Global Marketing News – 16th August 2016
Google faces antitrust measures in Russia and South Korea
Google is facing the wrath of yet more antitrust regulators, this time from Russia and South Korea.
After being on the receiving end of a formal investigation of the same nature from the European Commission earlier this year, the search company has been ordered to pay 6.8 million US dollars to Russia’s anti-monopoly watchdog.
The Federal Anti-Monopoly Service in the country ruled last year that Google had made all Android devices overly dependent on Google services, to an illegal extent.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s antitrust regulator made a statement on the same day, stating that it had begun formal investigations into the company for violating anti-competition laws.
The Korea Fair Trade Commission has previously investigated Google’s headquarters in Seoul in July, but no other information was given.
The investigation is said to be ongoing.
LinkedIn hits 100 million users in Asia
LinkedIn has hit the impressive milestone of 100 million users in Asia.
Mainly driven by its success in India, new data released by LinkedIn reveals that the Asia Pacific region represents around 22% of the site’s 450 million users, with India accounting for 37 million users and China accounting for 23 million.
LinkedIn’s Asia Pacific Managing Director, Olivier Legrand, said that the “rapid pace” at which the member base doubled from 50 million to 100 million members made the milestone more special.
He also added that 40% of the world’s professionals live and work in Asia, leaving LinkedIn with room to grow in the region.
In June, the professional social network was acquired by Microsoft for over 26 billion US dollars, a deal that is expected to be completed by the end of the year.
Line attracts the attention of advertisers in South East Asia
Line is fast becoming one of the most attractive prospects for advertisers due to its success in South East Asia.
The messaging app currently has more than four times the amount of monthly users that Facebook has in Japan, with similar numbers appearing in Taiwan, Thailand and Indonesia.
The results of a study by Macquarie Research on the attitude to Line as an advertising platform mean that the firm expects Line’s ad platform to drive “46 billion Yuan in incremental ad sales in 2017, and 70 billion Yuan in 2018”.
Currently, Line offers cheaper advertising than its competitors like Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo in Japan, but is expanding at a far higher rate.
David Gibson, an analyst at Macquarie Research, even predicts that Line’s stock price will increase by 32% on the Japanese markets due to the interest from marketers in its advertising platform.
Users launch Alibaba’s Taobao app seven times a day
During its Q2 financial results statement, Alibaba has revealed that users launch its Taobao app an average of seven times every day.
Alibaba CEO, Daniel Zhang, said that Alibaba had added social elements to the ecommerce app, such as share and recommend products.
He added that by adding these features, it “creates a lot of new demand from customers”, acting more like a “social commerce app rather than a marketplace”.
However, Zhang did also say that whilst the social additions had certainly improved its service, he also credited the automated product discovery features that help deliver “a highly personalised experience on mobile Taobao”.
Zalando sees outstanding first half of 2016
And finally, the German online fashion retailer Zalando has reported what it called an “outstanding” first half of 2016.
Sales on the ecommerce site during Q2 have been reported to have risen by a quarter since the same time in 2015, leading to sales of 916 million Euros, almost double what it achieved in 2014.
Zalando has credited investment in logistics and marketing for its successful year so far, saying that it now has over 18 million active customers, making around 3 to 4 orders on average each year.
It has also announced that it has opened a research centre in Dublin, whilst beginning test runs from a brand new logistics warehouse in Germany.
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