Amazon announced this morning that it will purchase MGM Studios for $8.45 billion, signaling the tech giant’s serious intent to expand its entertainment ambitions by beefing up its Prime Video content library to better compete with Netflix, Hulu and the growing collection of streaming video services. The deal marks the second largest acquisition for Amazon; the company paid $13.7 billion for Whole Foods in 2017. Amazon plans to leverage MGM’s significant catalog of 4,000 movies and 17,000 television shows to help strengthen its film and TV unit Amazon Studios. Read more

Florida just passed a new law, signed by Governor Ron DeSantis, that makes it illegal for Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms to permanently bar political candidates from their sites. The law, which was crafted in response to Facebook’s and Twitter’s ban of former President Donald Trump in January, will impose a $250,000 per day fine. The law also makes it illegal to prevent posts in response to stories on their platforms. The law will likely face a constitutional challenge in the courts. Read more

Nielsen Holdings will increase spending to improve how it measures TV audiences, especially its new Nielsen ONE product, said chief financial officer Linda Zukauckas. The news follows Nielsen’s $2.4 billion sale of Global Connect (since renamed NielsenIQ), which measures retail shopping for packaged goods companies, to Advent International Corporation. Nielsen ONE combines streaming and live TV ratings and is due to unveil next year. Nielsen hopes it will be a U.S. ratings standard by 2024 and, soon, a global standard. Read more

COVID-19 drove consumers to online shopping, with eMarketer reporting that global e-commerce sales grew to $4.28 trillion in 2020, from $3.35 trillion the previous year. Many advertisers shifted spending to social media platforms, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau, which said that such ad revenue grew 16.3 percent to $41.5 billion last year and represented almost one-third of all digital advertising. Now Snap, Facebook, Pinterest and TikTok have debuted ads that use augmented reality to market products. Read more

Disney executives met virtually with USC students on April 7 for the fourth installment in ETC@USC’s Spring 2021 Executive Coffee with… series. Mark Mine, director of the Technology Innovation Group at The Walt Disney Studios, along with his Disney colleague Daniel Baker, senior producer of technology innovation – interactive experiences, engaged a group of nine USC students in a one-hour discussion on “The Future of Immersive Media Storytelling.” They discussed the “aura” of effective immersive media, the balance between game elements and narrative elements, the use of light and shadow for user interface and user experience design, and the importance of navigation. Read more