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The AI Firms Helping Publishers Navigate AI in 2024 Signals a Maturing Ecosystem

17 December 2024 at 03:00
Tensions have been flaring between publishers and AI companies over content usage in 2024, but some AI-backed startups have emerged to help reconcile these conflicts. From helping publishers navigate AI integration, set optimal prices for their content, and monetize more effectively when AI companies want to license their data, to striking deals with publishers and...

Elon Musk's record $447 billion fortune means he's nearly $200 billion ahead of Jeff Bezos — and worth more than Costco

12 December 2024 at 04:16
Tesla CEO Elon Musk.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

Steve Granitz/FilmMagic/Getty Images

  • Elon Musk is almost $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos and worth more than Costco.
  • His net worth hit $447 billion after Tesla stock jumped and SpaceX's valuation rose to $350 billion.
  • Just five years ago, Musk was worth about $25 billion, and Tesla was valued below $100 billion.

Elon Musk is nearly $200 billion richer than Jeff Bezos, and personally worth more than Costco, after adding $63 billion to his fortune in a single day.

His net worth surged to $447 billion on Wednesday, per the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, after Tesla stock jumped 6% and SpaceX's valuation leaped to $350 billion based on employee share sales.

Musk's fortune has ballooned by $218 billion this year β€” a sum that exceeds the net worth of every other person on the rich list except Amazon's Bezos ($249 billion) and Meta's Mark Zuckerberg ($224 billion).

Musk is now more than twice as wealthy as Oracle's Larry Ellison ($198 billion), and more than three times as rich as Warren Buffett ($144 billion).

His one-day gain β€” the largest in the index's history β€” rivals the total wealth of Binance cofounder Changpeng Zhao, ranked 23rd with a $63.2 billion fortune. It also helped to lift the combined wealth of the 500 richest people on the planet to above $10 trillion for the first time, Bloomberg said.

Musk is now worth more on paper than the vast majority of US public companies, including Costco ($442 billion), Home Depot ($419 billion), and Netflix ($400 billion).

His wealth is largely made up of his roughly 13% stake and some contested stock options in Tesla, and his 42% slice of SpaceX. Musk's other businesses include xAI, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and X Corp, formerly Twitter.

Tesla shares have surged more than 70% this year to $425 at Wednesday's close, valuing the company at nearly $1.4 trillion. That figure comfortably exceeds the roughly $1 trillion market value of Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway and approaches the $1.6 trillion value of Zuckerberg's Meta.

The electric vehicle maker's shares have soared as investors bet it will harness artificial intelligence in revolutionary products such as self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

Tesla's robot called Optimus behind a glass display
Tesla is developing Optimus robots.

Future Publishing/ Getty

Musk's prominent role in Donald Trump's campaign, and his emergence as a close advisor to the president-elect who's tasked him with streamlining the US government, have also fueled optimism around his companies.

SpaceX is now valued at $350 billion based on the latest price paid by the company and its backers to buy shares from employees, Bloomberg reported Wednesday. The Starlink owner's valuation was previously $210 billion after a secondary share sale in June.

It's worth underscoring how dramatic Musk's wealth jump has been. He was worth less than $170 billion as recently as April, and only about $25 billion five years ago β€” around 1/18 of his net worth now.

Tesla was worth less than $100 billion during the Covid crash of 2020, or about 1/14 of its valuation today.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Inside the Eye-popping Numbers of 2024’s Hottest AI Firms

11 December 2024 at 03:35
As the artificial intelligence gold rush continues, valuations have soared to dizzying heights. From generative AI models that can write codes to AI-driven search engines that promise smarter answers, U.S. AI startups are raking in billions from investors eager to bet on the next money-making technological revolution. In Q3 2024, venture capitalists poured $3.9 billion...

Exclusive: Startup ProRata.ai Launches AI Search Engine to Pay Content Creators

9 December 2024 at 06:00
Artificial intelligence startup ProRata.ai wants to bring a more equitable compensation model to media companies with the launch of its AI-powered search engine, Gist.ai. The startup uses gen AI to accurately attribute search results and share revenue with content owners. This revenue is generated by subscriptions and ads that run Gist. People can sign up...

OpenAI Gears Up for a Blockbuster 2025: Big Moves, Big Risks, and Potentially Big Rewards

6 December 2024 at 02:21
With a valuation of $157 billion and a string of strategic moves, OpenAI is setting the stage for what could be a transformative 2025. The company is pushing to dominate the AI landscape by recruiting top advertising talent from Google and Meta, launching a search-integrated ChatGPT, and exploring ad-driven revenue as it refines its for-profit...

