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Asia the largest e-commerce market in 2015

Taken from tech.firstpost.com

Asia to become world’s largest e-commerce market in 2015

Asia is set to surpass North America to become the world’s largest e-commerce market this year, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

According to a report in Beijing by the EIU Tuesday, an advisory company under the Economist magazine group, it is estimated that retail sales in Asia will grow by an average 4.6 percent on a volume basis to $7.6 trillion, compared with 2.5 percent in North America and 0.8 percent in Europe in 2015.

The Asian consumer market was largely driven by the rising independence and economic power of Asia’s women, and female consumers in Asia are showing an unprecedented enthusiasm for online shopping. 

The report comes in the backdrop of huge demand for e-commerce generated in China by platforms like Alibaba which is picking up at a rapid pace in India.

The two countries together account for about three billion people.

The EIU report is based on a survey of 5,500 women across major cities on the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong, Taiwan and Macao, as well as countries including India, Japan, Singapore and the Republic of Korea.

Among the survey respondents, 43 percent were in managerial, executive or professional services jobs.

Nearly half of the women agreed or strongly agreed that they preferred online to in-store shopping.

The proportion on the Chinese mainland was as much as 69 percent. Sixty-three percent of those polled browsed the Internet at least once a day for products and services, with nearly 30 percent doing so twice or more per day.

When choosing an online retailer, price and quality were the main factors considered, followed by genuine products and convenience.

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As Internet use matures globally, annual growth in eCommerce between businesses and consumers will slow, settling at about 10% by 2018, according to eMarketer, which says such B2C sales will reach $1.47 trillion in 2014, up 20 percent from last year.

By 2018, the company projects, the total will reach $2.36 trillion, a 61 percent boost over the 2014 year-end projection and $200 billion in annual new dollars spent. eMarketer defines B2C eCommerce as sales that include all products and services ordered or booked via the Internet on any device, including leisure and unmanaged business travel.

Regionally, the combined spending of the U.S. and Canada will remain on top in B2C eCommerce sales this year, representing about one-third of the dollars spent on digital purchases worldwide, the company said in its forecast report. It previous had predicted that Asia-Pacific would surpass North America in market share, but it changed that view because of unanticipated slower growth in China’s B2C eCommerce spending caused by market maturation.

“With China accounting for a significant portion of eCommerce sales in Asia-Pacific, this affected our estimates materially,” the research company said. Instead, eMarketer expects the region to take the global lead in B2C eCommerce sales next year, when it will achieve a 33.4 percent share to North America’s 31.7 percent and Western Europe’s 24.6 percent.

“These three regions combined will continue to take around 90% of the global eCommerce market throughout our forecast period,” eMarketer said.

A growing base of digital buyers will help boost eCommerce sales in Asia-Pacific, as more new buyers come online. However, by 2018, nearly 70% of Internet users in both Western Europe and North America will purchase items on digital devices compared with just more than 50 percent in Asia-Pacific, eMarketer said.

“Buyer penetration in Asia-Pacific translates to the largest number of consumers, but the region is far more fragmented than North America and Western Europe,” the company noted. “In the latter two regions, eCommerce continues to grow at double-digit rates and will do so for several more years.”

In such large markets, this illustrates that individual buyers are making purchases more frequently and with higher order values, and consumer behaviors are relatively consistent across countries in both regions, the company said.

However, across Asia-Pacific countries, consumer behaviors are more disparate. China alone will make up more than half the region’s eCommerce sales this year, jumping to 70 percent by 2018, eMarketer said, which noted Australia and Japan rival markets like the U.S., UK and Western Europe in buyer penetration and average order values.

“On the other hand, in less-mature markets like India and Indonesia, there are large absolute numbers of digital buyers, but many are new to the market,” the company said. “Instead of buying high-ticket items, new digital buyers tend to wet their feet with less costly purchases due to product availability or simply to income constraints.”

A report published last month during the Global E-commerce Summit in Barcelona found Europe B2C eCommerce last year grew by 16.3 percent year over year to €363.1 billion (US$486.1 billion). The report predicted 17.2 percent growth this year, to €425.5 billion, eventually growing to €625 billion by 2016. The European e-commerce figures were compiled with various national eCommerce associations and in cooperation with GfK.

