What I Saw Happen -- Q1 2022

Digital Media Publishing

• Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith stepped down to found a new media company, and tapped New York Times media columnist Ben Smith to lead its future newsroom.
• The New York Times Co has agreed to acquire subscription sports site The Athletic in a deal valued at around $550M.
• Penske Media acquired The American Pavilion at the Cannes Film Festival, a relied upon communications, hospitality, and media center for global attendees.
• Reddit is aiming to go public and could be valued at as much as $15B. The company is said to be working with Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs on the initial public offering.
• Sports Illustrated rolled out a clothing collaboration with JC Penney.
• A group of D.C.-based journalists launched a new media company called "Grid" that focuses on hard news analysis and investigative reporting.
• The Chicago Public Media Board of Directors (CPM), which runs public radio station WBEZ, voted on Tuesday to acquire the Chicago Sun-Times. The deal was a no cash acquisition.
• OpenWeb, the premium audience relationship platform, announced it has acquired Hive Media Group, a digital publisher and engagement platform that builds proprietary and world class publisher technologies
• The New York Times Co. is buying Wordle, a free word game that recently exploded in popularity across Twitter and other web platforms. The publisher announced the acquisition, saying it paid “an undisclosed price in the low seven figures” for the game.
• Condé Nast is launching a recipe subscription product that draws from the archives and editorial expertise of its venerable foodie brands: Bon Appétit and Epicurious. Readers will be asked to pay up to $59.88 per year (based on the non-discounted monthly rate of $4.99) for access to more than 50,000 recipes across BonAppetit.com and Epicurious.com.
• Dotdash Meredith is eliminating the print editions of six of the former Meredith Corp.’s most iconic magazines, including InStyle, Entertainment Weekly, Eating Well and People en Espanol.
• Crypto exchange Binance takes $200M stake in Forbes ahead of SPAC IPO.
• Future plc is opening a hub for video production in Atlanta to help boost female viewership.
• IDG Communications, the nearly 60-year-old publisher that's home to brands like PCWorld, Macworld and TechHive, is rebranding as Foundry.
• The U.S. consumer magazine industry shrunk by more than 20% in the past five years, due largely to print advertising declines, per PwC data. But the rate of decline is expected to slow slightly in the next five years, thanks to new efforts from online media companies to acquire and digitize traditional print brands.
• Vogue and GQ will make content exclusively for TikTok, both for their own respective brand channels and in print, under a new deal Condé Nast signed with the social media platform.
• Apollo Global Management, the private equity firm that acquired Yahoo from Verizon for $5 billion last year, is having preliminary discussions with sports-betting companies to merge their assets with Yahoo Sports, according to people familiar with the matter.
• Vox Media told it plans to lay off 3% of employees following the completion of its merger with Group Nine Media
• Tech workers at the New York Times voted overwhelmingly in favor of unionizing with the NewsGuild, the 600-member Times Tech Guild will be the largest union of tech workers with bargaining rights in the country, per the NewsGuild.
• Reddit has signed a partnership agreement with IPG Mediabrands. The deal will give the media and marketing solutions division of Interpublic Group advanced access to cultural trends in real-time, data-driven insights, and other strategic benefits. The partnership will also benefit the social news aggregation website’s global advertising business.
• BDG, formerly Bustle, is leaning into parenting content as a bigger share of its business and pauses SPAC.
• Puck, the subscription newsletter company, is moving into podcasts; it will launch two new shows, including one that will be co-created with Bill Simmons' "The Ringer."
• ~80 current and former BuzzFeed employeesclaim they were shortchanged during the IPO, after not being allowed to sell shares at higher prices.
• Recurrent Ventures, a venture equity-backed digital media company, has acquired Business of Home, a digital and print publication dedicated to home and interior design enthusiasts.
• BuzzFeed is laying off 1.7% of its workforce and asking for voluntary buyouts in its news division after its first earnings call as a public company.
• Future Plc, the global enthusiast and B2B media platform, announced the acquisition of two businesses intended to boost the company’s social media expertise. The acquired companies are WhatCulture, a social-first brand focused on the gaming and entertainment market, and the data-insights start-up Waive, which uses machine learning to identify social trends.
• New paperwork filed by Forbes' SPAC Magnum Opus shows that the company and Forbes' majority shareholder have agreed to extend their SPAC termination agreement deadline from March 31 to May 31.

