Zach Fuller | MIDiA Research

Snap Inc Q1 2017
Declining User Growth Exacerbates Rising Costs

Report by Zach Fuller

12 May 2017

20,00 foot view: Following the release of its first earnings call since the March IPO, Snapchat creator Snap Inc has seen its stock price drop by 22% to $17.95, its lowest price since going public. The...

Amazon Double Down on Voice Control by Announcing Echo Show

Blog post by Zach Fuller

9 May 2017

Alexa

Amazon

Amazon Echo

Amazon is doubling down on Echo’s success (60% growth rate since November 2016) by just announcing the Echo Show. A visual iteration on the Echo, the device is priced at $229.99 and will initially only...

Quick Take: Snapchat Opens Up To Brands

Blog post by Zach Fuller

5 May 2017

advertising

brands

campaign management

Having incurred considerable audience loss to Instagram since the Facebook owned platform began copying several of the image-based messaging apps most popular features, Snapchat is fighting back with its...

The Platform-Agnostic Artist
Building Audiences In A Decentralized Media Landscape

Cover image for The Platform-Agnostic Artist

Report by Zach Fuller

5 May 2017

post platform

platform agnostic

decentralised audience

It used to be much simpler. Fixed programming formats in Television, Print and Radio meant you knew where an audience was and how long they would be there for, yet creators now find themselves in an...

WikiTribune Is a Start, But It Misses The Core Issue On Fake News

Blog post by Zach Fuller

27 Apr 2017

alternative facts

Fake News

jimmy wales

Having created Wikipedia, one of the most widely read sites in the history of the World Wide Web, Jimmy Wales is aware of the complexities and pitfalls when it comes to managing the authenticity of information....

Will Amazon’s Lex Platform Be the New App-Store?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

21 Apr 2017

Alexa

Amazon

amazon prime video

Swiftly following the success of the Echo, Amazon have announced their Lex platform is now open to 3rd party developers, allowing them to create and monetise chat-bots, further embellishing the device....

Quick Take: Baidu Acquires xPerception as Competition in Sensory Computing Heats Up

Blog post by Zach Fuller

14 Apr 2017

Alibaba

Amazon Echo

Apple

Chinese tech giant Baidu announced today they will be acquiring xPerception, in what can be interpreted as a strategic play for the Augmented Reality market. At face value, xPerception covers much of 2017...

Quick Take: EyeO Acquires Flattr

Blog post by Zach Fuller

5 Apr 2017

Adblock Plus

adblocking

advertising

In what could be a turning point in content monetisation, the creators of Adblock Plus have announced today that they will be acquiring the micropayments company Flattr. What began as a partnership several...

Palmer Luckey Leaves Facebook: Corporate Politics And VR's Trough Of Disillusionment

Blog post by Zach Fuller

31 Mar 2017

Palmer Luckey, once the boy wonder of VR’s renaissance, has announced he will be leaving the Oculus team at Facebook. Luckey had co-founded the Virtual Reality hardware company in 2012, thus ushering...

Drake's More Life is the New Normal in Streaming

Blog post by Zach Fuller

23 Mar 2017

apple music

compilation

Drake

Released over the weekend after much delay, Drake’s More Life project is setting records across the board on streaming platforms. The Canadian artist described More Life as ‘a body of work...

The Experience Economy
The Value Shift In Media Assets

Report by Zach Fuller

22 Mar 2017

experiential economy

streaming

messaging apps

With content now a more difficult proposition in itself to sell directly, the overall experience becomes, for many, their central core monetisable proposition. We have already seen this development in...

Snap Inc. As An AR Company

Blog post by Zach Fuller

17 Mar 2017

ar

augmented reality

cimagine media

Whilst those uneasy by the company's IPO may feel vindicated by the stock’s falling price, it may not be wise to completely write-off Snap Inc. just yet. Snap Inc. is ‘a camera company’. If we momentarily...

Quick Take: Google AMP And The Ongoing Issue Of Inflated Metrics

Blog post by Zach Fuller

10 Mar 2017

Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages has allegedly been inflating the traffic metrics of its publishing clients. The service was launched last year in a bid to compete with Facebook’s Instant Articles,...

Snapchat Imitations Are a Red Herring - Tencent Is Who Facebook Truly Want to Emulate

Blog post by Zach Fuller

2 Mar 2017

Apple

bots

Evan Spiegel

Snapchat has gone public, yet investors are still cagey on the company's IPO in response to Facebook’s regular copying of the ephemeral image-based app. Such is the extent of this that in response to...

Paid Versus Free
Monetisation In The Post-Sales World

Report by Zach Fuller

24 Feb 2017

Apple

Blendle

facebook

As the app economy matures into an amorphous content landscape, a picture emerges of how free and pure subscription models impact the bottom-line of the creative industries across music, online video,...

Quick Take: Tilt’s Acquisition By Airbnb Is A Major Coup For Social Commerce

Blog post by Zach Fuller

23 Feb 2017

airbnb

facebook

gaming

As ad-supported online content becomes the arena for the rise of fake news (and privately turns into a duopoly market between Facebook and Google), social commerce is shaping up to be one of the next big...

Differentiating Full-Stack Media and Tech Ecosystems

Blog post by Zach Fuller

20 Feb 2017

Alibaba

Amazon

full stack media

Two key developments in digital media that MIDiA Research has addressed over the past year are the emergence of both full-stack media and the tech ecosystem. These shifts in the digital life have recently...

Sarnoff’s Law and the Media Valuation Shift

Blog post by Zach Fuller

10 Feb 2017

arpu

broadcast.com

David Sarnoff

The story of David Sarnoff is the archetypal American Dream. A Belarusian child immigrant arriving in New York City at the turn of the 20th century, the ambitious Sarnoff would demonstrate an early instinct...

A Tale Of Two Technologies: The Narrative And The Numbers For VR And Voice

Blog post by Zach Fuller

1 Feb 2017

Alexa

Amazon

Amazon Echo

In the tradition of effective storytelling, the technology industry’s romantic narrative often involves two basic troupes: a garage and a dream. This alluring chronology is so embedded in start-up folklore...

Social Commerce: Facebook’s Next Act?

Blog post by Zach Fuller

26 Jan 2017

advertising

Amazon

banking

Discussions abound in tech circles over where Facebook will go next. Much in the same way as Apple’s definitive strategy in the past two decades can be interpreted through their services embellishing...