TikTok's plan to bring social shopping to the US is really starting to pay off

5 December 2024 at 13:58
A TikTok Shop logo.
TikTok Shop crossed $100 million in US sales on Black Friday.

Dan Whateley/Business Insider.

  • Social shopping finally broke through in the US in 2024, driven by TikTok Shop.
  • Companies spent years trying to import social-commerce habits from Asia, with varied success.
  • The US market is still dominated by Amazon, but social apps and influencers are key players.

Social platforms have spent years trying to get Americans to buy stuff from videos, posts, and livestreams. That bet seems to finally be paying off.

The 2024 holiday sales from social media β€” driven by TikTok Shop and influencer affiliates, among other factors β€” show how far social shopping has come in the past five years.

TikTok Shop, which had its official wide launch in the US in September 2023, reported $100 million in single-day US sales on Black Friday this year, triple what it drove in 2023. Americans viewed over 30,000 TikTok shopping livestreams that day, with one creator picking up $2 million in sales from a single session.

The company's holiday gold rush didn't come easily. TikTok and its owner ByteDance have spent years investing in its e-commerce business, even as competitors like Instagram have pulled back on shopping features.

TikTok began testing out social-commerce features in the US as early as 2020 when it let creators add shopping buttons to some videos. It began rolling out its more advanced product, Shop, in the US to a group of merchants and agencies in November 2022 after testing in other markets like the UK. It's since built out its own order fulfillment program, enlisted hundreds of outside partners to train merchants and creators on how to sell in-app, and recently began connecting creators with manufacturers to build their own products.

TikTok likely wants to replicate some of the success of its sister app in China, Douyin, which drives hundreds of billions in sales annually, often via influencer livestreams. While TikTok's numbers are comparatively small, the company has made a ton of progress this year, social-commerce executives told Business Insider.

Max Benator, the CEO of the social-shopping agency Orca, said he expects to hit just under $100 million in total gross merchandise value, or GMV, in 2024 across the company's clients, a roughly 10X increase from 2023.

"We've now been on TikTok Shop since the very beginning, and we've seen successes gradually and consistently increase month over month," Benator told BI. "The numbers are serious."

Outlandish, a TikTok Shop agency that recently opened a livestreaming hub in Santa Monica, said its Shop sellers earned $48 million in US sales in November, up from $20 million in October. The company is betting that live shopping will continue to gain traction in the US, as it has in more mature social-commerce markets like China.

"It's QVC on steroids," Outlandish's founder and CEO William August told BI.

A TikTok Shop host sells to the app's users during a livestream.
A TikTok Shop host sells on a livestream in Outlandish's Santa Monica facility.

Amanda Perelli/Business Insider.

Affiliate marketing from influencers and others drove a fifth of Cyber Monday sales revenue

TikTok Shop's holiday performance was impressive for an e-commerce newcomer, but its business remains a small piece of overall holiday sales.

Total online Black Friday sales in the US hit $10.8 billion this year, up about 10% from 2023, according to Adobe Analytics. Online sales in the US between November 1 and December 2 reached $131.5 billion, and β€―hit $13.3 billion on Cyber Monday alone.

Retailers like Amazon, Walmart, and Target continue to dominate much of online spending, but social-media influencers and other affiliate marketers are playing an increasingly important role in driving purchases on those platforms.

About 20% of US e-commerce revenue on Cyber Monday arrived via affiliate or other promotional links, a 7% year-over-year increase from 2023, per Adobe Analytics.

Outside TikTok and affiliate marketing, other influencer-focused platforms are also reporting meaningful sales volume this year. Live shopping platform Whatnot said in November that it had surpassed $2 billion in year-to-date livestream sales, for example.

TikTok and its partners are proving that US consumers are willing to adjust shopping habits

When TikTok and competitors like Instagram and YouTube first began testing e-commerce features in the US, not all consumers were psyched.

Social media is for entertainment, not shopping, some said. Amazon and other big retailers have long dominated e-commerce, and changing consumer habits is a challenge. Instagram backpedaled on its shopping product last year, removing its Shop tab in February 2023 and eventually partnering with Amazon for its in-app shopping strategy.

