BUD, a Singapore-based metaverse user-generated platform, announces its $36.8 million Series B round led by Sequoia Capital India. The company intends to use the fresh funding to further develop its creation tools, grow its global user base and roll out web3 products for its metaverse ecosystem. It has also revealed clear plans to launch its own non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace.
Shoppable video is the mirror image of retail media: instead of selling someone else’s ads on a retail website, it lets companies convert their own website into a retailer. Maybe that makes no sense, but the symmetry is appealing. What’s even more appealing is $150 million, which is how much livestream platform Firework just raised in a Series B, brining total funding to $369 million.
Google announced a range of advertising improvements at its Google Live conference. Changes include Zapier integration for CRM connections, expanded cross-channel attribution analytics and testing, auto-created responsive search ads, and connected TV campaigns targeted against affinition, in-market, and demographic audiences. Several other goodies too, if you’re interested.
Nearly one-third of major news publishers have blocked generative AI tools from reading their content. But that’s a drastic measure which could also exclude their results from conventional search engines. Microsoft has just given publishers the option to block access by Bing Chat without also removing their content from search results. We’ll see if competitors do the same.