In the year following its IPO, Reddit has defied our expectations, reporting five straight quarters of positive adjusted operating income and strong growth.
Profitability stems from disciplined cost management alongside exceptional user growth, with a focus on advertising performance and limited distractions.
The platform's human-generated conversations are proving valuable in the AI era, but AI strength could become a vulnerability if synthetic content overwhelms authentic discussion.
The USA is reshaping the global economic order in defiance of trade treaties; however, the rest of the world is observing trade treaties and absorbing the shock of the tariff wall erected around the US market.
The UK is relatively spared among the 90 origins hit by the USA's tariffs on imports of goods, which do not apply to services' exports to the US, twice the value of goods, including media (e.g. TV programmes) and advertising services.
The timing of the deteriorating global outlook is poor due to the headwinds facing the UK economy that are impairing the recovery of advertising in 2025.
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Trump II is already proving to be a more serious threat to an independent, robust news media than Trump I.
Trump’s direct power around news media is limited, but the threat comes from an unprecedented politicisation of federal regulators, enforcement and procurement—to favour friends and punish enemies.
Opposition to Trump II is weaker and more divided than the broad ‘resistance’ to Trump I. Big tech companies are going for a close embrace, hoping to steer policy to their advantage—while others bend the knee to avoid punishment.
AI agents capable of complex, self-directed tasks are becoming a reality, with capabilities set to improve dramatically through this year, and diffuse widely.
Consumer agent uptake will be hard to time, but fast when it occurs. Enterprise adoption will happen slower but with greater inevitability, as agents offer strong productivity gains across many business functions.
TMT firms should be able to capitalise on much of these potential cost savings, but are exposed to a number of specific risks around agents acting as new digital middlemen, disintermediating traditional web ecosystems within advertising and ecommerce.
Geopolitical clashes between the US and Europe were a barely concealed undercurrent at this year’s MWC, with European tech regulation at odds with US moves, and telcos pitching for regulatory favours on firmer ground than they have had for years.
Perhaps the largest impact is on the satellite industry, with Eutelsat OneWeb having been given a new lease of life as the EU champion versus a now disfavoured SpaceX/Starlink.
AI was of course the talk of the town, but largely in ways that are tangential at best to traditional telcos, with the necessary building blocks for telcos to play a big role (i.e. network APIs) still needing much work.
Despite the success and popularity of Amazon’s Echo, the rationale for this device in Amazon’s ecosystem has been unclear—until now.
The introduction of Alexa+ to Echo devices—enhanced with generative AI which improves its voice user-interface—aims to change this.
Alexa+ is designed to increase Prime lock-in, and enables Amazon to differentiate its devices and operating systems.
US big tech companies are deploying hundreds of billions of dollars to remake the global economy in their image, as enviable growth contrasts with layoffs and low morale.
The cost of using AI models will fall in 2025 and make more AI applications possible. Regulation is caught between pressure from Trump and investigations that must go on, such as digital markets.
Microsoft and Google have tied their fortunes to AI. Amazon and Meta stand to realise business gains from AI, while Apple is the outlier: capex declined in 2024 as it focuses on iPhone and services.
Telcos are increasingly developing APIs to share selected network data with third parties, with the goal of supporting useful end-user applications.
Capabilities are still nascent, but the potential is real. Telcos need to adopt a pragmatic approach that looks to match API capabilities to useful products, and build increasing scale over time.
Security is the largest near-term opportunity for API products, but AI is the key emerging area, with telcos potentially able to play an ambitious role in providing APIs to help manage the growth of autonomous AI agents.
Recent deals for Ligue 1, the Fifa Club World Cup and Foxtel signal DAZN is focused on global expansion, but this has postponed group breakeven.
Rights have been renewed at lower costs due to tepid competition and wider uncertainty in the broadcasting landscape, which support its improving margins.
Global scale may be a competitive advantage, but DAZN must still prove that global synergies improve local economics and generate a positive margin.
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