Ad Tech

• Integral Ad Science announced that it has bought Context, a French contextual advertising startup. This marks IAS’s third acquisition in the past 12 months, following the purchase of programmatic payments auditing service Amino Payments in January 2021 and CTV ad server Publica over the summer.
• NBCUniversal built a first-party identity platform that includes 50M households and 150M individual consumers to bolster its cross-platform targeting.
• Digital ad firm Magnite is acquiring data company Nth Party.
• Crypto-centric browser firm Brave announced it had passed 50M monthly active users, doubling growth on a year-over-year basis for the fifth year in a row. Daily active users averaged 15.5M during December.
• Innovid, an advertising tech co that focuses on streaming television, is acquiring measurement and attribution platform TVSquared in a cash and stock transaction valued at $160M.
• The advertising-technology platform The Trade Desk this week rolled out a new product called OpenPath that it says connects advertisers directly to publishers’ ad inventory, and in doing so, avoids Google’s Open Bidding and other supply-side advertising platforms. The move is significant in the ad-tech world for several reasons. First, The Trade Desk is the largest independent demand-side ad-tech platform in the world, competing with Google’s DoubleClick and Facebook’s Ads, among others. The Trade Desk managed $6.2 billion of the world’s ad programmatic spend in 2021, and produced nearly $1.2 billion in revenue, according to its latest earnings report.
• Outbrain, the web recommendation platform, annc'd its intended $55M purchase of Video Intelligence – its first acquisition following its July IPO.
• Magnite announced the acquisition of Carbon, a platform that enables publishers to measure, manage and monetize audiences in real-time. As the industry prepares for the deprecation of third party cookies and other third party identifiers, the acquisition accelerates Magnite’s seller-first, privacy-focused identity and audience solutions focused around first-party segments and bolsters the Product and Engineering teams in this critical area.
• The Trade Desk and LiveRamp announced that they plan to collaborate with key European market leaders on the development and deployment of European Unified ID (EUID), a new privacy-conscious identity solution for the European advertising market. Based on Unified ID 2.0, the new identifier will account for specific market requirements in Europe and the U.K., including GDPR regulations and consent framework limitations.
• Russia's invasion of Ukraine threatens to disrupt Criteo's $380 million acquisition of Iponweb.
• A partnership between in-game ad tech company Anzu and NBCUniversal aims to build out the infrastructure for serving in-game ads using programmatic tech.
• Ad-Tech Company TripleLift Is Buying 1plusX for $150 Million.