The growth is going to accelerate due to higher spending in mature countries and increase of the number of transactions in emerging markets, the report found.

e-Commerce on Social Media (SocialCommerce)

Taken from The Internet Retailer

2015 Social Media 500

Meet the 500 Masters of Social Marketing
& Commerce in 2015

As consumers continue to spend more of their online time on social networks (according to comScore Inc., the networks claim 20% of daily attention spans), and as those networks roll out advertising formats with unparalleled targeting capabilities, e-retailers are massively stepping up their social media marketing, and Internet Retailer’s latest research shows that these moves are paying off. Indeed, the 500 leading social media marketers in the U.S. and Canada are fine-tuning their social media marketing and commerce initiatives to maximize their impact on their bottom lines. They collectively grew their social commerce sales in 2014 by 26.0% to $3.30 billion, up from $2.62 billion—well ahead of the growth rate of e-commerce overall in the U.S. (16.9% in 2013 according to the Department of Commerce)—according to the data in the just-released 2015 Social Media 500. As a whole, the data show these 500 e-retailers:

• Boosted their Facebook Likes in 2014 by 33% to 915.7 million

• Grew their Twitter following by 26% to 88.6 million followers

• Increased their number of Pinterest followers by 16% to 34.7 million; and

• Drove 78% more video views on YouTube for a total of 3.89 billion.

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Taken from pymnts.com

SOCIAL COMMERCE RETAIL SALES UP 26%

While retailers fight the crowded social media space to get their voice heard by consumers, a new report says social media is playing a larger role in retailers e-commerce strategies.

Data from Internet Retailer’s 2015 Social Media 500 shows that total social commerce sales reached $3.30 billion in 2014, which was up 26% from 2013’s $2.62 billion. Retailers also saw an average growth of 5.4 percent in 2014 in terms of total site traffic from social networks. The data also shows that those visitors are more likely to purchase once they click on a retailer’s site from a social network.

But driving that traffic isn’t cheap.

“Merchants are having to spend more on ads to have their content seen by consumers. That’s because Facebook shows fewer of a brand or retailer’s posts to its fans now than it did a few years ago, a strategy that effectively forces marketers to spend more on advertising to reach Facebook users,” wrote Stefany Zaroban for Internet Retailer.

Organic reach is getting harder for retailers, so they are having to turn to social media to help market their brand. A report from social analytics vendor Socialbakers said, on average, only 25 percent of companies are able to reach its customer base through organic posts. And in Internet Retailer’s research, of the 43 e-retailers that reported its social ad budgets, their total budgets were up 144 percent in 2014 to $17.9 million a month.

Data from the report also indicated that retailers have placed a large focus in increasing their social media audience. In 2014, those surveyed said their collective number of Facebook “likes” grew 33 percent in 2014; Twitter grew by 26 percent; Pinterest followers grew by 16 percent; and YouTube views grew by 78 percent.

Personalized Digital Channel Marketing

Taken from emarketer.com

Offline Personalization Matters Just as Much
Marketers who personalize offline most likely to see lift in conversions
January 14, 2015

There’s been plenty of talk about personalizing online communications, such as email, but recent research suggests it’s equally important to tailor offline customer experiences as well.

According to September 2014 research by Econsultancy in association with RedEye, 95% client-side marketers worldwide who had implemented personalization via offline channels had seen an uplift in conversion rates. This was more than any digital channel studied, and led email—the most popular personalization channel—by 5 percentage points. Among digital channels, websites and search engine marketing (SEM) were most likely to have seen lifts in conversion due to personalization, with the latter tops across all channels for driving “major” uplift.

However, those polled weren’t exactly focusing on the most successful channels. Just 23% of client-side marketers worldwide personalized offline channels, compared with 88% who used email personalization and 44% who did so for websites. Agency professionals were even less likely to tailor offline efforts, at just 17%. One-fifth of respondents personalized SEM—the second-lowest response for both marketers and agencies.

