Enquire Now

YouTube Fights Censorship By Releasing Urdu Version

By Cal O'Connell on January 18, 2016

Global Marketing News – 18th January 2016

YouTube fights censorship by releasing Urdu version

YouTube has launched a localised version of its website targeting the Pakistani market, despite the fact it is currently blocked in the country.

YouTube.com.pk is written in Urdu and shows the top trending videos in the country. Google, which owns YouTube, has also said it will remove sensitive content if requested to do so by the Pakistani government.

The Supreme Court in Pakistan is now allegedly deciding whether to unblock the website or not.

YouTube is currently blocked in Pakistan as a result of the country’s strict anti-blasphemy laws, which state that imprisonment and even death sentences can be given to those who insult Islam.

Baidu in talks with Indian ecommerce companies

The Chinese internet giant Baidu is in investment talks with various Indian internet and ecommerce companies.

It is interested in investing in Zomato, BigBasket and BookMyShow, although exact figures and dates have not yet been announced.

Zomato is the country’s leading restaurant search engine, BigBasket is an online grocery store and BookMyShow is an ecommerce site specialising in films and events tickets.

A spokesperson from Baidu commented on the planned investments, saying: “The Indian market represents an enormous opportunity for us to connect more people with services, and we plan to put more resources there in the future.”

The Indian ecommerce market is currently worth 11 billion US dollars and is growing rapidly, with online sales expected to reach 220 billion US dollars by 2025 according to estimates by Merrill Lynch.

European ecommerce predicted to grow

European ecommerce is set to grow in the coming years, according to research by the CBRE.

Continental European countries such as France and Germany are expected to see ecommerce transactions grow by around 10% in the next 3 years, with the improving economy and subsequent increase in spending power being touted as the main reasons for the rise.

Most ecommerce spending will be done on domestic sites, with separate research by the European Commission finding that cross-border ecommerce is still relatively uncommon in Europe.

Currently, only 15% of EU citizens buy from other EU countries online. A key reason for this could be the high cost of receiving packages from abroad.

The European Commission’s research revealed that parcels from abroad typically cost 471% more than parcels sent and received in the same country.

The EU sees lowering the price of cross-border packages as being a key part of increasing the appeal of cross-border ecommerce in the continent.

Germans switch devices if they encounter a problem online

Research by Edelman Berland has revealed that internet users in Germany like to switch devices if they encounter a problem on one device.

The study found that this was a more popular option than just giving up or struggling on with the first device.

Users were most likely to switch devices if they thought the experience would be improved on a bigger device and when the content is not displaying well on the current device.

Internet users in Germany tend to have multiple internet-connected devices. Three quarters use their smartphones to go online at least once a month and just over half have a tablet.

Children in South East Asia prefer the internet to watching TV

And finally, children in South East Asia prefer the internet to watching TV, according to a study by the child-focused marketing company SuperAwesome.

66% of 6 to 14 year olds from Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia and Vietnam said they would rather only use the internet than only watch TV.

A quarter of 6 to 8 year olds from the region said they regularly went online after school, along with a third of 9 to 11 year olds and half of 12 to 14 year olds.

Smartphones were the most popular device used by children to go online, with tablets coming in second place in all countries apart from Vietnam where desktops were the second most popular device.

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.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

The following two tabs change content below.

Cal O'Connell

Lead Videographer at Webcertain
Cal has been the Lead Videographer at Webcertain for nearly seven years, creating a whole range of digital video content. As his main passion, and with over ten years of experience, he also has a hand in making feature films, short films and other online content, as well as providing his voice (and sometimes his face) to videos. In addition to Webcertain’s content, he also plays a part in creating content for a wide selection of our clients!

Leave a Reply

Yandex.Metrica