But TikTok kept charging forward with social shopping. It enlisted an army ofΒ agency partnersΒ and livestream coaches to accelerate the adoption of Shop and flooded its feed with videos of creatorsΒ hawking goodsΒ in exchange for a commission.

TikTok's owner ByteDance was likely behind the company's determination to make social shopping work as it sought to bring Douyin's success to TikTok.

TikTok Shop's US operations lead Nicolas Le Bourgeois presented at a company event.
TikTok Shop's US operations lead Nicolas Le Bourgeois made live shopping a priority this holiday season.

Dan Whateley.

Now that live shopping and social commerce are beginning to take hold in the US, TikTok and ByteDance's push into the category is paying off (though it all could fall apart if TikTok ends up being banned in January due to a divest-or-ban law).

"This is the year that we've seen the real beginning of live shopping in America," said Julian Reis, the CEO of SuperOrdinary, a social-commerce agency that's worked with TikTok and Douyin. "With TikTok, we've had the first real foray into building an ecosystem that ties in entertainment and live shopping together, and a full-service ecosystem that brings in the creators, the affiliates, the products, the brands altogether."

Read the original article on Business Insider

Perplexity Adds The Independent, LA Times, Blavity, and Others to Its Publisher Revenue-Sharing Program

5 December 2024 at 06:00
Perplexity's Publisher Program, which distributes revenue to media outlets when their content appears next to ads on the AI search platform, has recruited its second batch of publisher partners. The San Francisco-based startup now works with over a dozen global media titles, including the Los Angeles Times, Blavity, The Independent, Prisa Media (the leading Spanish-language...

Spotify’s β€˜2024 Wrapped’ Celebrates the Brat Girls, Swifties, and Other Diehard Fans

4 December 2024 at 05:00
To mark the 10th year of Spotify Wrapped, the streaming giant is celebrating the unique and surprising ways artists and creators have shaped fans' lives around the world. On Wednesday (Dec. 4), Spotify launched its global "2024 Wrapped" campaign, which over the past decade has become the platform's biggest marketing moment of the year and...

3 Reasons Why Pmax Ads Show Up In Shoddy Places

2 December 2024 at 03:00
As marketers know only too well, there are trade-offs with everything. And in the era of set-it-and-forget-it tools, that trade-off is one of spend efficiency for ads sometimes showing up in questionable environments. Despite grumbles, a lot of marketers have accepted that trade-off. But with AI fuelled made for advertising sites springing up, the phenomenon...

Audio platform Pocket FM taps into AI tools to help it expand its content catalog

27 November 2024 at 02:01

India-based audio platform Pocket FM has more than 200,000 hours of content on the service. However, the company’s CEO, Rohan Nayak, believes that the platform still has room to grow in terms of creating original content and expanding its library to multiple genres and subgenres. The fastest way to do that is to tap into […]

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5 Ways TikTok’s AI Ad Buying Tool Smart+ Can Catch Up With Meta’s ASCΒ 

25 November 2024 at 09:56
After nearly two months of testing TikTok's Smart+--which lets AI optimize creative and choose who to serve an ad--there are some areas for improvement, four ad buyers told ADWEEK. Especially when compared to Meta's Advantage+ Shopping Campaigns (ASC), which launched in 2022. Granted, Meta's ASC has had more time to finesse its AI-buying tool, but...

Bluesky Is Having a Moment, But Most Brands Aren’t Ready to Jump In Yet

21 November 2024 at 09:32
Bluesky is booming as internet users seek out the comfort of a controlled social media environment. However, the opportunity for marketers remains limited, due to a lack of ad products and a relatively restrictive audience scale. Brands who are actively posting organically on Bluesky are typical first movers, the likes of Duolingo, Hulu, and Netflix....

The Biggest Questions After The Trade Desk’s OS Announcement

20 November 2024 at 10:37
Is getting into smart TV OS a smart move for The Trade Desk? Today, ad tech platform The Trade Desk announced that it has developed Ventura, a new streaming TV operating system (OS). Additionally, it will partner with smart TV original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) and other streaming TV aggregators to launch the OS as early...

40% of an Ecommerce Brand’s Pmax Buys Were Served on AI-spun MFA Sites and Dead Domains

20 November 2024 at 08:52
The increase in AI-spun made for advertising sites is making it harder for buyers to ensure their ads show up in quality environments, especially when using AI-powered media buying tools like Google's Performance Max, according to four sources. One ecommerce brand found that, for one recent campaign, between 30% and 40% of its Pmax display...

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