Econsultancy’s findings are another reminder of the need for retailers to provide an omnichannel experience. While digital and mobile are no doubt part of the purchase path, most final buying decisions still happen in-store. Retailers who can tie all of the data collected on a customer stand a better chance at closing the deal.

But many face a long road ahead in doing this. In a study by Retail Systems Research for SPS Commerce, released in September 2014, just 5% of US companies believed they had made advanced progress in executing an omnichannel strategy, compared with 37% who said they were lagging.

Pajak untuk bisnis OTT, mungkinkah jadi dilemma ?

Diacu dari Bisnis Indonesia
OTT Asing Sulit Dikenai Pajak

Otoritas perpajakan Indonesia dan tekanan negara besar dinilai menjadi penghalang niat BRTI untuk mengenakan pajak terhadap pelaku OTT asing.

Pengenaan pajak atas penghasilan iklan pelaku OTT merupakan salah satu solusi untuk memberi keadilan ekonomi bagi Indonesia. Selain itu, Amerika Serikat, berkepentingan agar pemain OTT yang mayoritas bercokol di negeri itu tidak dibebani pajak oleh negara lain.

OTT dan operator jaringan telah menjadi permasalahan di AS. Pada tahun lalu, Federal Communications Commission (BRTI-nya AS) sempat mewacanakan agar penyedia jasa Internet bisa memungut tarif kepada pelaku OTT. Kebijakan ini, jika diluluskan, membuat akses Internet terhadap server OTT menjadi berbeda sesuai dengan tarif yang dibayar. Namun, rencana tersebut ditolak oleh presiden yang bersikukuh negaranya tetap menerapkan asas net neutrality sehingga kecepatan akses terhadap konten apapun sama sesuai bandwidth.

ITU juga seiya-sekata dengan negara-negara besar, hanya China dan Korea Selatan yang berhasil mengendalikan OTT. Pemerintah China melarang penyedia konten asing masuk ke jaringannya. Sementara Korea Selatan menarik pungutan kepada OTT dengan dalih perbedaan aksara Korea dengan internasional.

(Samdysara Saragih)

Investasi Telkom di ICT & MEDIA

Diambil dari situs BeritaSatu.com

Gagal Akuisisi 2degrees, Telkom Ekspansi ke Asia dan Timur Tengah

Investasi Bisnis Contact Center

Telkom sudah masuk pasar Australia dan Selandia Baru dengan mengakuisisi 75 persen saham Contact Centres Australia Pty Ltd (CCA), perusahaan yang bergerak di solusi business process outsourcing (BPO) yang berbasis di Sydney, Australia.

Telkom mengakuisisi CCA melalui anak usahanya, Telekomunikasi Indonesia International Australia Pty Ltd, dengan nilai transaksi Aus$ 11 juta. Aksi akuisisi tersebut rampung pada 25 September 2014.

Sebagai informasi, CCA adalah salah satu perusahaan contact center terbesar di Australia yang memiliki dua anak usaha, yakni Financial Information Services Pty Ltd, yang berkantor pusat di New South Wales, Australia serta Contact Center New Zealand Ltd di Wellington, Selandia Baru.

Investasi Bisnis e-Commerce

eBay Inc, perusahaan jual beli online asal Amerika Serikat (AS), berencana menambah kepemilikan saham pada PT Metra Plasa menjadi 49 persen dari sebelumnya 40 persen.

Saat ini, sebanyak 60 persen saham Metra Plasa dikuasai oleh PT Telekomunikasi Indonesia Tbk (Telkom/TLKM). Dengan begitu, kepemilikan Telkom pada Metra Plasa bakal berkurang menjadi 51 persen

Semula, Telkom melalui anak usahanya, PT Multimedia Nusantara, sepakat membentuk perusahan baru bersama eBay dengan kepemilikan masing-masing sebesar 60 persen dan 40 persen. Pembentukan Metra Plasa tersebut sejak April 2012.

“eBay bisa menambah menjadi 49 persen. Mereka juga punya opsi untuk menjadi mayoritas. Ada tahapan menuju ke sana, mereka inginnya cepat. Tapi saya belum bisa disclose,” kata Indra, belum lama ini.

