Global Marketing News – 7th January 2016
UK set to lead programmatic TV advertising boom
Programmatic TV advertising could be coming to the UK this year.
Programmatic ads are those that are automatically bought and placed by software rather than by humans.
The online ad company Videology pinpointed the UK as the country most well placed for programmatic TV advertising, ahead of the US, citing its good infrastructure, innovative platform operators and high number of internet connected TV devices.
The broadcasters Sky and Channel 4 have both announced they will be moving towards a more programmatic approach to advertising this year.
Sky is due to launch its Sky Advance service this month, which will allow advertisers to buy ad space on TV and online.
ITV has struck a similar deal by partnering up with RadiumOne, and Channel 4 has introduced a programmatic market to its online service All 4.
Channel 4 is also investigating the possibility of a real-time ad decisioning and ad break scheduling system and a spokesperson has said that it hopes this “automated ad allocation system” will be ready by the end of the year.
One challenge that programmatic TV advertising faces is a way to ensure that all ads comply with broadcast regulations. It would obviously be an undesirable scenario where an inappropriate advert is automatically selected and played on live TV in real-time.
Naver and SK Telecom in talks to merge app stores
The South Korean internet technology giant Naver has said it wants to team up with SK Telecom to merge their two app stores.
The South Korean app market is worth an estimated 4.5 trillion won, equivalent to 3.8 billion US dollars, and is currently dominated by the Google Play Store and Apple App Store.
Between them, the American giants account for 80% of the South Korean app market.
Naver hopes that by merging its app store with SK Telecom’s T-Store app store it will create a more competitive apps market in the country.
Naver and SK Telecom have confirmed that they are in talks about a merge, although they have not yet revealed how far negotiations have got apart from saying they have progressed a “substantial extent”.
Naver is the biggest internet company in South Korea. It is most well-known for its search engine of the same name, which accounts for around three-quarters of the search engine market in the country.
Recommendations from friends and family drive Spanish ecommerce
Verbal recommendations from friends, family and acquaintances drove online purchases in Spain last year, according to research by Cetelem.
62% of online shoppers said they made purchases based on recommendations from people they knew, making it the most important factor driving online sales.
Information provided by web brands was the second biggest information source leading to online sales, at 60%.
Blogs and opinion forums, physical stores and social networks came third, fourth and fifth respectively.
57% said they engaged in ecommerce at least once a month, with leisure, travel and fashion items being the most commonly purchased categories.
The Spanish ecommerce market was worth almost 18 billion US dollars last year, with 62% of internet users in Spain engaging in online shopping.
Cashback app Snapcart eyes South East Asian expansion
And finally, the Indonesian cashback mobile app Snapcart has received 1.6 million US dollars’ worth of funding.
Snapcart allows users to get cashback by uploading photos of their shopping receipts.
The app launched in autumn last year and in that time has gained 150,000 downloads and over 85,000 monthly active users.
It intends to use the investment to expand into other South East Asian countries, with the Philippines having been confirmed as its first new target market.
It hopes the expansion will help it to reach 1 million downloads by the end of the year.
The app also wants to use the investment to develop a video feature and an analytics tool.
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The United Kingdom may lead the world in the adoption of programmatic advertising, but significant barriers still remain before it takes over.