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Meta Connect showcased the company’s determination and ambition to compete simultaneously across multiple fiercely contested technology spaces, with Apple’s wearable products and services a primary target.

In attempting to both capture developer mindshare and change consumer perceptions of AI and wearables, Meta buried new and interesting AI developer frameworks and agentic experiences behind cartoon AI agents and a Tamagotchi-like device.

Smart glasses category expansion, and a radical VR glasses reveal, were tightly bound to AI as the missing component to assist app and service development, driving improved experiences for consumers. Meta’s hardware strategy remains US-centric with very slow international rollout for flagship devices.

The government is considering an update to the definition of public service media, to ensure its provision across a converging, over-populated online media ecosystem.

This opens up difficult questions about how we should define and incentivise quality content, and content that serves the public good—as well as defining success in carrying out public service obligations.

These definitional challenges bleed into the practical challenge of designing a prominence system for online platforms. There must be realism about the commercial upside to such a system for PSBs, and any potential to disadvantage other types of content creators. 

As the growth of streaming viewing slows, the narrative is being reshaped around the types of engagement these platforms can command.

With a common set of metrics across UK streaming platforms, we have categorised and quantified different types of engagement.

While focus inevitably is being directed to intensive, high-value engagement, this is the minority: most viewing is probably fungible, with a large proportion to older, non-exclusive content.
 

Video-sharing platforms give brands unprecedented freedom to commission and distribute entertainment, but building an audience is different from buying one.

The opportunity depends on brands turning fleeting attention into lasting affinity and, ultimately, commercial value.

As brands take greater control, money and responsibilities are shifting across the value chain, creating new opportunities and risks for broadcasters, producers and creators.

The UK national news industry is smaller, leaner and more profitable than it was a decade ago. Aggregate revenue is broadly flat on 2017, but adjusted operating profit has risen from £214m to £336m as publishers have shifted towards higher-value digital and reader revenues.

Subscriptions are maturing from a volume game into one of yield, retention and segmentation. Tabloids are selectively paywalling their content; the focus is increasingly lifetime value rather than subscriber count alone.

The next phase is portfolio economics, using the same journalism, expertise, personalities and IP across newsletters, specialist products, events, communities, flexible access and machine licensing—extracting more value from the same underlying assets.