Digital Story of the Week
The UK’s digital ad market is continuing to flourish, growing 11% in 2022 and hitting £26.1bn, according to the IAB’s latest Digital Adspend report. The IAB noted that the double-digit growth happening in spite of a challenging year, due to factors including the cost-of-living crisis. The study revealed digital adspend has grown 56% since the start of the pandemic in 2020. Search continued to dominant a majority of digital outlay, accounting for half of all digital spend, growing 13%. Another notable finding was that growth in targeting desktop devices outstripped mobile devices for the first time since records began in 2008.
Campaign Story of the Week
BrewDog has announced the return of its controversial Gold Can competition, with limited edition gold cans hidden in packs of its beer. CEO of BrewDog James Watt previously paid out £500,000 of his own money following a miscommunicated previous iteration of the campaign. Craft beer lovers can now hunt for the rare cans, which are found in supermarkets. The Beer will feature gold-plated cans and a £5k prize. Additionally, BrewDog will be offering the chance to win 'Gold Pints', and many other prizes in BrewDog bars, via scratch cards for those who spend £10 and over.
AI Story of the Week
Snapchat has rolled out its new AI chatbot to its 750 million users. The AI can do things like answer trivia questions, offer advice, help plan trips or suggest places or meals to eat. You can give My AI a nickname, tell it your likes, dislikes and the more you interact with it the better it gets to know you and the more relevant the responses will be. Snapchat revealed that My AI is there to help and to connect you more deeply to the people and things you care about most. They also said the chatbot is still evolving and they are still working to improve. They recommended that all responses by My AI should always independently be checked before relying on any advice as responses may include biased, incorrect, harmful, or misleading content.
Social Media Story of the Week
Meta returned to revenue growth in Q1 following three successive quarters of decline after recording a healthy bump in users and growing its newer ad formats. Revenue grew 3% annually to $28.6 billion in the first three months of the year, while advertising revenue lifted 4% to $28.1 billion. Chief executive Mark Zuckerberg told investors on Wednesday that ‘a lot of our results’ were driven by the company’s investment in artificial intelligence. For example, AI recommendations within Meta’s short form video product Reels have driven a more than 24% increase in time spend on Instagram since the product first launched.