Metra Plasa pada awalnya mengelola situs belanja online Plasa.com. Dengan menggandeng eBay, Telkom akhirnya mengembangkan situs belanja bernama blanja.com.

Menurut Indra, sejak 2012, eBay telah mengucurkan dana sekitar US$ 9,2 juta pada Metra Plasa. Telkom pertama kali berinvestasi pada plasa.com pada 2009 sekitar US$ 5 juta. Dengan demikian, total investasi Telkom dan eBay dalam mengembangkan situs belanja online sekitar US$ 14,2 juta. Per September 2014, aset sebelum eliminasi Metra Plasa sekitar Rp 68 miliar.

Ke depan, kata Indra, eBay berpeluang menambahkan investasinya ke Metra Plasa. Strategi menggandeng eBay membuat Telkom belajar terkait platform serta cross border trading. Nantinya, sistem eBay memungkinkan barang yang terdaftar pada blanja.com dijual ke luar negeri. Saat ini, situs blanja.com memiliki total 1 juta produk terdaftar, 600 penjual, serta 50.000 pengunjung per hari.

The most important emerging trends in digital media and emerging technology for 2015

Taken from Harvard Business Review's article
The Tech Trends You Can’t Ignore in 2015
Amy Webb
JANUARY 5, 2015

The trend was analyzed from consumer behavior, microeconomic trends, government policies, market forces, and emerging research within the context evolving tech and digital media ecosystem.

Then the analysis framework combines with The Five Questions:
1. Where/how are people wasting their time?
2. Where/how are people having difficulty with technology?
3. Where/how are people looking for information?
4. Where/how are people stuck?
5. How do people want to be perceived?

Here are the six of 2015 trends that offer great opportunity – along with some unusual new challenges – for managers in all industries:

1. Deep learning: Artificially intelligent computers are now capable of deep learning using neural networks, which you can think of as brain-inspired systems capable of translating pixels into English. Toward the end of 2014, Google researchers unveiled a new project that uses neural networks and deep learning to identify multiple elements of a scene without human assistance. Its software “learned” how to think by processing vast quantities of data. For example, deep learning will eventually allow robots to recognize objects they haven’t seen before and navigate to new locations on their own. Deep learning intersects with numerous fields, and it will soon aid in manufacturing, medicine, retail, utilities, and beyond.

2. Smart virtual personal assistants: SVPAs started entering the market in 2013. At the time, they used semantic and natural language processing; data mined from our calendars, email, and contact lists; and the last few minutes of our behavior to anticipate the next 10 seconds of our thinking. Most of those original apps have now been acquired. Emu was acquired by Google, Donna was acquired by Yahoo, Cue was acquired by Apple…and the list goes on. When it was still active, Emu was a clever stand-in for a personal secretary. It would monitor the conversation and automatically make suggestions as two people texted. For example, if you asked your friend to see a movie, Emu would immediately geolocate both of you, suggest a nearby theater and show films and times, then check your calendars for your availability. It would even display a preview for you to watch. Once it determined the best time for you to meet, it would help you purchase tickets and enter all the data into your calendar. And it did all of this inside a single mobile application. In 2015, consumers will begin to see SVPA technology baked into their mobile phones. For example, Google is quietly starting to release a new SVPA function for Android users: it automatically detects when you’ve parked your car, marks your parking spot for you on a Google map, and helps get you back to it once you’re ready to start driving again. All without you explicitly asking it to do so. Marketers, credit card companies, banks, local government agencies, political campaigns, and many others can harness SVPAs to both deliver critical information and to better read and understand constituents.