Big Tech

• France’s data watchdog has announced a total of $240M in fines for Google and Meta over how many clicks are required for users to refuse data-tracking cookies when visiting the company platforms.
• The Microsoft Advertising audience as of March 2021 reached 1B people globally on the search engine Bing as well as Outlook.com, AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft News/ MSN.com and several other Microsoft properties and premium publisher partners, according to Microsoft internal data and Comscore.
• France fines Google a record $170M for making it too difficult to opt out of cookies The French watchdog also fined Facebook's holding company Meta €60M (or around $68M) for the same offense.
• US tech giant is accused of manipulating ad auctions to increase Google's win rates and allocate ad spend to preferred clients - losing publishers up to 40% of revenue.
• Google manipulated the price and operations of ad auctions, according to newly unredacted details revealed Friday in an antitrust lawsuit filed in 2020 by a coalition of states.
• Microsoft acquires Activision Blizzard in all-cash deal valued at $68.7B.
• Google is scrapping a contested interest-based advertising system it was developing as part of its efforts to phase out online trackers called third-party cookies and taking a new approach, under the new proposal, which Google is calling “topics”, a user’s Chrome browser detects some of their top areas of interest each week based on the websites the person visits.
• Google asked a federal judge to dismiss the majority of an antitrust lawsuit filed by Texas and other states that accused the company of abusing its dominance of the online advertising market.
• TikTok and Instagram are now planning to incentivize their creator base. Instagram has started testing subscriptions in the U.S., a feature that lets creators offer paid access to their followers for exclusive content on Instagram. Similarly, TikTok is testing paid subscriptions that will let creators put their content behind a paywall for exclusive access.
• Amazon for the first time reported revenue from its advertising business, with growth of 32% year-over-year and $9.7 billion during 4Q21. Revenue at cloud computing business Amazon Web Services rose almost 40%, to $17.78 billion, handily topping estimates. The company also said it is raising the price of its annual Prime membership to $139, from $119.
• Google, Meta (formerly Facebook) and Amazon have never been so powerful. Together they accounted for more than $7 in $10 (74%) of global digital ad spending last year, which is 47% of all money spent on advertising over that period. That put them on track to reach a dominant share of the entire advertising market this year.
• Hoping to obtain regulatory approval for a $68.7 billion acquisition, Microsoft announced a new set of Open App Store Principles. “We have developed these principles in part to address Microsoft’s growing role and responsibility as we start the process of seeking regulatory approval in capitals around the world for our acquisition of Activision Blizzard,” said President and Vice Chair Brad Smith. “We want regulators and the public to know that as a company, Microsoft is committed to adapting to these new laws, and with these principles, we’re moving to do so.
• Meta claims to now undercount web conversions on iOS by around 8%, having said last year that Apple’s tracking changes would mean its measurements were off by 15%.
• In its most recent earnings report, Meta announced that privacy changes imposed by Apple would hit its business to the tune of around $10bn for the full year 2022. It based that estimate in part on the newfound difficulty of measuring the effectiveness of its advertising units on iOS devices.
• Google said it will phase out cross-app ad trackers on Android smartphones, a move aimed at increasing data privacy for consumers using its operating system. It plans to keep supporting current smartphone identifiers for at least the next two years and to give the industry substantial notice before any changes. It said it plans to work with the industry to develop the replacements.
• Snapchat is currently beta testing mid-roll ads that will appear in the Stories of a small group of U.S. creators, with a wider rollout happening in the coming months.
• Meta escalates its fight with TikTok. Facebook’s parent expanded the availability of Reels, a short-video format that competes with TikTok. The move comes weeks after Meta admitted that the Chinese-owned video platform was eroding its business, particularly among younger users.
• LinkedIn is launching its own podcast network.
• TikTok expands maximum video length to 10 minutes.
• Twitterchanged its feed back to chronological order after users complained about the company’s algorithmic “Home” feed.
• The U.K. Government announced Wednesday that executives could now face prosecution or jail time within two months of the new Online Safety Bill becoming law, instead of two years as it was previously drafted. The government said a range of new offenses had been added to the bill that makes the senior managers at tech firms criminally liable for destroying evidence, failing to attend or providing false information in interviews.
• Meta, the owner of Facebook and Instagram, updated its ads platform, introducing more automation into campaigns, as the company continues to adjust to privacy and data restrictions in online marketing.
• Spotify paid out $7 billion to the music industry in 2021, "the highest annual payment from any single retailer in history," the audio giant said. It also said that for the first time, over 1,000 artists generated over $1 million on Spotify.
• European lawmakers reached agreement on the main points of a new digital-competition law focused on the world’s biggest tech companies, setting the stage for one of the most sweeping pieces of technology-regulation legislation to go into effect next year. The new law, known as the Digital Markets Act, is part of the biggest proposed expansion of global-tech regulation in decades. It seeks to impose new obligations and prohibitions on a small cadre of digital giants the European Union defines as gatekeepers—backed by fines for noncompliance that, based on early drafts of the legislation, could rise into the tens of billions of dollars.
• Appledoubled down on podcasts, adding audience analytics tools and promotional tools that will go live in April. The new features will allow the company to better compete with Spotify.
• Google said it's adding a new label to search results for news stories, interviews, announcements and press releases that are frequently cited by other media outlets in an effort to elevate original reporting.

