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The Big Story: Highway To The Machine Zone

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The Big Story podcast

The M&A has been relentless this past week, with AppLovin buying the game publisher Machine Zone, Facebook buying GIPHY and Twitter buying the DSP CrossInstall.

On this episode, the team breaks down what each acquisition means. What is CrossInstall, and why would Twitter need to actually own a demand-side platform? Was Facebook buying GIPHY mostly a data play?

And in the week’s Holy S-H-I-T acquisition, the mobile ad startup AppLovin intends to acquire one of the world’s largest mobile gaming companies. Normally, you’d think it’d be the other way around.

Also in this episode, we’ll dive into the changing face of ecommerce. First, Facebook made another foray into ecommerce by introducing Shops. But this time, things are different. We’ll explain how.

Then, we’ll look at Target and Walmart. The two retail giants reported Q1 earnings this week and, surprise-surprise, saw a big boost in digital sales.


What do these changes say about the transformation of Americans’ shopping behaviors during the time of the coronavirus? And how can these two traditional brick-and-mortars leverage this progress to be even more competitive to Amazon?

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