[vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]
REPORTS
Mary Meeker’s 2019 Internet Trends report is here
Bond Capital founder and a widely followed technology backer, Mary Meeker published her 333-slide “Future of the Internet” report at Code Conference 2019.
She is referred to as “The Queen of the Internet” and her trends report is considered the most anticipated slide deck in Silicon Valley.
It covers various key aspects of internet trends over the last year and tells us what to expect in the year ahead.
Well, 333-pages is a lot of data to wade through, so let’s try to pull out some of the significant and most interesting trends from her report.
- Around 51 percent (3.8B) of the world’s population now has access to the Internet, up from 49 percent (3.6B) in 2017. With so many people already online, it’s getting harder to reach new users than before.
- 53 percent of all internet users are from the Asia-Pacific region. China being the single largest internet market in the world, with about 0.8B internet users.
- 7 out of world’s 10 most valuable companies by market cap are tech companies.
- Out of the top 25 most valuable tech companies, 60 percent were founded by first or second-generation immigrants.
- E-commerce makes up for 15 percent of all retail sales in the US.
- While e-commerce sales are up by 12.4 percent over the last year, physical retail has grown only by percent.
- Mobile advertising now accounts for 33 percent of advertisers’ ad purchases, up by 0.5% in 2010. Spending on print, TV, and radio ads has fallen as consumers spend far more time on mobile.
- Google and Facebook make the majority of online ad revenue, but the growth of US advertising platforms like Amazon, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest is outstripping the duopoly.
- Google’s ad revenue grew 1.4X over the past 9 quarters and Facebook’s revenue grew by 1.9X. The combined group of all new players grew by 2.6X.
- Google, Amazon, and Microsoft’s revenue from cloud services is headed towards $14B, up by 58 percent year-over-year. More data is now stored in the cloud than on enterprise servers or consumer devices.
- Average US adult spends 6.3 hours each day on digital media. Half of which is spent on their mobiles.
- Targeted advertising is going to get tougher due to GDPR, other regulations and demands for more privacy from players like Apple and Facebook.
- Privacy is becoming a bigger selling point. Expect more options to make your online communications safe. In Q1 2018, 87 percent of global web traffic was encrypted, up from 53 percent just three years ago.
- Customer acquisition costs are increasing considerably. In some cases, it surpasses the life-time revenue those customers will bring.
- 70M people globally listen to podcasts. It’s expected to double in the next 4 years.
- 47M people have Amazon Echoes installed, up by 2X from the last year.
- There are 2.4B interactive game players in the world, up by 6 percent over the last year. Fortnite alone has 250M users, as does the gaming social network Discord.
Have a look at the complete 333-slider report here.
E-COMMERCE
Case Study: Consistently getting 8x – 11x ROAS each month
Robert Dobrilovich shared a detailed case study from one of his e-comm clients selling yoga mats worldwide and how they were able to consistently generate a ROAS of 8-11x month after month.
Here’s some background on the campaign setup:
Ad spend: $1.5k/month
Platforms: Facebook and Instagram
Campaign Type: Facebook Retargeting Ads
Ad Type: Dynamic Ads + Static Ads
Location Targeting: USA
Language: English
Results: A consistent ROAS of 8x – 11x each month.
A few honest pointers to note:
- The brand was big and well known, which made it easier to sell.
- They own their warehouses and fulfillment process, which leads to higher ROAS.
- The client wanted to only test Facebook ads to being with so no other platforms were tested.
Since it was a well established brand, they only ran retargeting ads to being with, to leverage on the low hanging fruit.
For the first two months, custom audiences created from events such as View Content (VC), Add to Cart (ATC), Initiate Checkout (IC) and Purchase (PUR) performed well.
PUR custom audiences were created to add as exclusions from all retargeting campaigns and to use them later on in a cross-sell or upsell campaign.
Next step was to create Conversion campaigns optimized for Purchase.
For ads, dynamic carousel ads were created and the catalog was linked to the Shopify store to reach out to users which clicked on a specific product and show them ads of the exact product.
Simple ad copies created from clients branding sentences that connected with their buyers were used.
This brought great results during this 2 month period, though the Frequency had now started to increase.
Hence, they decided to segment these audiences based on days. 90 days, 30 days and 7 days. Here’s how they were used.
- For 90 days campaign – Brandable videos, without trying to sell them anything. Just to remind them why they were on the brand’s website.
- For 30 days campaign – Best engaging Instagram posts, pictures and copy to make soft sale ads.
- For 7 days campaign – Dynamic ads from the catalog with the aim to hard-sell products they clicked previously on the website.
This brought down the ad frequency, CPMs and resulted in better results.
Well, nothing extraordinary. The juice from the squeeze here is to leverage on retargeting ads for e-commerce especially if you have a brand with a decent sized audience.
Wanna have a look at the video overview of the whole process, along with the ads and copies they used? Head here to his post.
SPONSORED
PropellerAds presents “Push Traffic Market Analysis and Trends Report” for 2019-2021
Love it or hate it, push traffic took the advertising market by storm in 2018. In 2019, we can say that everyone is aware of this traffic type but there are still many questions left unanswered: What’s the average CTR? Will Google ban Push Notifications? What are the top GEOs? And more…
Well, PropellerAds looked for the answers and put them all together in one mega-report, looking at both what is going on now and what is likely to happen in the next 2 years with this traffic type.
The report contains unique information collected by an in-house analytics team at PropellerAds. Here’s what you can expect to read inside:
- The potential of Google’s ban for this traffic type.
