We’re over halfway through 2024, and AI, cookies, alternative app stores, and EU privacy laws continue to make headlines. Here are the most important updates from July in the adtech and gaming world.
GAMING
Industry: Adding to a busy year for emerging markets, new reports show increases in the German and Japanese games market. Consumer research also gives new numbers on how many people play video games.
Games: Helpful for planning the rest of your year, here are soft launches to keep an eye on. Monopoly Go also announced its $3 billion in total revenues, proving to be a successful transition from a classic board game to a mobile one. Everyone’s favorite tool, AppMagic, announced they raised $3 million in funding. Plus, updates on the SAG-AFTRA strike and what it means for games in development.
App Stores: Epic spent July preparing for its app store launch, removing Fortnite and other games from iOS and Android stores.
Funding: In a pre-seed funding round, Turkish startup Grand Games secured $3 million.
ADTECH
Cookies: As everyone has probably seen, Google reversed their decision to get rid of third-party cookies. Here’s an op-ed piece on what you should still be preparing for.
AI: OpenAI finally announced its search engine prototype, SearchGPT. Apple also released a preview of Apple Intelligence, while also announcing that the system was pretrained on Google’s processors.
Privacy Laws: 2024 brought in a slew of accusations and fines for the largest companies out there. Meta is now being fined for tying Marketplace and Facebook together, more than a year and half after the European Commision first accused them. At the start of the month, the EU Commission also ruled Meta violated the Digital Markets Act (DMA) by giving users a way to opt out of ads. In India, their antitrust body accused Apple of misusing its dominant position.
Let’s see how the rest of the year and Q3 plays out. Be sure to subscribe to our monthly newsletter so you won’t miss any updates!