Global Marketing News – 12th August 2016
New Online Payment Method Launched in Middle East
Leading Arab payment service, Payfort, has announced an instalments service that will be available through Egypt’s largest private bank, the Commercial International Bank, or CIB.
The new service will allow online retailers to offer their customers the option to pay through instalments in 15 banks in the region, providing “flexible payment options for an estimated 350,000 CIB customers.”
Payfort’s new service will allow customers to use a credit card to purchase items on ecommerce sites, then pay off the amount in monthly instalments through a bank of their choosing.
This is expected to encourage ecommerce sales in the countries effected, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt.
Ahmed Al Salahy, Regional Manager for Payfort, said that the launch “helps increase the purchasing power of CIB account holders”.
WeChat Promotion Brings Growth
The second annual ‘No Cash Day’ campaign by WeChat Pay came to an end this week, after its seven day run.
During the promotion, any offline payment made in an eligible store with WeChat Pay, entitled the user a random prize reward of any amount up to 888 yuan, or 133 US dollars.
However, those prizes have now been drawn, and are currently redeemable through WeChat.
The campaign has led to an increase in the number of stores using WeChat Pay, with the number of co-operating locations increasing from 80,000 shops last year, to around 700,000 this year.
Analysys, a Chinese research firm, has revealed that due to rival payment service AliPay also running a similar promotion, the country’s mobile payment market has doubled since last year, reaching nearly 6 million yuan in the first quarter of 2016.
Facebook At War Over Ad Tech
Facebook has appeared to have entered a tech war with ad blocking company, Ad Block Plus.
The social network recently attempted to bypass ad blockers on its site using what they called “ad preferences”.
The idea was to allow users to opt-out of adverts about a certain subject, meaning the blocking software would not be necessary.
However, just days’ after the changes were put in place, Adblock Plus developed a system that tricked Facebook into thinking the ads were normal posts.
Andrew Bosworth, Facebook’s advertising chief, wrote on Twitter that his team “plan to address the issue.”
Adblock Plus meanwhile have said that “for this round of the cat-and-mouse contest, looks like the mouse won.”
The blocking company have caused controversy in the past due its business plan, which allows ads through if the advertiser pays it a percentage of the revenue.
Mobile Marketing To Get Budget Boost
It has been forecast that spend on mobile marketing will rise substantially over the next year.
A new report by Warc and the Mobile Marketing Association showed that over 90% of the marketing professionals questioned across EMEA, are planning to increase annual spend on mobile.
It was also found that nearly half of them expected to see a growth of 25% or more.
Currently less than 10% of the budget is spent on mobile advertising by 62% of marketers.
David Tiltman, head of content at Warc, said the findings showed that “marketers are making the necessary investments to realise mobile’s potential”.
Google Partners-Up With Eateries India
Google has partnered up with online food companies in India to make eating from local restaurants easier.
It was revealed in a blog post that the search company will now enable users to have an option to book a table, or place an order after they search for nearby restaurants in the area.
Indian food delivery companies Zomato and Swiggy, and table booking services Dineout and Bytplus, are all involved in the new feature that allows users to book tables or order food straight from Google’s search results page.
Google said that this was just the start of the feature, which will be available on iOS and Android, and that it would be “adding more partners and evolving the look and feel over time.”
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Cal O'Connell
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