Floor 9

This month on Floor 9, the Lab team assembles for a panel discussion on the future of the entertainment industry. Faced with rising streaming fatigue, high-churn “nomadic subscribers,”  and the looming threat of AI-generated “slop content,” Hollywood needs to be smart about navigating the post-streaming-wars industry landscape, and that begins with re-aligning their business model with the market reality. In this episode, host Ryan Miller is joined by Chelsea Freitas, Tom Trudeau, and Richard Yao to break down the various issues facing the entertainment industry today and point to the best practices going forward. If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on LinkedIn and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

As usual, Apple’s latest WWDC event brought forth many software updates, but the star of the show was Apple’s major AI update — Apple Intelligence, which will enable LLM-powered new features across Apple’s entire ecosystem. In this episode, Adam and Ryan took a deep dive into Apple Intelligence, the ChatGPT integration, its impact on the AI competitive landscape, and more. Listen now to hear our analysis on the WWDC announcements, including: Apple Intelligence overview - 2:20Siri’s big upgrade - 5:58Fun AI features: Genmoji and Image Playground - 10:26Apple’s AI privacy promise & how it works - 14:04Apple’s OpenAI partnership & ChatGPT integration - 21:07How Apple’s AI strategy differs from competitors - 26:20Safari Highlights & new Photos app updates - 30:01New immersive Vision Pro content - 33:20Implications for brand marketers - 37:58f you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

May marks the beginning of the tech conference season, and this year, we had three key players in the AI race — OpenAI, Google, and Microsoft — all hosting their respective developer conferences within a two-week period in May. If you missed the announcements, fret not! The Lab team is here to help you keep up with the fast-evolving AI developments and competitive landscape.In this episode, Chelsea Freitas from our strategy team, along with Ryan Miller and Tom Trudeau from our partnerships team, took the Floor 9 mic and discussed all the highlights from the recent developer conferences, including:Microsoft’s hardware-centric Surface event - 0:52Is AI-powered Surface laptops a legitimate competitor to Apple? - 3:27AI-powered Recall feature for the Copliot+ PCs - 5:01Key announcements from Microsoft's Build event - 9:03Will people call them “AI” as more AI-powered features become productized - 15:25The advertising implications of Copilot and Microsoft’s AI features - 16:45Key announcements from Google’s I/O developer event - 19:55The impact of Google rolling out AI search - 21:23Google integrating Gemini AI into its suite of popular products - 24:31Google’s new multimodal AI-powered creative tools - 29:03Last thoughts on the AI race and wrap up - 32:52If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Kids these days! In this episode of Floor 9, the Lab’s strategy team (Adam Simon and Cheslea Freitas) and partnerships team (Ryan Miller and Tom Trudeau) join forces to analyze the youngest generation on the scene and their Millennial parents. Together, the team tackles topics that include:Gen Alpha’s key media behaviorsHow Gen Alpha socialize digitally  Gen Alpha as “AI natives”Millennials’ collaborative and overprotective parenting styleThe major concerns of Millennial parents The recent “no phone childhood” movementKey takeaways for brands looking to reach kids and parentsIf you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

This week on Floor 9, it’s about the Vision Pro! Ryan, Adam, and Chelsea regroup on Floor 9 for an in-depth discussion of Apple’s groundbreaking “spatial computing” headset. From our team’s first impressions of trying it on, to unpacking its use cases and market implications, the Lab team is eager to share our hot takes on Vision Pro. Key topics include:Assessing the Vision Pro launch and initial reception - starting around 0:57The Lab team’s first impressions of Vision Pro - starting around 3:31Discussing Vision Pro’s primary use cases - starting around 7:37Does Vision Pro signal a computing paradigm shift? - starting around 18:57The entertainment value of Vision Pro - starting around 21:40The user experience of Vision Pro: isolating or shared? - starting around 29:24Vision Pro’s impact on the mixed-reality headset market - starting around 34:23The marketing implications of Vision Pro and brand takeaways -  starting around 39:34If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Welcome back to Floor 9! This week, your hosts Ryan and Adam are joined by Chelsea Freitas from our Strategy team to take a deep dive into the trends and themes from our latest annual Outlook report, which includes:Macro trends in consumer behaviors - starting at 0:42Life's New Beats - starting at 13:36The Remixed City - starting at 24:50The Revenge of the Monoculture - starting at 37:50The Expanding Experience Economy - starting at 45:48Make sure to check out the full version of Outlook 2024 report on Medium here: https://bit.ly/LabOutlook24If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast. Follow the Lab on Twitter @ipglab and on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Welcome back to Floor 9! As always, we’ll kick off the year with a CES episode, in which the Lab team assembles to recap the biggest trends we spotted at CES 2024, including:How the AI hype manifested on the CES show floors, both the good and the bad (1:05)How the translucent TVs wow'ed the crowd and could be interesting for retail (2:56)How interoperability emerged as a major trend for smart home devices (4:25)How digital health solutions continue to be on-demand and home-centric (11:09)How immersive experiences are evolving and supercharging next-gen entertainment (15:17)How some CES exhibitors brought a luxury touch to their products through cutting-edge tech and design (26:10)How the CES showcased the latest trends in play and toy: the rise of educational toys, and AI-enabled play (37:48)How the auto industry is rushing to integrate AI into the dashboard and re-adjust their EV strategies (47:44)And many more!In addition, we also each named our favorite CES product this year!To learn more about CES trends, read our written recap here on Medium.If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Follow the Lab on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!Correction: at the 22:21 mark, Richard mistakenly said "Roku" when he meant to say "Roxi" when mentioning their new interactive linear broadcast channel.

To close out this significant year of innovations, the Lab team assembles for an end-of-year recap of the biggest trends that defined the tech and media landscape for the past 12 months:The rise of generative AI & its impact on creator economy and marketingThe “post-streaming wars” reality & the new opportunities in interactive ad formatsThe shifting social media landscape & the pivot in social commerce The revival of monoculture & the resulting “funflation” on consumer spendingThe emergence of spatial computing and immersive headsets, spurred by the impending release of Apple’s Vision ProListen now to hear what the Lab team has to say about each of these five topics that will continue to influence consumer behavior in 2024 and beyond. You can read more about the trends discussed in this episode in our year-end roundup piece here on Medium.If you enjoyed the episode, please consider giving us a five-star review on Apple Podcast and Spotify. Follow the Lab on Medium for our latest insights. Thanks for listening!

Welcome to our annual holiday shopping trends episode. This year, this holly jolly discussion is led by Chelsea Freitas,  VP of our Strategy team, and she is joined by two other members of our strategy team, Adam Simon and Katy Geisreiter. In this episode, the trio shared some must-know stats about this year’s holiday shopping trends and consumer behaviors, highlighted their favorite tech-enabled retail holiday campaigns, and debated the effects of funflation and other marco-economic forces on holiday shopping behaviors this year. Listen now!