Zach Fuller

Walled Gardens: How Does Amazon and Google’s Approach Compare to Apple’s?

Zach Fuller
Having begun to embed itself within popular consciousness throughout 2017, voice control is poised to extend its influence and usher in the latest hardware paradigm shift in tech. What is important to consider is that in these early days of the technology, the charge is being led by two companies with a far less decorated history of delivering hardware: Amazon and Google.
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Quick Take: Amazon, the Premier League and Next Gen Sports Frameworks

Zach Fuller
In a move long anticipated by MIDiA , Amazon are rumoured to be in the running for Premier League streaming rights. Although they are unlikely to be alone in this endeavour (both Facebook and Google have also been mooted as sports rights bidders), they are arguably in a better position to build a next-gen sports monetisation framework than their rivals.
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Quick Take: Universal’s Partnership with Facebook

Zach Fuller
Following its renewed deal with YouTube earlier this week, Universal has signed another landmark agreement for digital monetisation, this time with Facebook. Described by the world’s largest recorded music label as ‘unprecedented’, Facebook users,under the terms of the partnership, will now be able to upload videos that contain licensed music across Facebook’s assets.
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The FCC Repeals Net Neutrality: This Changes Everything

Zach Fuller
Anticipated for months, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted yesterday to repeal the Obama-era ‘Open Internet Order’ enacted in 2015. Despite public outcry across social media over the anti-competitive nature of the decision, the regulatory agency led by Ajit Pai has enacted a decision so far reaching – effectively weaponising content distribution, it will affect how millions access the internet and have significant consequences for the digital economy.
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Snapchat’s Re-Design Is Likely Too Little Too Late

Zach Fuller
Having promised a ‘whole new Snapchat’, it appears the app’s mooted re-design is not the revolution Evan Spiegel proposed during his company’s Q3 earnings call. The company’s founder stated that: “While blurring the lines between professional content creators and your friends has been an interesting Internet experiment, it has also produced some strange side-effects (like fake news) and made us feel like we have to perform for our friends rather than just express ourselves.
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With Amazon's Black Friday in Full Swing, What Would Marshall McLuhan Think of Voice Control?

Zach Fuller
AsBlack Friday kicks into gear throughout the US, Amazon has been quick to adopt the occasion as an opportune event for getting more Echo devices into Prime customer households. MIDiA has been writing a lot the past year on implications of voice technology, and it got me thinking about what one of the most noted voices in media criticism in the 20th century would have thought of the device and its consequences.
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Tencent Can’t Lose With Its 12% Stake Purchase in Snap Inc

Zach Fuller
As tech’s big players continued to rollout their Q3 earnings reports, one of the most startling revelations was quietly embedded within Snap Inc’s stock ownership. The section read: In November 2017, Tencent Holdings Limited notified us that it, together with its affiliates, acquired 145,778,246 shares of our non-voting Class A common stock via open market purchases.
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Quick Take: Big Tech’s Q3 Earnings Have Big Implications for Media

Zach Fuller
With US listed public companies’ quarterly earnings currently being drip-fed to Wall Street, here are two of the implications for Media and Advertising entities from Tech’s Big Four Q3 earnings: Amazon’s Media Presence is Continuing to Grow: While Amazon did not break out its specific numbers around the nascent advertising and media group aspects of its business, its revenue defined as other, is alongside its emerging subscription revenue (Prime, Amazon Video etc), is the fastest growing element of the Amazon ecosystem.
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The Digital News Consumer

Cover image for The Digital News Consumer
Zach Fuller
As the publishing industry’s issues regarding monetisation move front and centre in the political debate over Facebook’s media influence, the way consumers discover and interact with news content stands at a tipping point. With increasing diversity in consumption patterns across geographical markets and age groups, understanding the digital publishing consumer involves addressing platform distinctions and the wider divide between the traditional and the new.
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Media Company Strategy
How Legacy Format Audiences Can Fund Digital Transition

Cover image for Media Company Strategy
Zach Fuller
Media’s well documented struggles of balancing the decline of ad revenue with building digital subscriber bases has resulted in surprising strategic actions by some of its largest entities. As the tech majors take more digital ad revenue form across the digital sphere, publishing, music and online video companies are quietly super-serving legacy products to consumers and stretching the existing high-margins in these areas, as a revenue hedge during this transitional period in digital monetisation.
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Thoughts On WMG's Acquisition of Spinnin Records

Zach Fuller
Warner Music Group has announced they will be acquiring Dutch Dance Label Spinnin Records for $100m. Whilst the label boasts some of the most popular names in Dance Music, such as Martin Garrix and Tiesto, much like the record Neymar transfer we discussed earlier this year , this is as much an investment in digital real-estate as it is for Spinnin’s copyright and management functions.
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