Streaming

• WarnerMedia’s streaming service HBO Max and HBO ended 2021 with about 73.8M subscribers, exceeding management’s forecast, AT&T said Wednesday.
• Viewership for the NFL's 2021 regular season was up 10% from 2020, its highest-rated season average since 2015, per Nielsen. The NFL accounted for 41 of the 50 most-watched broadcasts of 2021, per Sportico , and 75 of the top 100. Games averaged 17.1 million viewers (TV/digital), per the league, and 370 billion total minutes were consumed, up 18% from 2020 and the second-highest total since 2015.
• According to a Financial Times report, the top eight US media groups expect to spend at least $115B on new movies and TV shows in 2022 to attract new customers for the video streaming biz.
• An investment firm backed by Blackstone and run by one time Disney colleagues Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs has taken a minority stake in Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook Inc.
• Kevin Mayer and Tom Staggs’ Blackstone-backed media venture has set its next acquisition, of Faraway Road Productions, the company behind Fauda and Hit & Run.
• Apple has held talks with Major League Baseball about streaming weekday national games previously carried by ESPN.
• Scott Rosenberg, a prominent Roku executive who helped launch the Roku Channel, is stepping down after nearly a decade.
• Netflix has increased the price of its monthly subscription plans in the U.S. and Canada, effective immediately for new subscribers beginning on Friday. In the U.S., subscribers to Netflix’s basic plan, which allows for one stream on one screen at a time and does not have HD streaming, will now be charged $9.99 a month, up from $8.99. Standard plans — which allow for users to stream on two screens at the same time — now cost $15.49 per month, an increase from $13.99, while premium plans have inched up to $19.99 a month.
• Netflix has ordered a docuseries following men’s and women’s tennis players during four Grand Slam tennis tournaments. The series comes from Box to Box Films (“Formula 1: Drive to Survive”), which is also producing a project featuring the PGA golf tour for Netflix.
• YouTube is winding down its original programming business, electing to focus on creator-driven content and live shoppable programs.
• Some Roku smart TV owners are seeing banner ads appear over live content.
• Snapchat has announced that it’s renewed its ongoing content deals with Disney, Viacom and NBCUniversal, which will see exclusive shows and programming broadcast to Snapchat Discover over the coming year.
• Discovery Inc. commissioned 556 first-run TV shows in 2021, more than any other media company, according to Ampere Analysis. ViacomCBS came in second with 406, Netflix placed third with 403, and Disney was fourth with 387.
• Roughly half of U.S. viewers who signed up for Disney+, HBO Max and Apple TV+ within three days of the release of Hamilton, Wonder Woman 1984 and Greyhound unsubscribed within six months.
• Reacher has been renewed for a second season on Amazon. The action thriller series debuted on the streamer on Feb. 4 and is based on the Jack Reacher novel series by Lee Child. Per Amazon, the show is already one of their top five most-watched shows of all time, though Amazon also does not provide viewership numbers.
• Netfllix has posted a note on its platform informing subscribers that six Marvel Defenders universe shows will not be available on the service after March 1.
• The shows — The Defenders, Daredevil, Jessica Jones, Luke Cage, Iron Fist and The Punisher -- were made for Netflix by Disney’s now-defunct Marvel Television between 2015 and 2019.
• Roku is exploring a plan to manufacture its own TVs.
• Streaming in the US reached a new all-time high in Jan. in total minutes during a week, according to Nielsen’s latest The Gauge report. The ratings co said the first week of January totaled 197.6B minutes of streaming, vs the previous record of 183B minutes which just set during 2021's Christmas week.
• Disney is expanding its Self Service business in a bid to democratize access to streaming inventory across its portfolio of brands. Disney Advertising is opening Self-Serve Platform, known as Hulu Ad Manager, to agencies, and launching an on-demand curriculum to empower underrepresented-owned small businesses. Additionally, advertisers will have turnkey access and seamless setup through the self-serve solution, with a faster time from sign-up-to-launch campaigns.
• CNN+ to cost $2.99 a month at launch, Early subscribers will be able to lock in the $2.99 rate for life, as long as their accounts are active. Otherwise, the service will cost $5.99 a month.
• NBCUniversal is terminating its next-day streaming deal with Hulu, a move that will go into effect with the new TV season in September – and strengthen NBCU streamer Peacock. Shows including Saturday Night Live and The Voice, along with the rest of NBCU’s broadcast and cable lineup for next season, won’t be available to stream on Hulu, although Hulu will still have rights to catalog content. Comcast has 33% ownership of Hulu, but Disney has operational control; it’s expected that Comcast will sell that ownership stake.
• Apple has signed a deal with Major League Baseball to livestream two games on Friday nights on its Apple TV+ service.
• HBO Max, the general entertainment streaming service from WarnerMedia, and Discovery+, the streaming service from Discovery that includes mostly non-scripted shows, will combine after WarnerMedia and Discovery merge next month.
• Streaming companies are cracking down on password sharing, as the number of quarterly subscription cancellations in the U.S. grows.
• A new reportclaims the NFL is developing its own streaming service that would include games, radio, podcasts, and content for each team.