3. “It’s like Uber for ____”: In spite of harsh criticism about its business practices, 2014 was a banner year for Uber. With a $40 billion paper valuation, the simple app connecting drivers to passengers is now worth more than Halliburton Corporation, Aetna, General Mills, Delta Airlines, Kraft Foods, and Charles Schwab. Uber’s fast growth is due to lightning-fast consumer adoption, and that’s because Uber does two things very well. First, it monetizes downtime. For professional drivers, Uber is a fast, easy way to find riders. It’s also been a boon for people who’ve lost their jobs, offering them a way to make money when other jobs are hard to find. Second, Uber provides a seamless payment interface. Riders don’t need to carry cash or even a credit card, as the entire transaction is handled via a simple mobile interface. Uber’s success has inspired hundreds of other entrepreneurs who want to emulate the best features of the company. In 2015, expect to see lots of new, Uber-ish delivery and intermediary businesses, including fast grocery delivery, helicopter rides, portable ATMs, alcohol delivery, in-home massage service, dry cleaning and laundry, iPhone repair, personal shopping, medical marijuana, dog walkers, and on-site car mechanics. Meantime, consumers will respond to one-click transactions that process payments in the background – meaning there’s a great opportunity for established retailers, transportation companies, banks, and others to leverage what’s becoming standard consumer behavior.

4. Oversight for algorithms: In its essence, an algorithm is simply a set of rules or processes that must be followed in order to solve a problem. In the coming year, we will also begin questioning the ethics of how algorithms can be used, and we’ll scrutinize the tendency of some algorithms to go awry. Programmers are adding in subjective judgments to algorithms and allowing them to deliver answers. As a result, those in the big data space are increasingly misclassifying objects, data, and even people. There are numerous stories of algorithms wrongly identifying terrorism suspects at airports. High-frequency trading algorithms once nearly destroyed the stock market. A glitch in Amazon’s algorithm caused the price of The Making of a Fly: The Genetics of Animal Design to spike to $26,698,655.93. During the next several months, managers should discuss how to include accountability systems for algorithms.

5. Data privacy: Ongoing breaches have continued to dismantle the public trust. According to a Pew Internet and Society poll, 91% of Americans surveyed either agreed or strongly agree that consumers have lost control of their personal information and data. Whether it’s fear of a third party monitoring our mobile phone activity or concern about the safety of online transactions, people are increasingly concerned about their privacy, and they’re pointing the finger at business, not maleficent hackers. In 2015, businesses must not only work to meaningfully encrypt their data, but they must make a public showing of the measures they’re taking to safeguard our personal information. One new area of particular note in 2015: digital consent. Lawyers could soon use our personal data against us in court. Fitbit data, processed through a third-party analytics tool, was used in a courtroom late in 2014, around the same time that the FTC began investigating Fitbit’s practice of selling users’ 3 data to advertisers. We will see growing demands for digital consent agreements and increased transparency.

6. Block chain technology: The block chain is the transaction database that’s shared by everyone participating in bitcoin’s digital system. It’s how the crypto-currency promises complete anonymity while using a crowd-regulated public ledger system. Think of the block chain as a sort of distributed consensus system, where no one person controls all the data. Even if Bitcoin itself never really gains traction, block chain technology has enormous promise.  For instance, some people argue that a block chain system would have prevented the massive credit card breach at Target. A new company, Blockstream, plans to turn the block chain into a universal platform that can be used for anything requiring signatures or authentication. It would let people participate in “trustless” transactions, where buyers and sellers work with an intermediary like an escrow manager, a trustee, or other middlemen.

In some way, each of these tech trends will affect your business in the coming year. The best way to prepare for coming disruption is to learn as much as you can, discuss implications with others in your company, and then commit to launching small experiments internally to help you see the trends in motion.

IoT Security & Privacy Concern

Taken from CIO-Today's article:

Internet of Things Growing Despite Security Concerns
December 30, 2014

Chances are you'll hear a lot more about the Internet of Things (IoT) in 2015 -- and it might not all be good. Although IoT is clearly gaining momentum, consumers are concerned about privacy and security.

Nearly 65%  of American consumers are moderately or extremely interested in adopting smart home solutions, according to new research from the Internet of Things Consortium (IoTC). And 71% buy it based on word-of-mouth referrals from people they trust or in-store employee recommendations.

Security Threats Emerge

That said, two-thirds of respondents are concerned about privacy. In fact, across age, gender and income, 66% of survey respondents express concern about privacy. Researchers say this finding highlights the need for industry participants to mitigate privacy and security concerns to drive the industry forward.

