Media & Entertainment

China’s Singles’ Day is no longer just a discount shopping event, as participating digital giants are now leveraging livestreams, new product launches, and novel technologies to enhance customer engagement and the buying experience.

eMarketer principal analysts Mark Dolliver, Nicole Perrin, and Yory Wurmser join vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna to discuss what a revised Section 230 might look like, the pivot to localized and loyalty-based marketing next year, re-reclassifying Uber and Lyft drivers in California, the changing tides of media ad spending, AMC Theatres being close to the edge, how an apple and an onion can taste the same, and more.

eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson, junior analyst Blake Droesch, and forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Eric Haggstrom discuss the surprising and unsurprising elements of Facebook's Q3 earnings. They then talk about Facebook's new "Neighborhoods" feature, the Facebook "Oversight Board" going live, and the threat to social networks that gaming poses.

The large increase in live video viewers is one of the biggest digital media growth stories of the pandemic.

eMarketer principal analyst Debra Aho Williamson and junior analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch discuss how Twitter's Q3 earnings should be evaluated. They then talk about whether social audio will be the next big thing, TikTok's new partnership with Shopify, and if 2020 has been the year of live shopping.

This year, digital ad spend in the US entertainment industry will drop by 6.9% to $7.03 billion.

eMarketer principal analyst at Insider Intelligence Karin von Abrams discusses our Global Media Intelligence Report 2020, which compiles data and insights about internet users’ digital and traditional media usage across 42 countries. This annual project is a partnership between eMarketer and Starcom, and based on research from GlobalWebIndex. Also joining the discussion are Jason Mander, chief research officer at GlobalWebIndex, and Kelly Kokonas, executive vice president of global data strategy, technology and analytics, at Starcom.

Most advertisers have pulled back their spending, but streaming services are marketing themselves as heavily as ever.

In recent months, both Instagram and Snapchat have made several changes to their products that are reminiscent of growing contender TikTok. Instagram launched its highly-anticipated feature Reels, which allows users to create short videos set to music, and Snapchat introduced a slew of new features, including adding music and a test for vertical navigation.

With citywide lockdowns and ongoing social distancing measures in place, people throughout the Asia-Pacific region are spending more time at home consuming all forms of media—especially digital video.

The media and entertainment industries have traditionally made up a small fraction of the US digital ad market, and we expect their shares to remain flat or diminish through 2021. This partly has to do with traditional media conglomerates tightening their belts; their own ad revenues will continue to decline as ad dollars shift away from print and TV and toward the digital duopolies.

The number of US digital gamers will grow by 5.0% this year to 174.7 million. That’s roughly 8 million more than last year, and an increase of 5 million gamers from our previous forecast for 2020.

We previously expected there to be 80.5 million US pay TV households this year. We updated our forecast in August, and we now believe that figure will decline by 7.5% to 77.6 million. Our pay TV figures exclude virtual multichannel video programming distributors (vMVPDs), which deliver live TV over the internet.​

We expect the number of US pay TV households to decline by 7.5% to 77.6 million this year.

The pandemic has caused reduced advertiser spending overall, leading to lower growth of in-app ad spending despite significantly higher numbers of ad placements. While in-app purchases (IAPs) never stopped growing amid the pandemic, publisher revenues have recently been shifting from in-app advertising to purchases.

eMarketer vice president of content studio at Insider Intelligence Paul Verna steps in as host of this week's "The Weekly Listen," where he and eMarketer principal analysts Mark Dolliver and Debra Aho Williamson, and junior analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch discuss the latest updates on the TikTok saga, Quibi's unique predicament, Roku and NBCUniversal's buried hatchet, new game consoles from Sony and Microsoft, the Emmys' declining viewership, and how a home-field advantage influences soccer (or football, if you're European) referees.

Programmatic podcast ad spending, which we are forecasting for the first time this year, is growing at a fast rate from a small base.

With the shuttering of amusement parks and cancellation of live events, the entertainment industry will see some of the biggest declines in digital ad spending this year, eclipsed only by the travel, auto, and media industries.