Netflix Pushes Ads, McDonald’s Goes Viral, Threads Loses Steam, and Elon Musk Risks it All

Netflix moves to drive revenue with expanded ad inventory. McDonald’s smiles as Grimace drives same-store sales, and the Threads and Twitter battle for social media attention continues.

Netflix Moves to Get Subscribers to Ad-Supported Package

Netflix removed its basic ad-free package in a push to get more subscribers to sign up for its ad-supported package. The ad-supported package could lead to a large influx in ad inventory. This is a trend to keep an eye on as marketers lick their chops to get access to those eyeballs.

McDonald’s Uses Storytelling and Characters To Drive Same-Store Sales

McDonald’s Grimace Shake goes viral on TikTok, and despite negative videos, same-store sales grew nearly 12%. Another example of a brand using the power of compelling characters and stories to drive loyalty and sales. If your brand has a stable of characters, leverage them. If not, think about how to create them through original storytelling.

Threads Surge Stalls

Threads usage is down dramatically, even though the active user base is still higher than predicted for a platform less than a month old. Will those initial 100 million come back? Or have they left for good? Without new features, and an unclear launch in the EU, that time may never come.

Elon Musk and X Risks it All Pushing to be Like WeChat

Is Elon Musk right that rebranding Twitter to X can allow the app to grow into an “everything” app, like China’s WeChat? Or is this just an attempt to recapture his lost youth in a nod to x.com – which became PayPal? If Musk is expecting the X active user base to wait for new features the way consumers were willing to wait for the Tesla Model 3, he might be in for a rude awakening.