Demographics

Twitter and other tech giants face corporate culture rifts: Reports of employee dissatisfaction at Twitter follow similar news from other major players, all during a tightening market for knowledge workers.

About a third of K-12 students have already returned to class amid a fourth COVID-19 wave. While, earlier this year, analysts had predicted a very optimistic back-to-school (BTS) season for retailers and brands, not all is lost: Many parents still want to make school-related firsts and rites of passage as “normal” as possible for their children.

Marketers will need to meaningfully address greenwashing: Greenwashing concerns many Gen Z consumers, and brands are seeing the opportunity in sustainability-focused marketing. However, there’s still a gap between what brands say and what they do.

Mattel dinged for noninclusive line: The Barbie manufacturer came under fire for creating a Tokyo Olympics collection without any apparent Asian representation.

Publicis announces partnership with TikTok: The deal is TikTok’s first strategic agency partnership, and marketers should expect more of those in the months ahead.

On today's episode, we discuss Snapchat's Q2 performance, which features are standing out, and what we expect in Q3 and Q4. We then talk about some recent Snapchat augmented reality partnerships, Gen X's level of adoption across social media, and which platforms Gen Z folks think have the most genuine influencers. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer forecasting analyst at Insider Intelligence Nazmul Islam.

As retailers explore new strategies in H2 2021 and beyond, they will need to gain greater understanding of which consumer behaviors have shifted permanently, which will revert to those of pre-pandemic times, and which will settle somewhere in the middle.

The gaming gender gap: The number of male teens who found in-game ads the most captivating was more than triple that of female teens, though this may be the result of female preference for mobile over PC and console gaming.

TikTok minis: The platform's new third-party integration system Jump allows users to embed mini apps in their videos and marks an important step toward TikTok becoming a super app like WeChat.

On today's episode, we discuss some updates in the social audio landscape, whether convenience is outweighing price, if fashion rental can make a comeback, podcast ads versus other ad formats, changes in millennials' spending behaviors, how football players are similar to bears in more than just stature, and more. Tune in to the discussion with eMarketer analyst Nina Goetzen, forecasting analyst Peter Vahle, and analyst at Insider Intelligence Blake Droesch.