Commerce

• Best Buy became the latest retailer to spin up an in-house ad-sales unit, aiming to reach brands beyond its endemic tech marketers.
• Department stores are running out of ways to reinvent themselves going into 2022.
• Walmart is significantly scaling up its delivery service that allows it to enter a customer’s home or garage to deliver groceries and other purchases or pick up returns.
• Shopify filed a patent application for a system of sensors that can measure traffic in retail store.
• Gap Inc. is globally launching an assortment of collectible non-fungible tokens (NFTs) with a gamified digital experience.
• Walmart offering "smart" outdoor boxes for at home grocery deliveries.
• Amazon going to the mall with its first-ever clothing store.
• Amazon has scrapped plans to stop accepting Visa credit cards in the UK.
• Panera now lets diners sit down and order from the table using its app instead of lining up at the cash register.
• Everyday items are being priced more like airline tickets and gasoline, where the sticker prices can move frequently within hours or days.
• Target Corp. is doubling down on beauty. The discount retailer is adding nearly 40 new beauty brands to its assortment. Half of the new brands will be exclusive to Target and most items will sell for $10 or less.
• Alaska Airlines began selling pay-as-you-go flight passes in a move that hops on the popularity of the subscription model. Travelers who agree to pay a monthly fee will receive credits to fly a fixed number of roundtrips among 16 selected U.S. West Coast airports.
• Shopify plans to spend $1 billion over two years to build a network of warehouses that can deliver packages in two days or less to more than 90% of the U.S. population.
• Amazon will accept Visa credit cards across all of its sites after the two companies reached a global agreement.
• Macy’s has opted against separating its e-commerce business from its bricks-and-mortar stores after calls from an activist investor.
• Ebay forecast bleak Q1 results, as the e-commerce platform tackles waning online demand, stiff competition and global supply chain disruptions, sending the company's shares down nearly 9% in extended trading
• Target's annual revenue crosses $100 billion.
• Amazon shutters bookstores to double down on grocery -- Amazon plans to close nearly 70 physical retail locations in the U.S. and United Kingdom, including bookstores, Amazon 4-star stores and pop-up shops.
• Walmart said it is introducing an e-commerce tool that aims to let customers see how garments fit on a model of their height, shape and skin tone.
• Twitter began a beta test for Twitter Shops, which lets marketers sell up to 50 products directly on the platform.
• Twitter Shops: Twitter istesting a shopping feature that lets users browse products within the app. Sellers can directly list up to 50 products.
• Google will allow people who download Spotify to pay using the streaming music service’s own billing system as an alternative to its Google Play billing system.
• Instacartannounced it will start offering enterprise software to grocery stores to help manage ecommerce, fulfillment, and ads.