Good News for Advertisers

Despite these concerns, respondents are still pressing into IoT. 37% of survey respondents want to be able to enhance their home entertainment experiences by transferring shows and content from one device to another. The same percentage of respondents also wants to control their home appliances using a voice assistant.

In welcoming news for marketers, U.S. consumers said they would be open to viewing advertisements on connected home devices. Over a third said they would be willing to accept commercial advertising if it helped subsidize the cost of connected home products or services.

CES Trends: Privacy, Security and the Internet of Things

January 5, 2015

The International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2015 event is seeing the debut of serious hardware and software for business plus a focus on tools for maintaining data privacy and security, and management tools for the emerging Internet of Things. 

Samsung Electronics and Daimler AG/Mercedes-Benz discussed the many possibilities being created by the fast-evolving Internet of Things, while Mercedes-Benz is expected to talk about autonomous driving, meaning self-driving cars.

IoT 'Everywhere'

The Internet of Things, which encompasses networked devices ranging from smart thermostats to cellphone-controlled door locks and ultra-small micro-electromechanical systems, is expected to generate $300 billion in product and service revenues by 2020. The number of IoT devices likely to be deployed by then will reach around 26 billion units.

Nielsen's Advertising Strategies

Taken from SharedThis blog:
Shared Conversations Series with Randall Beard
By Matt Wolfrom on September 03, 2014

Randall delves into innovative ad strategies to succeed in today’s fragmented media industry, the transformational nature of marketing organizations and the value of leveraging quality data to increase your advertising effectiveness.

Developing ad strategies in the current multi-screen landscape.

Today, creating an effective advertising strategy is complicated due to an incredibly fragmented industry, especially with the rise of new forms of media like social, mobile, tablet, etc.

The challenges that advertisers are facing in an integrated multi-screen world:
1. It is important to measure not only how well your advertising reaches your intended audience, but also how much it resonates, changes brand preference and reaction. In other words, does it impact behavioral sales? We call this the three Rs: reach, resonance and reaction.
2. Clients want common metrics in measurement across platforms. Although every platform is unique, in order to have comparability to allocate spending appropriately across platforms, you have to have common measurement metrics. Simplify success metrics with three basic questions:
- How well are you reaching your intended audience?
- How well does your advertising resonate with that audience?
- How well does it drive a reaction?

“Better, not bigger, data.”

For years many digital measurements like page views and click through rates existed, but at the end of the day advertisers and agencies were left with one major question: who did my digital advertising reach?

The ability to measure audience delivery in digital with traditional panels was virtually impossible, so we  partner with Facebook, who has the largest panel in the world.

To make the data even better, we take it and compare it to our cross platform gold standard panel. Then we put it through a calibration engine to make sure it is really accurate.

Reach consumers and understand  behavior in today’s crowded marketplace

The reason digital audience measurement is so important is because advertisers, agencies and media companies want accountability. When an advertiser buys 30M impressions against women 20-29, they want some measurement and a guarantee to know whether or not the media company or publisher actually delivered.

Another approach is through real-time optimization — moving money from lower performing to higher performing sites. In terms of reaching consumers and understanding consumer behavior, that circles back around to the reach, resonance, and reaction model, and using reaction to be smarter about who you want to reach. Being able to optimize real-time allows users to maximize performance of a campaign while it’s still going on, and before ad dollars are wasted.

One of the things that we have developed is the ability to do single source — bringing together a measurement of what people watch, including the ads that they are exposed to, and what they buy at the household level. We have a panel of consumers where we know what they’ve been exposed to and what those people have purchased in store, based on other datasets. We then match those two at a household level, stripping out any personally identifiable information. This data is anonymized and privacy-protected.

Impending advertising singularity  

Singularity is when computers and artificial intelligence become smart enough to self-learn and smarter than humans. There is so much going on in the world of advertising and media and it is creating greater automation and optimization opportunities for advertising effectiveness.

Increasingly you’re able to measure individual level exposure to ads and then match that to consumption of purchase behavior. By looking at what people are exposed to and they’re buying, brands can measure the individual impact of every digital touch point. An advertiser that’s bidding for 10K search keywords could measure the individual impact of each of those 10K search keywords for online and offline sales.

