Global Marketing News – 16th June 2016
India Uses Translation To Boost Online Growth
Growth in India’s ecommerce market is down to the translation of language.
Because the internet in the country has almost exclusively been conducted in English, it was only accessible to India’s most highly skilled and educated population, nearly all of whom are now connected.
However, since sites like Quikr and Snapdeal have begun launching services in Hindi and other languages, this has allowed for more online expansion in the country.
With companies launching local-language services, non-english speakers are connecting to the internet, allowing for the sustained-growth of internet usage in India.
Virendra Gupta, CEO of Indian news site Dailyhunt, says that there are 400 million people still left to come online, meaning that ecommerce sales are forecast to hit 137 billion US dolllars in 2020, from just 11 billion in 2013.
Ramadan Causes Sales Surge Across Middle East
Ramadan is due to cause a significant surge in ecommerce sales across the Middle East, according to ecommerce site SOUQ.com.
A combination of more hours at home and a celebratory atmosphere are believed to encourage people to spend more time and money online.
Google Data has also shown that during the month of Ramadan in 2014 and 2015, promotions for Ramadan were some of the highest searches, whilst SOUQ themselves saw a jump in m-commerce sales over the same periods.
There is also a further increase in the last week of Ramadan as people search for gifts for the Eid-Al-Fitr festival that immediately follows the month of fasting.
Saleem Hammad, General Manager of SOUQ, said that the company “saw an increase in online consumer spending by 24% in the U.A.E and 15% in the KSA during Ramadan” and expected similar increases this year.
WhatsApp Reigns In Half Of All Countries On Earth
A new study by Similar Web has shown that WhatsApp is now the top messaging app in 109 countries.
Equating to over half of all countries around the world, the Facebook owned messaging service is now installed on 95% of all android devices and is used for around 37 minutes per day on average.
In second place, being the most popular messaging app in 49 countries, was Facebook’s own Messenger app which was the most used in markets such as the US and Canada.
Viber was the only other messaging service that came top in over 10 countries, including Iraq and Sri Lanka, whilst Line and Wechat’s success was limited to a few countries like China and Japan.
Some apps dominated the market domestically, like Kakao in South Korea or BBM in Indonesia, but scored very low elsewhere.
Germany Increases Programmatic Ad Spend
Germany has experienced a sharp increase in its total spend on programmatic advertising.
According to BVDW, the digital advertising format receives double the amount of spend than it did just two years ago in 2014.
After rising 45% in 2015 to 390 million euros per year, it is expected to increase at the same rate again to 566 million euros.
The popularity of the platform is very high considering that when questioned last year, over half of marketers said that programmatic advertising gave them too little control, and 42% said that it lacked transparency when it came to the use of data.
However, the majority did also say that they were pleased with how it gave them real-time buying data.
Meanwhile, the US B2B sector is also increasing it use of the platform with nearly 80% of B2B marketers expecting to use at least some of their 2016 budget on programmatic.
Visa Launches New Banking App
And finally, Visa has rolled out a new banking app in the US enabling banks to offer easier online payment options to their customers.
The Visa Digital Commerce App has already attracted over 40 financial institutions across America who have since used the app to create their own online payment services, like PNC Bank’s SmartAccess debit card.
Vincent Alimi, vice-president of Mobeewave who has supplied the technology for the app, has called the new service a “major step forward for the digitization of commerce” and said that it “allies customer needs and the latest innovation in terms of payment and banking”.
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Gemma Houghton
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