YouTube is now the UK's fifth most-used venue for finding news, and a key focus for UK broadcasters and publishers. They made up a quarter of UK trending news videos in 2023, competing with native YouTubers and US broadcasters

We find that YouTube’s algorithms tend to funnel users from news content towards non-news within a few videos. The reverse trend, of non-news to news content, is almost non-existent

We do not find evidence of widespread brand safety concerns impacting advertising on news videos, though publishers still note YouTube is better for exposure and consumption than it is for generating revenue. The ad load is largely in line with other genres

Use of publisher content to train AI models is hotly contested. Unacknowledged scraping, licensing deals, and lawsuits all characterise the publisher-AI company relationship.

However, model training is not the whole story. More and more products rely on up-to-date access to content, and some are direct competitors to publisher offerings.

Publishers can’t depend on copyright to deliver them the value of their IP. They need to track which products are catching on with users for licensing deals to make sense for them, and to ensure their own products keep up with the competition.

Roblox’s rapid redirection towards attracting brands and advertisers with new tools, including programmatic advertising, is a savvy and ultimately necessary strategy to position the company as a global platform for games and entertainment IP

Roblox will comfortably hit 100 million DAUs in 2025, as growth rates begin to run upwards of 25%, aided by aggressive geographic expansion. New content partnerships could accelerate it faster 

For TV and film marketers, led by Netflix, Roblox is becoming a default option for immersive experiences and games, while actively avoiding indirect support for Disney through Fortnite

From the depths of 2023, advertising expenditure on legacy media rose moderately in 2024, on the back of an uptick in real private consumer expenditure thanks to lower inflation and reduced costs of credit—the outlook for legacy media is about the same for 2025.

Online stands apart from legacy media due to the growth of ecommerce—driven by both goods (over 26% of retail sales) and services such as travel, as well as intense competition among platforms (Amazon, Shein, Temu)—with double-digit growth in 2024 set to continue in 2025.

Television remains the most effective medium for brand advertisers—despite the decline in viewing—with broadcasters’ digital innovation and SVOD ad tiers providing greater targeting alongside the mass broadcast reach.

Big tech capex is set to jump over 50% in 2024, fueling the current AI boom, and supporting the training and deployment of the next-generation of frontier models slated for release over the next 2-4 months

If these frontier models can deliver greater capabilities, and the returns to match, it will intensify the race to scale up capex even further to train ever more powerful models on ever larger clusters of chips

If returns do not flow to the frontier, then models become commoditised, with all of big tech able to capitalise on their application layer dominance. If they do, then outcomes are uneven and uncertain with the core cloud players racing for dominance and leaving the others behind

We analysed hundreds of ads on YouTube, the biggest online video platform. Direct response campaigns predominate, especially among finance, ecommerce and technology buyers.

YouTube on TV hosts more brand campaigns with unskippable >30-second ads. In the UK, YouTube viewing on the TV set will grow c.80% by 2030, changing the profile of YouTube advertising.

YouTube generates about 85% of its revenue from ads. We found it also guides user behaviour by ramping up ad load for logged-out users so that they log in.

UK news publishers are experimenting with generative AI to realise newsroom efficiencies. Different businesses see a different balance of risk and reward: some eager locals are already using it for newsgathering and content creation, while quality nationals hold back from reader-facing uses.

Publishers must protect the integrity of their content. Beyond hallucinations, overuse of generative AI carries the longer-term commercial and reputational risk of losing what makes a news product distinctive.

Far less certain is the role of generative AI in delivering the holy grail of higher revenues. New product offerings could be more of an opportunity for businesses that rely on subscribers than those that are ad-supported.

Women’s sport press news coverage during the 2024 Paris Olympics has softened after three years of record-breaking highs, though it remains up 3.8x on 2016 levels

Publications vary in their representation, with populars increasing article numbers faster, though qualities continue to devote more space to women. Success is a key generator of ‘newsworthy’ content

Coverage of women’s sport, despite falling article numbers, is larger and more prominent than before, and the threshold for inclusion continues to fall—signalling wider normalisation of women in sports pages
 

In the past, broadcast TV and YouTube content has been poles apart—both in substance and the need states they served. This is changing, with the overlap in offerings growing 

We estimate that c.61% of viewing of YouTube Trending content is of videos that could be considered TV-like. Similar programming makes up c.35% of broadcast TV viewing 

YouTube’s videos are also becoming longer, raising audience tolerance and expectations, and allowing the service to compete in a broader range of genres. However, this will be challenged by monetisation limitations

Sony PlayStation 5 and Microsoft Xbox unit sales crashed in the last quarter, despite promotional discounting. Neither company appears able to reverse a clear consumer shift away from fixed consoles. 

Nintendo Switch outsold Xbox and nearly matched PlayStation sales, even with the Switch 2 set to launch in 2025. 

A radical change in hardware strategy and leadership will be the best solution for Microsoft to demonstrate a growth narrative following its acquisition of Activision. Gamescom this month may provide more clues.