 2020, the purse strings will tighten. And with ecommerce becoming an ever-greater portion of total UK retail sales, the effect on the high street will be marked. A hard delineation between the online and offline worlds isn’t necessarily helpful, though, as those lines between “clicks and bricks” continue to blur.

For our report on how the role of the CMO has changed in recent years, we asked more than 60 CMOs about their current priorities and what they’re planning for 2020. Our interviews covered everything from iHeartMedia’s CMO talking about the digital transformation of radio to Ryan Dell taking men’s lifestyle brand MVMT from online to offline.

Disregard talk that newest streaming service will be a “Netflix killer.” There is room for multiple streamers to succeed as consumers funnel more money to digital video subscriptions. Still, at some point, with so many streaming services entering the fray, Netflix and its competitors will have to deal with subscription fatigue. Eventually.

eMarketer was pleased to moderate a Tech-Talk Webinar presentation featuring Gurdeep Dhillon, global head of commercial marketing for the Adobe Experience Cloud. He shared why empathy will be the No. 1 driver of growth in the next five years.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom and principal analyst Nicole Perrin talk about the US political ad spending landscape. How much money is being spent, where and why? They then discuss smartphone voting, consumer attitudes on privacy jargon and how Google can profit from government search warrants.

The role of political advertising in social media will be a key discussion topic in 2020—an easy prediction to make. Kantar Media expects that US digital political ad spending will reach $1.2 billion this year, and we believe the social platforms that continue accepting political advertisers will be major beneficiaries of that spending.

eMarketer principal analyst Mark Dolliver and vice president of content studio Paul Verna talk about a new subscription ad-avoiding service, data privacy in 2020, TV show companion podcasts, Pinterest's new AR tool, giving up on newspapers, Atari-branded hotels and more.

eMarketer junior analyst Blake Droesch and principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson discuss how TikTok will handle the many hurdles it faces in 2020. They then talk about the "Off-Facebook Activity" tool, Facebook's first Super Bowl commercial and the plan for WhatsApp ads.