Retail Media Grows its Share of Total US Ad Spend; Amazon & iRobot Terminate Acquisition Agreement; China Approves 14 Large Language Models

On today’s ExchangeWire digest: Retail Media Grows its Share of Total US Ad Spend; Amazon & iRobot Terminate Acquisition Agreement; China Approves 14 Large Language Models

Retail media has increased its share of total US ad spend, growing faster than either search or social, reports eMarketer. According to its forecast, retail media ad spend is expected to make up over one-fifth of total US ad spending by 2027. Social media is predicted to maintain its position as the second biggest ad channel through 2027.

Amazon has terminated a USD$1.4bn (£1.1bn) deal to acquire iRobot, the maker of robotic vacuums, following EU opposition to the merger. iRobot is due to receive a USD$94m ($74m) termination fee from Amazon as a result. In a joint statement, both parties declared that they saw “no path to regulatory approval in the European Union”; the European Commission raised concerns about the deal regarding how it could restrict competition in the robot vacuum cleaner market. The merger was cleared by the UK’s competition regulator last June, but remained under further scrutiny from the European Commission as well as the US competition watchdog.

In the APAC region, China has approved this year’s first batch of large language models (LLMs) – the tech used to train services such as ChatGPT. Fourteen LLMs and enterprise applications were recently signed off by authorities for commercial use, including a number of industry specific ones. Previous approvals had only seen general AI models, demonstrating how the country’s industry regulation is pushing AI to boost efficiency in enterprises. Last September, the China Electronic Standardisation Institute, a government body, was set up to implement a national standard for LLMs. There are now over 40 government approved LLMs and related applications in China.