The games industry, with the potential to become the world’s largest media and entertainment sector by revenue, is undergoing profound transformation.

The consolidation of major developers is a response to a revenue model pivoting toward subscription, with direct consequences for those already in the subscription space: film, TV and music.

A technology-led creative medium, with an audience approaching three billion gamers, is seeing its franchises become more valuable and useful than ever.

UK news publishers have rushed to distribute content on TikTok. They are drawn by its enormous young audience, but poor monetisation and data sharing, a lack of referrals to their own sites, and data security concerns are frustrating a full embrace of the platform.

TikTok is increasingly identified as a ‘news source’ by young people: a risk to publishers distributing content on the platform is that their brands may get lost in user feeds.

Publishers should view activity on TikTok as a strategic cost instead of a revenue source: an investment in brand awareness, and development in content and delivery formats that are becoming more widespread across platforms. Brand visibility is key to success here.

Consumer tech revenue growth ground to a halt by the end of 2022.

Changes in technology and user behaviour are creating risks for incumbents.

Shareholder pressure is driving efficiencies, but high costs are an inevitable response to growing challenges.

Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard is in trouble. US, UK, and European regulators may make the deal impossible for Microsoft—and a disaster for Activision and the wider industry. 

Sony’s late improvement in PlayStation 5 sales is only just enough to reach its target numbers for the year. It needs a more dynamic approach to a rapidly changing industry, and a less dogmatic message to consumers and regulators. 

Netflix Games is more than a trial—it’s on track to become a major games platform. 

A combination of factors drove the worst quarter ever for big tech growth, though the secular shift online of the economy and society will continue.

Advertising demand is down, reflected in lower prices. Ads did better the closer they are to transactions, with variability by category.

Efficiencies and AI are the investor-soothing buzzwords going into 2023.

The post-pandemic recovery has lifted vacancies to a high of 1.27 million, at critical levels in hospitality and health—sectors impacted by the exodus of EU workers. We expect recruitment advertising for private sector roles to have risen 13% in 2022 to £746 million (noting base effects from lockdown in H1 2021), and will decline c.4% in 2023.

LinkedIn dominates recruitment advertising directed at professionals, leveraging its free global networking service. Indeed anchors the other end of the skills spectrum, which is low value and high volume, aggregating openings to create a scale proposition for jobseekers, using technology to target and match them with employers.

Specialists are surviving Indeed’s technology-driven business model by relying on human expertise and ancillary HR services to differentiate. Agencies continue to specialise in supplying workers to large employers for temporary positions. News publishers have retained a small but dwindling slice of recruitment advertising.

In this report we develop a rough segmentation of the adult population by level of online use: offline (10% of adults), shallow online (10%), deep online (80%). We examine how online services seeking to reach new audiences increasingly face the obstacle of missing demand rather than a lack of consumer skills or access

The app economy still relies on a limited consumer pool, but ecommerce is now reaching almost all of the deep online. Bridging the current gap between occasional and frequent online buyers is a clear opportunity and we are still in the early days of evolving buying services into shopping services

The only industry monetising all online users is advertising. Ad platforms, led by Google and Facebook, also play a critical role expanding the ranks of the deep online and online immersed. But offline brand display media, led by broadcast TV, remain critical for online brands wanting to expand their audience