Phone outage cuts trio of big banks’ customer service: A Verizon toll-free number outage affected Wells Fargo, Capital One, and TD Bank on Wednesday. App-based alternatives could reduce US customers’ reliance on call centers and mitigate the risk of future outages.

PayPal users can make offline transactions using the wallet’s QR payment codes on select United flights—and Amex made it easier for customers to add their cards to PayPal.

Four years from now, eMarketer estimates that mcommerce will account for over 10.4% of all retail sales in the US. To take advantage of that growth, retailers will need to double down on their efforts to find and serve a mobile audience.

A child-centric PFM app could help NatWest influence a younger generation’s financial lives—and its unique value-add could reduce defection to proliferating switching incentives.

Since Alibaba held its first Singles’ Day in 2009, the event has grown into a shopping extravaganza that lasts for weeks and stretches across various platforms.

VR’s potential in digital therapeutics is muted thanks to barriers like cost and unclear efficacy: On the back of VR DTx startup MindMaze’s $125M, we detail the operational barriers stymieing it and its peers from making a wide scale impact in healthcare anytime soon.

IAC’s Dotdash acquires Meredith in a $2.7 billion deal: The move demonstrates that publishers see value in building deep verticalized content brands, hastened by the demise of the third-party cookie.

On today's episode, we discuss what the ramifications of Facebook going dark might be, the search for virtual reality's (VR) dopamine rush, how optimistic marketers should be, some new augmented reality sunglasses for binging TV, how to future proof your marketing, how to combat employee burnout, why there's still some hope for humanity, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer principal analyst Suzy Davidkhanian, director of reports editing Rahul Chadha, and director of forecasting at Insider Intelligence Oscar Orozco.

In the US, Hulu is the fastest-growing subscription streamer on connected TV devices, with the number of households that watch it via those devices rising by 53% between January 2020 and June 2021.

Following an announcement from YouTube Premium that they've hit 50 million subscribers worldwide, we have updated our US forecast to reflect the platforms uptick. We now forecast YouTube Premium will hit 29.5 million US subscribers by year-end 2021.

Gen Z spends more on clothing and cares more about political issues: A recent survey highlighted Gen Z spending habits that are behind the growth of social commerce and secondhand clothing and showed an increased rate of environmental consciousness.

Focusing on products could help social media companies like Facebook recover consumer trust: Consumers by and large distrust social media companies more than tech companies focused on products and services per a new survey.