1. Marijuana delivery company Eaze is reported close to bankruptcy, after burning through funding, once again. Eaze has seen unannounced layoffs, and its depleted cash reserves threaten its ability to make payroll or settle its AWS bill. Eaze was forced to raise a bridge round to keep the lights on as it prepares to attempt a major pivot to “touching
the plant” by selling its own marijuana brands through its own depots. TechCrunch spoke with nine sources with knowledge of Eaze’s struggles. If Eaze fails, it could highlight serious growing pains amid the “green rush” of startups into the marijuana business. One of the biggest issues is the criminal investigations into its business, which includes now claims by the feds of money laundering.
2. OpenWeb, an engagement platform serving over
1,000 publishers, today announced it has acquired the audience management company Jeeng. Jeeng utilizes AI technology to support over 650 publishers, including VICE Media and HarperCollins. It leverages first-party data to deliver content tailored to users' interests via email, push and other channels, serving 150 million unique visitors per month, OpenWeb says. "With the demise of third-party cookies, collapsing trust in social media, and the segmentation of online audiences,
publishers and advertisers need to talk to their users one-on-one," said Nadav Shoval, CEO and co-founder of OpenWeb. "With Jeeng's capabilities we can continue to build and strengthen those individual relationships."
3. Looks like Google just announced a new JavaScript event for Chrome that fires when a user stops scrolling, allowing you to identify that particular point on your website.This is huge news for anyone who’s trying to figure out
how their audience engages with their content. The scrollend event can fire in various moments, like when:
The browser is no longer animating or translating scroll.
The user releases touch from the screen.
The pointer has released the scroll thumb.
The keypress has been released.
And so on… Meaning you’ll know when users stop reading your posts, how they engage with your content, etc. You seeing the possibilities yet? It’s not exactly new: some browsers,
like Mozilla Firefox, have already implemented scrollend.
4. TV advertising has been a tough market for the past few years, but NBCUniversal CEO Jeff Shell says the market is stabilizing. In a statement during Comcast’s fourth-quarter earnings call on Thursday, Shell said: “There are parts of the market that are really doing well — pharma, entertainment. Travel is on fire. But there are parts of the market that feel uncertain.
Tech, auto, financial services all are weak." He added: “The ad market feels like it has stabilized a bit. And we are assuming it is going to stay weak for the first half of this year and then recover.”Company-wide, NBCUniversal's advertising revenue in the fourth quarter of 2022 was up 4% to $2.98 billion. But taking out the late-fall bump from the FIFA World Cup, advertising revenue sank 5.6%.
5. Traditional linear TV -- national and local
broadcast and cable -- will see flat advertising growth in the fourth quarter, according to estimates from MoffettNathanson Research. That's a far cry from digital media advertising platforms, which are expected to see double-digit growth in Q4. "While traditional television advertising dollars are historically more resilient given the protective dynamics of the upfront reservation system, last week we cut our fourth quarter U.S. TV advertising forecast by 200 bps to 0% growth," writes
media analyst Michael Nathanson. "This reflects just how weak the domestic advertising market was at the end of 2022." "Taking out Olympics comparisons of a year ago and advertising video-on-demand [AVOD] platforms, TV declined 2% in the third quarter after a 1% drop in the second quarter and a 7% rise in the first quarter," Nathanson added.
6. Web3 startup ValuesCo has closed a $2.7 million seed-funding round to build community-driven rewards
ecosystems for brands, creators and nonprofits powered by Web3 tokens, encouraging campaigners to align with ESG issues they care about. Upon launch, the startup has begun working with ad giants Publicis and Dentsu.To utilize ValuesCo’s offerings, customers sign onto its “Values” app and receive social tokens for joining ESG “missions” and “rewards-led” programs, earning their way to prizes. The company says that Values allows communities to design and launch a social token with no code
or blockchain knowledge. They can create wallets instantly with just a phone or email login and earn tokens by completing actions and submitting proof via photos, social media posts, and scanned QR codes. Tokens are then redeemed for rewards like products, experiences and digital collectibles. For example, customers of watersports brand Starboard have used ValuesCo to incentivize cleanup of 770,000 pounds of ocean plastic, earning branded tokens that can be redeemed for trees
planted
8. Comcast added five million paying subscribers to its Peacock streaming service in 2022, finishing the year with more than 20 million customers. CEO Brian Roberts said Thursday that the company's programming was a draw for many viewers—particularly during the World Cup, which streamed on Peacock. But the cost of that programming also had an impact: Peacock lost $978 million on revenue of just $660 million. Overall,
Comcast reported revenue rose 0.7% to $30.5 billion in the quarter, while net income fell 1.1% to $3 billion. Comcast's cable business, which includes broadband and TV services, reported a marginal lift in revenue and profits as it gained broadband subscribers but lost TV viewers. NBCUniversal, the entertainment arm that includes Peacock, reported a 36% drop in quarterly profits—as measured by adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization—on 5.9% higher revenue for the
full year. For 2022 alone, Peacock lost $2.5 billion compared with its loss of $1.7 billion in 2021
9. Stripe has been thinking about going public for a while now, and it looks like the company is finally ready to move forward with its plans.
The company told employees and investors Thursday that it's considering both a direct listing and a private-market transaction that would give employees liquidity within the next 12 months.
The all-hands meeting will discuss the options on Friday.The potential maneuvers are aimed at resolving a lingering problem for Stripe: Some of its veteran employees hold restricted stock units due to expire soon, meaning a big piece of their compensation could evaporate without maneuvers from the company. The fundraising process is more likely to result in Stripe raising new capital privately, rather than a public offering, two people familiar with the matter said.
10. The Trade Desk is a company that helps the biggest brands in the world buy ads online, such as banner ads, digital out-of-home ads, mobile ads, and connected TV ads. They help these businesses use data to figure out which ads to buy, at what price, in millions of online ad auctions that take place every second. Advertising is a lynchpin of economic growth, contributing to as much as 20 percent of a country’s GDP, and also core for entrepreneurialism,
helping small businesses establish themselves in the early stages of growth. This is why it is important to have an open, transparent and competitive market for advertising. The Trade Desk does not own any media content or sites, they do not have a search engine and they can objectively buy the ads that have the most value to any given brand. Google on the other hand makes money on all sides of the advertising transaction and in many cases, Google is even buying from Google on behalf of
brands.
11. Preciso, the world's first real-time bidding system to offer targeted display advertising campaigns specifically to small-and-medium-sized merchants, today announced the full-scale launch of its integration with multinational ecommerce platform Shopify.Founded in Canada in 2006 and known for its massive global reach and ease of use, Shopify has grown to become one of the world’s most successful commerce platforms. More
than 1.7m merchants used Shopify as of 2021, and its growth in the pandemic catapulted the service to the forefront of its sector. With the mainstream launch of its Shopify integration, which follows a year of testing via a soft roll-out, Preciso continues to break down barriers for smaller ecommerce vendors without in-house IT or technology teams. Larraine Criss, COO at Preciso explains: “Our integration with Shopify is helping SMEs not only to reduce manual processes and budget waste through
our disruptive programmatic ad buying, it is also opening the doors to premium advertising for all advertisers - democratising access
