Hot button topics like rising food costs, sports betting and reproductive rights are manifesting through a surfeit of political ads. S&P Global Market Intelligence Senior Reporter Mike Reynolds sat down with Kantar Media's Steve Passwaiter, TVB's  Steve Lanzano and Kagan analyst Peter Leitzinger to learn which media platforms are set to earn that largest share of the ad spending pie as Election Day approaches. 

In this episode of "MediaTalk," S&P Global Market Intelligence tech reporter Anser Haider and Kagan analyst Neil Barbour discuss how gaming companies are grappling with a range of hurdles, including ongoing hardware component shortages, disruptions to game development cycles caused by the pandemic and an increasingly hostile regulatory landscape.

The 2022 box office results are outstripping most expectations despite the permanent changes to the business brought on by the pandemic. In this episode of "MediaTalk," S&P Global Market Intelligence reporter Joseph Williams talks to Kagan box office analyst Wade Holden and Box Office Pro chief analyst Shawn Robbins about the films that are driving consumers back to theaters, even as exhibitors face shorter exclusive theatrical windows and increased competition from streaming services.

S&P Global Market Intelligence reporter David DiMolfetta spoke to 451 Research analyst Jordan McKee and Cleve Mesidor, a policy adviser with The Blockchain Association, about who is using cryptocurrencies today and how they might use them in the future. Investing in cryptocurrencies can offer equal opportunities to groups of people who historically have experienced discrimination in their efforts to access legacy banking systems. Banks and regulators must launch more digital asset outreach and education to avoid creating a new digital divide between those who can access the cryptocurrency market — estimated by the White House at $3 trillion — and those who cannot.

Over the past four years, sports betting has gone from being a somewhat taboo, off-shore business and has now become "a mainstream entertainment platform," PointsBet USA CEO Johnny Aitken said on the latest episode of "MediaTalk," a podcast by S&P Global Market Intelligence. Aitken — whose company offers mobile betting in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, West Virginia and Virginia — said that in 2021, legalized sports betting generated some $58 billion in wagers.

In this episode of S&P Global Market Intelligence's "MediaTalk" podcast, Kagan analyst Neil Barbour delves into the various trends that the video game industry is increasingly eyeing in efforts to establish new revenue streams. This includes a rash of M&A activity, the metaverse and the use of NFTs and cryptocurrency for in-game transactions.

While state privacy laws in California, Virginia and Colorado have helped lay the groundwork for a national privacy standard, there is still work to be done on figuring out exactly what an omnibus privacy bill should look like. In this episode of MediaTalk, we talk with two experts -- Alexandra Reeve Givens, president and CEO at the Center for Democracy and Technology, and Sheryl Kingstone, head of customer experience and commerce at 451 Research -- who provide insights on privacy legislation in the U.S., how online companies are storing our data, and growing concerns among consumers about privacy in the wake of the pandemic.