Lab Weekly — 09/11/2020

Tech’s impact on mental health; New Floor 9 episode on the New Normal; Plus, news and stats roundup

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Lab Originals

Re-evaluating Technology’s Impact on Mental Health

For this week’s Lab Original, Sean Ahearn, Senior Manager of Client Services, pens a well-researched piece dissecting how the role that technology plays in our mental health has shifted during the pandemic, along with some suggestions as to what brands can do in response.

The Path Forward for Ambient Computing

The pandemic has suppressed the development of Ambient Computing, yet it also laid down a foundation for its long-term domination, writes our manager of content & strategy, Richard Yao, for ANA Marketing’s latest Pulse issue.

In case you missed it…

The Future of Small Businesses

The pandemic forced many small businesses to join the digital economy, but will they be able to fend off the aggregators in the long run?

What TikTok Tells Us about the Future of Music

The rise of music streaming services has transformed the music business. Now, the meteoric rise of TikTok is set to usher in a co-creative vision for the future of music.

The Long-Lasting Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Payments

The pandemic is pushing contactless payment and mobile wallets into the mainstream, setting up a cascade of implications that will reshape the banking industry

Floor 9 Podcast

Episode 82: The New Normal

Joined by Christina Adranly, Director of our Strategy team, the trio discussed their experience of working from home, new pandemic social etiquette, changes in media consumption, and overall a first-hand review of this new reality that all brands must adapt to.

News Analysis

Fortnite Is Launching A Concert Series On The Party Royale Island [The Verge]

Epic continues to build out its Party Royale island as a virtual event venue with a new concert series, complete with a state-of-the-art studio space in LA. Fortnite hopes to make this “a tour stop for artists” to reach audiences that they usually can’t access, which is an interesting idea for building the future of digital entertainment. So far, with live entertainments in real life mostly canceled, some musicians have pivoted to performing online (on Twitch and Instagram Live) to connect with listeners and make up for lost revenues from canceled tours. With this new initiative, Epic is taking another step towards building out non-gaming content in Fortnite and develop a proto-metaverse.

Related: Travis Scott drops McDonald’s-themed merchandise including a $90 chicken nugget pillow [CNN]; Twitch brings custom esports competitions to streamers in closed beta [The Verge]

WarnerMedia Eyes Spring Debut For HBO Max’s Ad-Supported Tier [Digiday]

Ever since HBO Max’s debut, there have been reports that WarnerMedia is considering to launch an ad-supported tier. Now that we have a rough date, it would be interesting to see if ViacomCBS’ plan to revamp CBS All Access can beat this new HBO Max tier to the market to compete for increasingly fragmented viewer attention. Besides, Digiday also reports that this new tier will only carry “a maximum of four minutes of ads per hour for episodic programming and two minutes of ads per hour for movies”, which is a significantly lighter ad load than linear TV, and even lighter than the four-minutes-per-hour benchmark that NBC’s Peacock previously set. But then again, it might be completely fair to compare Peacock’s completely free ad-tier to that of HBO Max, which would likely still cost about $10 a month given the light ad-load.

Related: Comcast is looking to license its set-top box operating system to TV manufacturers [Protocol]; CBS All Access adds 3,500+ TV episodes and films, rolls out update with curated homepages and better discovery [MacRumors]; AT&T exempts HBO Max from mobile data caps [Engadget]

Amazon’s new Alexa partnership lets you link your AT&T number to turn your Echo into a phone [The Verge]

This new partnership presents a rather interesting new use case for smart speakers to replace landlines. By doing so, AT&T gets to differentiate its phone call service from competitors, whereas Alexa gains an extended use case that could be helpful for senior citizens. It could be great for emergency calls when someone couldn’t physically reach the phone or dial. However, given that most phone calls people tend to receive these days are annoying spam calls, Amazon better has a strong spam filter in place, lest Alexa keeps interrupting users with spam calls.

Related: Netflix is now available on Google’s Nest Hub and Nest Hub Max [The Verge]; Amazon launches Alexa Print, a way to print lists, recipes, games and educational content using voice [TechCrunch]

Apple Sets Fall Product Event For Next Tuesday [9to5Mac]

Apple has set its first fall event for next Tuesday, Sept. 15. Early reports suggest that we can expect to see new Apple Watch, new iPads, and maybe even the previously reported Apple Silicon Macbook Pro. However, it looks like new 5G-ready iPhones will not be unveiled next week; reports indicate that they will be announced in a separate October event, which will likely introduce the Apple One service bundle along with the previously announced AirTags too.

Now, with new iPads being announced before new iPhones, it is hard to tell when iOS 14, along with its new privacy settings that will disrupt ad tracking, will become widely available. My guess is that it will come out with the iPhones next month. But there is a small chance that Apple could release them with the new iPads too, depending on their shipping date. As always, the Lab will be covering the event via our Medium site and newsletter, so be sure to check back next week for our hot takes.

Related: Peloton launches new ‘Bike+’ exercise bike featuring Apple Watch GymKit support [9to5Mac]; Apple confirms the ‘Apple One’ subscription bundle in its own Apple Music app’s code [TechCrunch]

Stats To Know

• Epic filed another motion in its war with Apple, which isn’t very interesting, except that in its filing, Epic disclosed some interesting data: iOS daily active users on Fortnite are down 60% since Epic started the fight, 116 million of Fortnite’s 350m registered users are on iOS, and iOS users have played 2.86bn hours.
• Edison Research posted a quick update on listening habits during quarantine in late August, and found that podcast consumers have expanded listening time up to 6 hours and 45 minutes per week on average over the second quarter of 2020. That’s about a half hour per week growth since the previous quarter.
• Due to mass quarantines, social distancing guidelines, canceled sporting events and reduced foot traffic, marketers are now adjusting their OOH strategies. In early March, eMarketer predicted that U.S. total OOH ad spending would increase by 3.3% in 2020. The forecast has been revised to a 4.6% decline this year to $8.25 billion spending on OOH ads.