Day: December 14, 2019

With digital media advertising spending expected to account for nearly half of global advertising spend this year, adtech’s importance for any business has never been greater. For companies to leverage the latest advertising technology, they must first understand the trends and why the industry is moving towards various advancements.

As a leader in adtech, I’ve outlined below movements I am seeing in the industry to help marketers better capitalize on their ad spend.

Moving to mobile

As desktop internet usage falls and mobile use outperforms TV for overall time spent, marketers are utilizing their resources to adhere to their target audiences’ medium of choice: mobile. As such, marketers are looking to break into mobile apps’ untapped potential and hope it serves as the next gold mine of previously untapped revenue and potential customers for advertisers.

Near-instant machine learning

Adtech companies provide data that help marketers properly A/B test and determine what resonates with a target audience. However, with the increase in competition, speed is a close second to data in terms of importance. AI and Machine Learning’s presence in the industry is quickly increasing as technology can outpace humans and more efficiently optimize ad campaigns to ultimately increase revenues.

A native ad experience

The rise of the “super app” is point-proven that users seek a seamless online experience; they don’t mind ads, as long as it doesn’t interrupt their in-app user experience. As such, marketers are relying more heavily on programmatic advertising to create more refined and user-specific targeting. Spamming users with unrelated, clunky or invasive ad placements can become detrimental to a brand’s reputation.  It is not about the number of impressions; it is about reaching the correct users and integrating ads seamlessly onto apps.

Mobile data, coming soon

Web-based advertisers had decades to perfect measuring the success of ads on their platforms. At the moment, mobile doesn’t have the capabilities to compete with the data that web ads provide. The good news, however, is that adtech companies are pushing to create these tools and create a more measurable experience for marketers on mobile platforms. Moat— an analytics and measurement company that offers viewability, attention, and brand safety solutions— was developed to help provide a solution to mobile’s lack of ability to measure viewability on the screen, and companies are pushing to create more advanced technology to provide advertisers the proper tools to better address various methods of ad fraud.

Rise of Walled Gardens

The rise of consumer privacy concerns is leaning towards a cookie-less industry, opening the door for large publishers to maximize their value through walled gardens. A walled garden in advertising allows large publishers to build an entire marketing infostructure around their platform, utilizing their data and services, and empower small and medium-sized businesses to customize this walled garden for their own marketing efforts. By allowing anyone with a publishing position to transition into their own walled garden, more companies can maximize the monetization and the value that they propose. Before referring to the traditional adtech structure and finding supply partners, they can create their own network operations and monetize their data from within.

Transparent sourcing

Agencies are seeking more transparent platforms as ad fraud continues to remain a top-of-mind concern for publishers. As such, companies are building their own audience networks, utilizing premium, first-party data sources, such as e-commerce platforms and mobile apps with engaged audiences. The first-party data allows advertisers to leverage reliable audience insights and alleviate data privacy concerns.

Super Apps becoming super

Large apps have a lot of potential to grow into “Super Apps,” but aren’t yet tapping into that potential. Apps with large audiences typically start off making money on their technology that connects a consumer to something – a driver, a delivery service, a product. And once they receive investors and the opportunity to grow, they begin floundering; we’ve witnessed it with both Uber and Lyft. To ensure profitability, these apps need to turn to other revenue streams, such as advertising. Apps can make money from media buys, both from inside and outside their app. Apps can provide ad space within their platform, like Amazon, or they can remove themselves from the front lines and simply be used as a powerful source for data. Many major apps are sitting on an incredible amount of data that can help them grow.

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“A growth hacker is a person whose true north is growth.” – says Sean Ellis, the growth hacking guru. 

Here are 5 growth hacking tips that you must consider for your business’s success and thank me later!

Your product must be perfect

The only way to grow your business is to have more people use or talk about your products and services and that can only happen when you whole-heartedly meet up with the needs and preferences of your targeted market/audience.

A product-market fit must be your first and foremost priority as a growth hacker whilst having a strong analysis of your competitive-market research. If you are able to fight off that competition, it will work as a catalyst for the growth of your business.

Also Read: 3 types of hobbies every growth-minded individual needs to cultivate

To make your product perfect, go out on the ground and be receptive to your customer’s feedback. Let them criticise, object and compare your product with your competitors – you instead, must be an active listener with an intention to improve your product.

Set actionable goals

A growth hacker’s only focus is growth. As Neil Patel says, “the power of a growth hacker is in his obsessive focus on a singular goal. By ignoring almost everything, he can achieve the one task that matters most early on.”

Hence, it is extremely important for your business that you set precise and focused goals, that will help you achieve growth with maximum time investment and through effective approach refinement. Make sure your goals are practical, actionable and realistic.

Keep a log of your day-to-day progress.

Invest in your team

Investing in your startup requires you to have the right skills and expertise on -board to make it work in the longer run. Most startups, overlook the idea of hiring a team with sharpened skills and actual, practical knowledge of their areas of interest – however, with those skills, you can hit a dynamic customer base filling your cup of advantages not just internally, but outside as a growth hack. Investing in a good team today will bring you a long-lasting outcome tomorrow.

Having inexperienced, enthusiastic employees will require an internal effort to first, train them and make them capable of the work that is required from them, and testing whether they would be fruitful or not. As a growth hacker, you are not here to test, you have to perform and raise the competitive bar with tangible results.

Leverage social media as a go-to strategy

Social media is the perfect platform for start-ups to get in progress with their marketing campaign especially for targeting millennials as they are the largest consumer demographics and are available readily on social media.

The best way to leverage social media for your small businesses and startups is to join relevant groups and build up a network for rapport-building among your targeted customers.

With that, you will be able to analyse the needs and wants of your target markets. