Feb 13, 2023
"You’re going to quit rap, for a triangle?” – Missy Elliott, Doritos Super Bowl commercial
They say "monocultural" events are becoming very rare. These are the moments that capture a high percentage of society's attention...and hence have massive monetization potential. Yesterday’s Super Bowl was one of them. While estimated viewership, 100 million people, was an entire zip code away from the World Cup Final’s viewership (1.5 billion people), the Super Bowl is nevertheless one of the most attention-grabbing days of the year, domestically. Because of the concentrated eyeball potential, guess how much a 30-second ad cost? $7 million (according to AdAge).
Titan's Takeaway: We can’t help but wonder if buying an ad spot is economically worth it. Or more specifically, we’re wondering at what price point does buying a Super Bowl ad no longer make sense. But don’t get us wrong here - they are highly entertaining to watch.
I.e., the Federal Reserve’s battle against Inflation. From Princeton economics professor Alan Blinder (also ex Vice Chairman of the Fed) last week:
“Consider these amazing facts. When the Fed started tightening in March 2022, the unemployment rate was 3.6%. Since then, about four million net new jobs have been created, and the unemployment rate today stands at 3.4%. Yet inflation has come way down, not up; wage increases are moderating, not accelerating; and less inflation from rents is in our future. We also know that the effect of tight money on inflation is long delayed. Maybe, just maybe, the Fed can finish off the dragon without killing the economy.”
Tuesday’s inflation report is going to be a market-moving signal either way.
Some Google employees have started to question CEO Sundar Pichai’s decisions around their launch of chatGPT competitor, Bard. So we asked chatGPT what it thinks:
"As an AI language model created by OpenAI, I do not have personal opinions or emotions. However, I can tell you that the announcement of Bard, Google's chatbot technology and ChatGPT competitor, caused controversy among Google employees who criticized the company leadership, including CEO Sundar Pichai, for the rushed and botched nature of the announcement. Despite the internal criticism, it remains to be seen how well Bard will perform in the market and how it will compete with ChatGPT and other chatbot technologies.”
Titan's Takeaway: How mature of you, ChatGPT! The frenzy sparked by the AI launch is clearly shifting Google's strategy and it seems like Microsoft is pleased with the discourse. Maybe Google’s competitive moat wasn’t so deep after all.