Global Marketing News – 5th May 2016
Naver’s Line messaging app is taking over Asia
Naver’s mobile messaging app, LINE, has become a big hit in Asia.
The service has become the most used messaging service in key Asian countries such as Japan or Thailand.
With 218 million users, the success of the app is thought to lie in its locally-tailored strategy, where in Bangkok for example LINE launched a service that helped with the delivery of food.
This led to around 85% of smartphone users across Thailand using the app, the second largest user base in the world behind Japan.
After focussing on the Thai market to start with, LINE is looking to expand, but says that it will continue to use the local strategy that has worked so well.
Hoping to continue this way of approaching different cultures, LINE has hinted towards using the current platform to introduce business-to-business solutions, e-commerce and online-to-offline services.
LINE’s growth since its launch in 2014, follows the trend of increased usage of mobile chat apps in Asia; particularly in China, where user numbers grew from 527 million to 608 million in the last nine months of 2015.
Amazon to help European vendors sell across Europe
The internet giant Amazon has announced plans to help European vendors sell items across the continent.
The Pan-European Fulfilment program will allow sellers to ships their goods to an Amazon distribution centre within the EU.
So, when an order is received, Amazon will pick, pack and ship the item to the buyers themselves, leading to what it claims will be faster and cheaper delivery costs.
According to Amazon, cross-border sales are already extremely high within the EU, with UK sellers alone exporting nearly 1.77 billion Euro’s worth of goods last year.
This further expansion of Amazon logistics across Europe increases competition with services like Royal Mail or TNT across the continent.
Online payment company Klarna to expand offline
The online payment service provider Klarna is looking to expand offline and into high street stores.
The Stockholm-based start-up has said that it will launch its offline payment processing service next month.
The new offline service would behave like an online transaction, sending the customer a text in the shop, with a link to Klarna’s online payment portal.
Currently offering online services to 65,000 e-commerce shops in 18 countries, Klarna’s CEO Sebastian Seimiatkowski said that the new offline services had the potential to outgrow its online business.
The move would allow Klarna to move into a much bigger market, as currently under 10% of retail transactions take place online in Western countries, where the company currently works.
However, this move would also bring the new service into direct competition with traditional banks, or new payment systems from companies like Samsung or Apple.
Chinese mobile programmatic advertising spend rising
Chinese mobile programmatic advertising spend is increasing dramatically, new figures show.
Driven by companies like Alibaba, Tencent and Baidu, who all focus heavily on mobile advertising, mobile’s share of programmatic digital display impressions has gone from 3.9% half way through 2014, to just under 40% by the end of last year.
This high level of growth in 18 months includes a rise of 350% in just the second quarter of 2015.
The data released by iPinYou shows that the trend is not slowing either, with eMarketer estimating that the “spending on the format will reach [7.06 billion US dollars] in 2016”, which will equate to a 97% increase over the previous year.
Instagram pays £7,000 reward to 10-year-old hacker
And finally, Instagram has paid out a £7,000 reward to a 10-year-old hacker from Helsinki.
The boy, named Jani, discovered that he was able to delete comments on images posted by other users.
Facebook, who owns Instagram, said that the issue had been quickly solved after it was discovered by the boy, before confirming that he was the youngest recipient of their ‘bug bounty’ prize.
Despite not technically being able to join the site due to being three years short of Instagram’s age restriction, Jani proved his theory after he emailed Facebook in February and security engineers set up a test account for him.
The boy told newspapers in Finland that he planned to spend his money on a brand new bike, football equipment and computers for his brothers.
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.
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Gemma Houghton
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