Web3

• Fanatics is buying Topps’ trading-card business for $500M.
• GameStop is launching a divisionto develop a marketplace for nonfungible tokens and establish cryptocurrency partnerships, pushing the company into much-hyped areas as it tries to turn around its core videogame business.
• OpenSea reaches $13B valuation in latest raise -- OpenSea, the NFT auction marketplace, announced that it closed a $300M Series C funding round at a $13.3B valuation.
• New York state will permit mobile sports betting starting January 8.
• Take-Two's acquisition of Zynga could create a formidable mobile internet ad platform.
• The NFL has regained its swagger in the just-completed regular season -- through 18 weeks -- boosting its Nielsen-measured average game viewership up 7% to 16.3 million versus last season.
• Google has hired a former PayPal executive to help improve Google Pay as it prepares to enter the crypto market.
• Wynn Resorts is looking to sell its online sports betting business at what appears to be a deep discount, according to a NY Post report.
• CBS Sports wrapped up its most-watched NFL season in six years by delivering its largest audience of the season for the AFC Championship Game as Cincinnati’s overtime victory at Kansas City on Sunday averaged 47.851 million viewers and is the most-watched Conference Championship Game in the early window in six years.
• The investment firm of Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian raised $500 million across two new funds with a plan to invest primarily in crypto startups.
• NBC has sold out all advertising inventory in the Super Bowl LVI across NBC, Telemundo and all digital platforms including Peacock -- with some 30-second commercial spots on NBC going for a record $7.1 million.
• Gamblers will bet an estimated $7.6 billion on the Super Bowl, up 78% from last year, according to the American Gaming Association.
• Non-fungible token marketplace OpenSea is investigating an apparent phishing attack on Saturday that led to stolen NFTs from some user.
• Online betting opens in New York with a bang. Gamblers have placed$2.4 billion in wagers in the state since betting was legalized there last month. That made New York the biggest gambling hub in the U.S., and led to nearly $80 million in tax revenue — and new worries about gambling addictions in the state.
• Derek Jeter stepped down as C.E.O. of the Miami Marlins and sold his stake in the pro baseball team.
• The sports-merchandising company Fanatics has raised $1.5 billion in new capital at a $27 billion valuation.
• Turner Sports has landed a long-term deal with the U.S. Soccer Federation for an eight-year multimedia rights agreement that will make TNT/TBS and HBO Max the exclusive English-language home to more than 20 Women’s and Men’s National Team matches each year.
• Total NFT sales for all markets hit $17.6B in 2021: Up 200x from $82M in 2020.
• Total NFT profits when reselling or buying reached $5.4B in 2021: A huge jump (44,900%!) from $12M in 2020.
• Ethereum remains, by far, the main blockchain when it comes to NFT transactions with 78% of the entire market.
• Fox’s plans in the digital collectibles space are beginning to get a little clearer. The broadcast network will launch its first set of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), tied to its celebrity singing competition The Masked Singer. The company will also launch a marketplace and community in which users can buy, sell or trade Masked Singer NFTs, which it is calling The MaskVerse.
• NFT giant: Yuga Labs, the parent company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club,acquired the rights to Cryptopunks and Meebits, both owned by Larva Labs. Across the 3 collections, Yuga owns the rights to ~$5.5B in NFTs.
• ESPN hired Joe Buck and Troy Aikman from Fox to host “Monday Night Football.”
• Great Web3.0 pod here -- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/so-what-the-hell-is-web3-with-the-chernin/id1080467174?i=1000547747331 .
• Mark Zuckerbergconfirmed that NFTs are coming to Instagram soon, and hinted that users will be able to mint NFTs in Instagram as well.
• The latest Bored Ape Yacht Club collaboration includes CBD skin care, hair care and candles with images of two NFTs from the collection.
• Yuga Labs, the parent company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs,released ApeCoin — a new token that will be used in a play-to-earn game based on BAYC characters.
• Yuga Labs has secured a virtually unprecedented $450 million in seed funding, bringing the startup to a post-money valuation of $4 billion. Best known as the creator of popular NFT collection Bored Ape Yacht Club, Yuga Labs will use the capital for staff expansion and future partnerships.
• The metaverse might mean many businesses one day have roles such as metaverse experience designer and chief metaverse officers, but chief experience officers are likely to take the lead in the meantime.