- Detailed stats on each vertical.
- Statistics and benchmarks by GEO, OS & Platform, Verticals, and User activity.
- Trends like regulation tightening, iOS push tech, cross-channel integration.
It also seeks to answer the question: Will Web Push market grow even further?
Whether you are already running push or just want to stay on top of any potential breakthroughs (or threats) to a “hot traffic type”, the Push Traffic Market Analysis and Trends by PropellerAds is a must read.
To get it, all you have to do is go here, leave your name & email and you will instantly get access!
Not sure? Well, let’s spoil the prediction for the next couple of years. This might get you tempted to look into this whole push traffic thing…
“Based on last year’s figures and financial trends, we are expecting the average daily market volumes to reach $5M; growing through new markets (for example, iOS entering the Push market) and fresh product offerings (advanced integrations and instruments).”
That’s not bad, don’t you think? Grab the report here!
Facebook is up to its old tricks again and WhatsApp threatens spammers
Aside from Ads Manager being perpetually buggy, there are still many privacy concerns looming over Facebook and its network of apps. This is unlikely to get any better with WhatsApp being prepared to start serving ads in 2020.
There are 2 updates, one about FB’s data hunger and another one about WhatsApp trying to clean up its platform to avoid scandals as it starts monetizing.
Gotta get that data again
If you remember, earlier this year, Facebook removed an app called Research from the AppStore because it was paying teens to access their mobile activity.
Well, a scandal broke out and the app was pulled out. Today is a new day, with a great new vision ahead, a day where FB does things differently… Just kidding!
Facebook launched an app called Study which basically does the same thing as Research. The main difference is that it’s better explained from its launch what this app does, there’s more transparency in that regards.
In short, they waited a few months for the outrage to subside then rebranded. Then added some PR-talk in their announcement.
We don’t have anything against doing market research yet we can’t help but poke fun at how FB does things: don’t tell people about privacy breaches and issues -> scandal breaks -> apologise -> wait a few months -> retry the same thing that got you in trouble but put a different spin on it.
WhatsApp wants to take spammers to court
Maybe this should have been done earlier but WhatsApp is taking additional steps to keep the spammers away from its platform.
Instead of only trying to catch them, the company now plans to take action against those who even state they can abuse the messaging app to spread misinformation or other content that goes against its policies.
While this is not as common in the US and EU, there’s plenty happening in India, Indonesia and even in Nigeria, where tools meant to bypass WhatsApp restrictions are advertised regularly.
We can’t wait to see the storm once WhatsApp also has paid ads! #sarcasm
TOOLS
Two tools that make your content creation and results analysis easier!
It’s been a while since we found some cool tools to share with you… Well, chance was on our side today and we have two cool tools you might find useful.
Connect Google Trends to Data Studio easily
How would you like to have your Data Studio connected with Google Trends to have all the reports you need at one place?
Well, thanks to the gtrends.app from StrategiQ team, it is now possible.
Apparently, it’s an app which was launched last year but they were only using it for internal purposes.
And now, they made it available to public use for free.
Here’s how it works:
- gtrends.app API: The team has built an API which fetches the data from the Google Trends UI and returns it as JSON. All you gotta do is provide a keyword phrase and the location pair.
- Data Studio Connector: This allows you to configure the data source (Google Trends in this case), sends calls to the gtrends.app API as needed. You can then use this data into a format that Data Studio can use.
Want to know the exact process of setting it up? Head here for the details.
SEO writing assistant
This one is for all you SEMrush Fans out there and for SEOs and content writers in general.
It’s a Chrome extension by SEMrush called SEO Writing Assistant. It provides instant recommendations for content optimization based on Google’s top 10-ranking pages for your given keywords in a given location.
Here’s an overview of what it does:
- Overall score: It checks your content for general quality based on metrics such as readability, text length, and target keywords.
- Readability score: It evaluates reading difficulty levels based on Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease score.
- Target keywords: Recommendations about given keywords, their volume and their difficulty.
- Recommended keywords: Semantically related keywords, that should also be added to your text.
- Plagiarism: Validates that your writer has submitted original content.
- Linking: Checks your links for possible errors and problems.
Well of course, there are many other similar tools out there. However, it’s worth checking it out, if content is what powers your house or if you already use SEMrush for various other purposes.
Another tool to make life of your content writers even harder.
POOLSIDE CHAT
Cool tech, (funny) business, lifestyle and all the other things affiliates like to chat about while sipping cocktails by the pool.
Uber Air is not an April Fool’s announcement
OK, but it’s not launched yet either. It’s a serious, big plan by Uber, based on the Skyport designs they revealed at Uber Elevate.
John Badalamenti, Head of Design for Elevate said that “With the first launch of Uber Air just a few short years away, this collection of Skyport Mobility Hub concepts establish a practical, sustainable vision for the infrastructure needed in the communities we plan to serve.”
Uber wants to launch its Air service in 2023 in Dallas-Fort Worth, LA and Melbourne.
Our first thought was: “Hold on a second, do we really want more things flying over our heads all the time?”
It’s very clear that Uber Air is not a replacement for its core ridesharing service and doesn’t promise to replace cars with flying vehicles. And we think that’s good.
So Uber Air wants to be a service in cities where it really makes sense, where there’s no better transportation, at least in certain situations. We also assume it won’t just have free reign to fly over crowded areas for no reason.
One big question is: Will Uber actually go past the tipping point to stop its bleeding by then?
[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]