These advertisers can also measure the impact of all combinations of touch points. Many platforms have machine learning capabilities where they continuously learn about what methods are more effective. They have the ability to plug into demand-side platforms and drive real-time bidding. This is individual-level measurement of advertising exposure that is connected to purchase behavior and all updated in real-time.

Excellent partnership and foster with digital partners

To stay on top of industry trends there are two ways approach, organizational and cultural.

From an organizational approach, we need capability to address cutting edge issues. Create an advertising effectiveness innovation lab in partnership with University.  

Fostering a culture that is open to experimentation and external partnerships to solve big important  problems is really important.

Marketing Trends

There are three areas that are really important:
1) Data. Marketing in general is much more data and evidenced base, and it is becoming much more of a science. To be clear, creative, big advertising and marketing ideas will always be the foundation for great marketing. However, the rise of data and evidence-based marketing is a big trend, and getting the finance function to begin seeing marketing as an investment, as opposed to a cost line in the income statement, is essential.
2) Real-time. There’s a growing need for people that have the ability to be adaptive and operate in the moment.
3) Technology. new capabilities are enabling expanded opportunities in marketing that were not possible before.

The main challenge is how to advertise in a truly cross-platform in an integrated way. We’ve been very focused on bringing new tools to advertisers and agencies that allow them to plan across platforms so they can maximize reach across TV and digital.

ADVERTISING TRUST

Taken from nielsen article:

GLOBAL TRUST IN ADVERTISING AND BRAND MESSAGES
04-10-2012

The voice of fellow consumers continues to be strongly heard when it comes to the most trusted forms of advertising. 92% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as word-of-mouth or recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising—an increase of 18 % since 2007, according to study from Nielsen. Online consumer reviews are the second most trusted source of brand information and messaging, with 70%  of global consumers surveyed online indicating they trust messages on this platform, an increase of 15% in four years.

KEY TAKEAWAYS:

- Earned media sources remain most credible
- Trust in traditional paid advertising messages declines
- Confidence in online and mobile advertising increases
- Regional variances offer global marketers opportunities
- Improved relevance in advertising has room to grow

Nielsen’s Global Trust in Advertising Survey of more than 28,000 Internet respondents in 56 countries shows that while nearly half of consumers around the world say they trust television (47%), magazine (47%) and newspaper ads (46%), confidence declined by 24%, 20% and 25%, respectively, between 2009 and 2011.

Still, the majority of advertising dollars are spent on traditional or paid media, such as television. In 2011, overall global ad spend saw a seven percent increase over 2010, according to Nielsen’s most recent Global AdView Pulse. This growth in spend was driven by a 10% increase in television advertising, with countries including the U.S. and China, attracting more advertising dollars versus the year prior.

Randall Beard, global head, Advertiser Solutions at Nielsen said “Although television advertising will remain a primary way marketers connect with audiences due to its unmatched reach compared to other media, consumers around the world continue to see recommendations from friends and online consumer opinions as by far the most credible. As a result, successful brand advertisers will seek ways to better connect with consumers and leverage their good-will in the form of consumer feedback and experiences.”

In addition the survey found that relevancy results often mirrored trust responses, indicating there is room for improvement by marketers to make a more personal connection with consumers.

Digital Advertising

Taken from Investopedia article:
How The Internet Web Ad Industry Works
By Trevir Nath

Over the past 10 years, advertising strategies have evolved as a result of technological development. Commercials and print advertisements, which dominated advertising in the 20th century, have lost importance as the internet has provided new channels for advertisers to reach a larger audience. Gannett Company estimated in 2013 that the newspaper industry lost more than $1 billion in advertising, a 5.3 percent decrease from the prior year. The advertising industry has moved largely away from print advertising in favor of digital and web based advertisements.

Online marketing has grown and expanding containing a number of tools to reach consumers via the Internet. Areas of online marketing include, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and mobile advertising to name a few. While various forms of internet advertising exist to optimize sales, it is imperative for companies and advertisers to reach the highest rank on search queries within Google. Google (GOOG) has created Google AdWords and AdSense for advertisers to utilize in conjunction with other marketing strategies.

