Global Marketing News – 2nd August 2016
Baidu sees record profit losses in Q2
The Chinese search engine Baidu has reported a substantial drop in profits for the second quarter of 2016.
The company reported a 34.1% drop in profit compared to last year’s Q2 report.
Whilst it is the most used search engine in China, it has suffered a range of controversies in the first half of this year concerning its advertising standards, and it has also had to change its regulations following a public enquiry.
Now with a changed advertising policy, Baidu CEO Robin Li told investors that the recovery could take more than two or three quarters.
Li also said that “a significant portion of revenue” had been lost, but that it has made steps that “will result in long term benefit and reward”.
Meanwhile, Alphabet, Google’s parent company, has seen strong profit growth over the same period.
Due to strong advertising sales, particularly on mobile, it saw net income rise from 3.9 billion US dollars in Q2 2015, to 4.9 billion US dollars at the same point this year.
Alphabet’s CEO, Sundar Pichai, also said that it had used AI in order to make better video recommendations on YouTube, further strengthening its position in the industry.
Bangladesh has lowest internet penetration rate in South Asia
Bangladesh has been announced as the country with the lowest internet penetration rate in South Asia.
According to a report by the International Telecommunication Union, just 14% of the Bangladeshi population have access to the internet.
This falls well behind other countries such as the Maldives, the smallest country in the region, which has a penetration rate of 54%, and Myanmar which has a rate of 21%, even though mobile connections were only introduced recently.
Additionally, it was also shown that only 2.4% of Bangladeshis have a fixed broadband subscription.
Another report by the World Bank also reported that Bangladesh has the fifth largest offline population, with 148 million people still unable to get online.
The lack of public service development online, and the government’s anti-connectivity policy make it hard for the private sector to expand its coverage, with LIRNEasia’s Abu Saeed Khan calling the situation “miserable”.
Visual search engine TVRunway launches
A new type of search engine has been developed to assist consumers in finding clothes on television as they watch.
The visual search engine, TVRunway, launched last week and is the first tool of its kind.
The TVRunway technology is available to be used on Stream Now TV’s selection of over 1,000 films and television shows.
Retailers such as Bloomingdale’s and Target have already signed up to participate with the service, which integrates with the video streaming website and matches the user’s requested item of clothing to over 300 retailers’ current stock levels.
TVRunway’s CEO, Terena Bell, said that “forcing ads down people’s throats for what you think they want doesn’t work”, and believes that “if there’s ever been a call to arms to create better ads, this is it”.
She added that the platform is unobtrusive as the user is already watching what they want to watch anyway, and they are the one who decides when they want to learn more about an item of clothing.
Currently, the industry loses nearly 22 billion US dollars to ad blockers each year, and Bell says that it is “the…approach that video advertising desperately needs”.
The most popular app in the US revealed
And finally, SurveyMonkey has revealed the 30 most downloaded and used apps in the US so far this year, with Facebook’s Messenger leading the way.
Social media apps came in as the top four most downloaded apps, with the twelve most used apps all being owned by either Facebook, Apple or Google.
It was also revealed that there was very little correlation between the most downloaded apps and the most used apps.
The report said that “40 percent of the most-used apps come pre-loaded on the operating system, highlighting the importance of Android and iOS to Google and Apple”, adding that this gave insight into Facebook’s desire to “control this deeper layer of the stack”.
Webcertain’s global marketing news bulletins are daily 5-minute videos, providing marketers with the latest international digital marketing news in an easy-to-digest format.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Gemma Houghton
Latest posts by Gemma Houghton (see all)
- Watch the recording: How to identify and seize growth opportunities in international markets - April 20, 2022
- International marketing recruitment: How to drive global growth amid The Great Resignation - February 23, 2022
- 5 trends to include in your 2022 international digital marketing strategy - December 21, 2021