Other Stuff

• Airbnb doesn’t plan to revert to pre-pandemic levels of marketing on search platforms like Google because it found that most people came to its platform organically when it pulled the plug on those initiatives.
• Say goodbye to dollar stores, 2-buck Chuck, and the dollar pizza slice. They got wiped out by the pandemic. 
• Cinnabon and Auntie Anne’s are looking to move outside the mall. The two snack concepts are as much a part of U.S. mall culture as The Gap and teenagers recently signed a 10-unit deal with Fresh Dining, an existing Auntie Anne’s franchisee, to develop 10 cobranded Auntie Anne’s/Cinnabon locations in New York City.
• Adam Neumann, who built office co-working giant WeWork before resigning as chief executive when his fortunes soured,has a new business venture under way: apartment landlord.
• Automakers recently announced their 2021 sales tallies, and the big winner was Tesla. The electric vehicle maker sold nearly 950,000 cars last year, up 87 percent from the year before. Detroit’s Big Three — Ford, G.M. and Stellantis, the parent of Chrysler — all saw sales fall last year, though they still sell far more cars than Tesla.
• Netflix landed “unparalleled” access from the PGA Tour for an untitled docuseries following the world’s top golfers during the season.
• iHeartMedia is extending its presence into web3 and the metaverse, beginning w/ plans for the creation of iHeart events and experiences for listeners and music fans on Roblox.
• Luxury car brands such as Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Porsche and BMW are reporting record sales, thanks to customers who have craved them and manufacturers that have directed scarce chips toward their most profitable models.
• Intel plans to build a $20 billion manufacturing complex in Ohio. The site, near Columbus, wouldinitially have two factories and employ 3,000 people. It is part of Intel’s effort to ramp up its production capabilities in the U.S. and reduce its reliance on foreign makers, an effort that might cost as much as $100 billion.
• Google and the AARP announced a program to train 25,000 people ages 50 and older on helping them use digital skills to advance in their careers. 
• Burger King, Denny’s and Domino’s are among the chains pulling back on their value menus or shrinking portions to try to improve margins.
• Due to pandemic-related borrowing, the U.S. gross national debt crossed $30 trillion for the first time.
• Move over Pandora – Amazon Music is now the #2 music streaming service after Spotify, according to eMarketer.
• Movie theaters are introducing variable pricing, charging customers more to see blockbuster films.
• A group of private equity firms, including Elliott Management, arein talks to purchase Nielsen Holdings, the TV-ratings pioneer, for ~$15B.
• Rising rates: The Federal Reserveapproved an interest rate hike for the 1st time in 3+ years. This hike increased rates by 0.25 percentage points, but the Fed says there will be six more hikes in 2022.
• Chocolate and candy saleshit a record $36.9bn last year in the US, up 11% on last year.
• Even as people start working from the office again and going out more, fashion brands continue to bet on athleticwear to drive sales growth. Apparel brands Abercrombie, Express’ UpWest and Revolve, all released their first in-house athletic collections. Also, last week, footwear brand Birdies unveiled its first athletic sneakers. These traditionally fashion-oriented brands are continuing to bet on high-performance fabrics and silhouettes after athleisure sales continued to grow in 2021.
• The SECproposed a new set of climate rules that would provide more transparency into how public companies are tackling the climate crisis. The rules would require reporting on emissions directly from the company as well as emissions resulting from suppliers and partners.
• Tesla officially began making cars in Europe after opening a $7 billion plan outside Berlin.
• Uber willadd NYC cabs to its app this spring, onboarding ~14k taxis to the platform. Fares will be the same as UberX.

Buffett on Berkshire’s Evolution

• As is tradition, Warren Buffett used Berkshire Hathaway’s annual earnings report to share his thoughts on the state of his $713 billion conglomerate, and to describe what he sees as its future. Here are some highlights from that shareholder letter:
• Berkshire’s deal machine is taking a rest. While Buffett has long been known for his huge corporate takeovers, Berkshire has shied away from big-ticket M&A in recent years. Don’t expect that to change, with Berkshire instead focusing more on stock buybacks. “Today, internal opportunities deliver far better returns than acquisitions,” Buffett wrote.
• Berkshire is a tech investor, of sorts. While Buffett famously shied away from investing in tech stocks for years, he now regards the company’s 5.5 percent stake in Apple as one of its “giants.”
• It’s also an infrastructure behemoth. Buffett said that Berkshire owned and operated more U.S.-based infrastructure assets than any other American company, setting the company up to benefit from a surge in federal spending on transportation assets.
• Berkshire considers itself a good citizen. With corporations criticized for paying little in taxes and not acting enough on climate change, Buffett argued that his company was doing its part on both fronts: He noted that Berkshire paid $3.3 billion in federal taxes last year and that its BNSF railroad and vast power operations played roles in reducing carbon emissions.

The opinions expressed here are the author's views and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillage.com/MyersBizNet.