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Our expanded retail and ecommerce forecast coverage now includes country-level breakouts for 66 nations around the world. North America, China, and Western Europe continue to drive global outcomes, but a total of 53 countries will have at least $1 billion in ecommerce sales.

Direct-to-consumer ARPU: $11.99 for US and Canada; $4.05 for other markets. Global D2C ARPU for the quarter increased by 1% YoY to $7.84 but was lower than last quarter鈥檚 $8.00. Overall financials: Total revenues declined 4% to $9.62 billion as theatrical revenues plunged 40%, and adjusted EBITDA for Warner Bros. Discovery鈥檚 entire business dropped 19% to $2.41 billion.

The survey was conducted in Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Spain, Sweden, United Arab Emirates, the UK, and the US.

Air Canada was recently forced to pay a customer $812.02 in damages and fees after a Civil Resolution Tribunal member ruled it was responsible for its AI chatbot鈥檚 false information. The potential for inconsistent tone, bias, and toxicity is also a concern. GenAI-powered chatbots have more personality than rule-based bots, and that distinctive 鈥渧oice鈥� can help improve engagement with customers.

Affirm previously only operated in the US and Canada. Why this matters: The UK is a large expansion opportunity for Affirm. More than one-quarter (27%) of UK adults鈥攁bout 14 million people鈥攗sed BNPL at least once in the last six months of 2022, per data from the UK鈥檚 Financial Conduct Authority (FCA).

Meta is bringing its conversational AI assistant, Meta AI, to its Quest VR headsets in the US and Canada鈥攔eplacing basic voice commands with a more sophisticated assistant you can talk to naturally. The integration of voice AI into these face-worn devices represents a step toward more immersive human-computer interactions in VR.

The AI features will be available in US English initially, then localized English in Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the UK in December. AI will land in the EU in April. The opportunity: Apple鈥檚 move to add AI to popular devices could drive mainstream adoption and boost upgrade cycles as it enters its most profitable quarter.

Well-played, Canada. Anyway, today's real topic, Walgreens identity crisis. So Walgreens Boots Alliance says it has agreed to be acquired by private equity firm, Sycamore Partners, as the struggling retailer looks to turn itself around after years of losing money, notes the Associated Press. Its shares are down 45% in the last 12 months.

In July, Meta announced new smart glasses coming later this year, alongside plans to integrate its AI assistant into its Quest headsets in the US and Canada starting in August. These moves signal Meta鈥檚 push to offer consumers more opportunities to interact with genAI across its products and platforms. What does this mean for marketers?