*By Madison Alworth*
People around the world will spend more time online than watching television next year as global internet usage climbs in countries where smartphones have become more readily available than TV, according to new data from Zenith [cited by Recode](https://www.recode.net/2018/6/8/17441288/internet-time-spent-tv-zenith-data-media).
Advertisers' dollars are set to follow: Globally, they're expected to spend $60 billion more on Internet ads in 2019 than TV advertising.
However in the United States, the largest media consumption market in the world, television is still king.
"Americans still spend far more time watching television than on the internet," said Sara Fischer, a media reporter for Axios. Though many Americans seem to spend more time on their phones, Fischer said, is not necessarily engaged time.
"If you were to take a look at it from a minute-by-minute basis, more often than not, people spend more media consumption time on television than they do with some of their mobile properties," Fischer said in an interview with Cheddar. "Even though they might check them up to 100 times a day, it's not like they're sitting there, spending a ton of time."
For full interview, [click here](https://cheddar.com/videos/internet-consumption-outpacing-television).
Neonvest is a platform connecting startups and entrepreneurs with experts in the VC space. The startup says it's in the process of raising a seed round of approximately $2.5 million from a mix of angel and institutional investors. Aakash Shah, co-founder of NeonVest, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell to discuss.
The Bill Gates-founded Breakthrough Energy company invested $80 million in Verdox Inc. to facilitate efficient, lower-cost technolog to remove carbon from the air and emission sources. CEO of Verdox, Brian Baynes, joined Cheddar News to discuss the investment, how the company's tech works, and where he sees it going. "We anticipate that with technologies like ours, we potentially can get to the scale of about a million tons per year within 5-10 years," he said. "And then ultimately we need to be doing this at the scales of billions of tons per year and ultimately about 10 billion tons per year in the year 2050."
Amazon closed its deal to buy MGM's many content brands for $8.5 billion, and Michael Pachter, a managing director at Wedbush Securities, joined Cheddar News to discuss the e-commerce giant's second-largest acquisition to date and how he thinks it will all pay off. "To make a movie today, you just can't even think about it for less than 30 million bucks, so 4,000 movies, I mean that's several billion dollars worth of assets," he said, noting how it would also add to Amazon's little-known ad-supported IMDb TV service. "I don't know that the IMDb TV guys actually talk to the Amazon Prime Video guys, but a lot of content, it makes the value of a Prime subscription much, much greater, and people are far, far less likely to churn even if they're only buying one package every three months."
Beer brand Heineken recently revealed its foray into the metaverse was something of a joke, but how serious are brands taking the latest craze in general? Cheddar's Alex Vuocolo takes a closer look.
