# Streaming Commerce, Cross-Platform Expansion, and High-Impact Ad Formats

**Podcast:** TechCrunch Daily Crunch
**Published:** 2026-03-25

## Transcript

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TikTok ads are about to get a tad more disruptive.
I'm Imran Shake, and your Wednesday daily crunch, featuring three big tech headlines, starts right now.
Apple Music announced on Tuesday that it's partnering with Ticketmaster to power its concert discovery feature.
Now, this integration aims to improve how users discover live music events based on their listening habits.
You see, Ticketmaster is the first ticketing service to integrate with Apple Music, allowing listeners to find nearby concerts and events tailored to their individual music preferences.
Every event listing on the music streaming app now includes a direct link to Ticketmaster for easy ticket purchasing.
Now, with the new integration, Apple Music users can explore ticket options through various features in the app, including the homepage carousel that highlights nearby concerts related to their listening habits, a dedicated concerts tab for browsing events, and artist pages that display concert listings along with a badge indicating when an artist is on tour.
Additionally, push notifications will alert fans when their favorite artists are performing nearby.
Ticketmaster already powers other events listings across the Apple ecosystem, including maps, spotlight search, photos, and Shazam.
So this is an expansion of that partnership.
It should be noted that integration with Ticketmaster comes on the heels of Spotify, you know, one of Apple Music's biggest rivals, teaming up with SeatGeek.
So music fans can access ticket links when browsing an artist's page or upcoming tour dates.
Now, in the past, Ticketmaster has partnered with competitors to facilitate ticket sales such as SoundCloud and YouTube.
Roku announced on Tuesday that Howdy, its $3 ad-free streaming service, is launching on Amazon's Prime Video.
The announcement marks the service's first expansion outside the Roku ecosystem.
Now, launched in August 2025, Howdy features a library of nearly 10,000 hours of content from Roku's partners, including Lionskate, Sony Pictures, Disney Entertainment, Warner Brothers Discovery, and Film Rise, alongside select Roku original titles.
Subscribers can watch titles like A Haunting in Venice, Ice Age, Weeds, and Kids in the Hall, as well as rom coms, medical dramas, 90s comedies, classics, and more.
At launch Roku said Howdy was designed to compliment, not compete with premium services.
Alright, alright, you're sold.
Enough of the chit-chat.
How do you actually sign up for Howdy?
Well, via Prime Video.
You'll need either an Amazon Prime membership or a standalone Prime Video subscription.
The expansion to Prime Video doesn't come as, well, a surprise as Roku CEO and founder Anthony Wood said at CES in January that Howdy would be coming to other platforms.
Roku's launch of Howdy came two months after the company paid 185 million dollars to acquire Friendly TV, a streaming service that offers live TV, on-demand video, and cloud-based TVR.
On Tuesday, TikTok announced that it's introducing new ad formats, including one that displays another brand's logo alongside TikToks on the launch page when users open the app.
Now, the new logo takeover ad format allows companies to co-brand with TikTok in a way that captures users' attention from the second they open the app.
TikTok says that the ad format showcases partnership, credibility, and cultural relevance while giving advertisers a broad reach.
A new primetime ad format allows brands to show a series of ads at specific times, whether that's during a live event or another engagement period.
With this ad format, three sequential ads from one advertiser will be shown to the same user within a designated 15-minute time window.
TikTok says brands can use this format to tell a continuous story during high activity periods.
There's also a new Top Reach ad format that combines two of TikTok's current ad placements, Top View and Top Feed.
Top View is the first ad users see when they open the app, and Top Feed is the first in-feed ad that appears in the for you feed.
TikTok says that by combining these placements, brands can reach the maximum number of users of the day through high visibility placements.
Now, while TikTok says these new ad formats will allow brands to maximize reach, they are more disruptive than the current ad placements on the platform.
For instance, seeing an ad within the first second of opening the app can be, well, frankly, annoying.
Users may not want to encounter three ads from the same brand within just 15 minutes.
However, TikTok doesn't see these as interruptions.
Additionally, the social network is expanding its TikTok Pulse Suite with a new Pulse Mentions tool that places brands alongside moments when users are already discussing them and their category.
The new Pulse Taste Makers offering allows brands to align their ads with a selection of eligible creators.
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