GOOGLE ADWORDS AND ADSENSE
A majority of Google’s revenue is generated from advertising. Google’s online advertising programs, AdWords and AdSense, generated $50 billion of Google’s $57 billion in revenue in 2013. Google AdWords is a marketing strategy for companies and advertisers to reach a larger audience. Appearing higher on a Google search query ultimately bodes well for new and established firms.

AdWords provides companies an opportunity to bid on the placement of an advertisement and keywords within Google’s website. Searches in relation to the business will result in the company’s advertisement and website appearing as a result of a search query. Google only generates revenue when advertisements are clicked. This is defined as cost per click and is a marketing strategy to direct traffic to a company website.

Likewise Google AdSense enhances a company’s opportunities to reach larger audiences through advertisements. Google places the advertisements within other websites to produce clicks rates and website traffic. Largely recognized for its search engine, Google generates a majority of revenue through advertising services for companies in search of enhancing website traffic.

SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMIZATION (SEO)
While Google AdWords and AdSense produce higher search results with a Google search result, there are organic means to similar results without spending money. Search engine optimization is a strategy to naturally increase the visibility and traffic of a website in a search engine.

SEO specialists must consider how search engines operate, keywords in a page's URL, and how consumers search. Incorporating a variety of SEO strategies to support a website can generate higher ranks in popular search engines resulting in increased traffic. Due to Google’s robust market share in search engines, advertisers customize their SEO efforts to Google’s search algorithms.

While optimizing a website for SEO isn't easy, companies may outsource their needs to firms that specialize in SEO. Typically, an SEO firm will analyze and audit features of a website such as keywords, Google Analytics reports and links. In order to optimize a website, an overhaul of coding, link building and a website redesign may be needed to create fresh content. As digital advertising and marketing strategies continue to develop, it has been suggested that search engine optimization may not always work in obtaining the highest search results.

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING
Success in internet advertising can be easily measured by the amount of website traffic a company generates. Social media encompasses tools which globally connect individuals to create and share information and experiences; not coincidentally, social media can be a huge driver of website traffic.

Though Facebook (FB) is often thought as the preeminent social media platform, there are many social media companies, both public and private, including Twitter (TWTR) and Instagram to name only the next largest two. (Instagram is owned by Facebook.) Due to the nature of social media, consumers are constantly connected with each other, and as a result advertisers can attract a larger audience with a relatively low-cost tweet, Facebook post or Instagram picture.

Social media marketing can be measured by impressions or engagement. Impressions measure the number of times an advertisement is seen even if it is not clicked. Marketers also measure the level of engagement between consumers and businesses. Engagement is a strategy in which consumers post new content and conversations within social media to drive website traffic and noise. As Millennials are deeply immersed in social media, advertisers believe that social media marketing is the most effective digital channel.

MOBILE ADVERTISING
Over the past 10 years, mobile technology has made vast gains in innovation, design and service. It is Pew estimates that 90 percent of American adults own a mobile phone, and 58 percent of them own a smartphone as of 2014. As a result, mobile advertising has rapidly grown to the most effective channel in reaching a large audiences.

Mobile advertising is a form of advertising via smartphones including advertising formats such as display, video, social and search. Display and Video advertisements encompass advertisements located on websites. Display advertisements take the form of banners; whereas video advertisements are pre rolled ads and often reformat TV commercials. It is reported that mobile advertising is growing much faster than all other forms of digital advertisements with search and social media at the forefront of revenue. 

THE BOTTOM LINE
Ubiquitous internet access has enabled new advertising and marketing strategies to reach consumers. Google AdWords and AdSense create opportunities for companies to increase search rank at a cost. In conjunction with Google’s advertising programs, companies can increase web presence through search engine optimization, social media marketing, mobile advertising, and content marketing. Measuring success of internet advertisements can be done through search and web analytics which quantify a number of features including impressions and engagements. The development and sophistication of online marketing has proven to be quite successful with internet ad revenue exceeding $42.8 billion in 2013, marking a 17%  increase over the year prior.