The Stack: OOH Sector and BBC Break Records; AI Use Surges

by Aimee Newell Tarín on 16th Aug 2024 in News

This week on The Stack: OOH Sector and BBC Break Records; AI Use Surges; Today’s MadTech Daily Podcast episode

Records were broken in ad tech this week, starting with the BBC setting its new streaming record. Thanks to its coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympics, the broadcaster gained 218 million streams – more than doubling the viewership of the Tokyo Olympics. In addition, over 12 million viewers were signed into their iPlayer accounts while tuned in to the content. A record was set in Europe too, with 215 million viewers watching coverage of the games broadcasted by Warner Bros Discovery. Meanwhile, the out-of-home (OOH) advertising sector set its own record, with growth during this year’s H1 seeing their strongest growth yet. Unsurprisingly, the increase was predominantly driven by Digital OOH, which rose by 21%.

So far, this year has also been promising for Perplexity AI: its usage has increased sevenfold since the start of the year. The search engine has answered around 250 million questions in the past month – quite an impressive figure when compared to the 500 million questions it answered in the entirety of 2023.

News in the antitrust ambit has been less positive. Spotify and Epic Games called out Apple’s newly revised compliance plan for the EU’s Digital Markets Act, calling it purposely confusing and unlawful. Apple’s plan includes the introduction of two new fees: an Initial Acquisition Fee, and Store Services Fee.