🚙 Di$tract€d driving

The modern car can parallel park itself, power a house during a blackout, pick its driver up from a parking lot, and remotely control a PlayStation 5. So does it really come as a surprise that it might also try to earn a little commission on selling you a sandwich?

• Cars, like many other functional utilities now decked out with large connected screens, are quickly becoming an advertising gold mine. 

• That potential revenue is leading automakers to test the controversial addition of in-car ads — and likely playing into the growing wave of automakers scrapping popular phone-mirroring systems like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto from their models.

• In-car ads appear pretty subtle, for the most part — an in-map suggestion that a Dunkin’ Donuts is nearby on an early morning commute, or a gas station promotion on the infotainment screen when the tank is nearing empty — but as vehicles become more sophisticated, their ads do, too.

• German-based driver interaction platform 4screen is at the forefront of the in-car ad industry. Partnered with 16 vehicle brands, including Stellantis, Toyota, Volkswagen, and Mercedes, 4screen says its technology works on all infotainment systems (including Apple CarPlay and Android Auto). 

The company is operational in a dozen countries, having launched in the US in 2024. The majority of 4screen’s marketing is currently geared toward utility: EV charging locations, supermarkets, or after-sale verticals like maintenance suggestions. Ads, CEO Fabian Beste says, are an obvious next step for today’s cars. Currently, 4screen says its ads result in a 3% to 7% boost to its cars parking at advertised locations. 

The Takeaway

Ford has filed multiple patents for in-car advertising systems in recent years. One would use a car’s cameras to read nearby billboards and display similar ads on its infotainment screen; another could listen to conversations in the car, parsing for relevant key words. Statista estimates there are 400 million “connected cars” currently on roads worldwide. The Center of Automotive Management, a German research institute, estimates “in-car e-commerce” revenues could reach between $100 and $120 per car, per year by 2030, creating an addressable market worth more than $50 billion.

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• Have precious metals lost their shine? It’s said that parabolic moves don’t end by going sideways, and that harsh reality dawned on gold and silver to end last week. After months of retail rushing into the precious metals trade, the iShares Silver Trust fell more than 30% at its lows, with silver suffering its worst drop since 1980. A bounce in the US dollar on Trump’s nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the Fed contributed to the vicious reversal, which was exacerbated by the growth of assets and activity in leveraged precious metals ETFs. Their rebalancing activity on Friday provided a big wave of selling that everyone knew was coming. It wasn’t pretty, but even with the rout, both silver and gold will end January up double digits. We’ll see if China, where buyers of precious metals have been even more zealous than in the US, joins the selling parade on Monday after staring at these steep declines.

• Apple’s record quarter shows that AI doesn’t sell iPhones: Dive deeper into Apple’s blockbuster earnings last week, which included record iPhone sales (with much thanks to China for that) and revenue. Why the surge? CEO Tim Cook credited the display, the camera, the performance, and the design, but notably didn’t mention AI once. That’s no surprise to Sherwood News’ Rani Molla, who mapped out the primary reasons people purchase a new phone.

Near the start of the year, D-Wave Quantum announced a technological breakthrough that would help scale gate-model quantum systems — and followed that up the next day with an acquisition of Quantum Circuits for $550 million in a cash and stock deal. Then, during its annual Qubits conference held in Florida last week, the company dropped a trifecta of big news.

The path it’s chartering going forward

• 🏀 NBA: The three most likely teams to win the NBA championship are Oklahoma City (39% chance on prediction markets*), Denver (14%), and San Antonio (9%). Incidentally, those three teams are also the favorites to win the Western Conference, a sign of how lopsided the conferences are this season. The best team in the Eastern Conference, the Detroit Pistons, has a mere 6% chance of winning.  

• 📺 Halftime Show: Bad Bunny’s forthcoming halftime show at Super Bowl LX will probably feature some other artists as well, but who joins the rapper is an open question. Markets think there’s a 64% chance Cardi B shows up, a 47% chance of Karol G, a 38% chance of JHAYCO, and a 26% chance of Travis Scott. 

*Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.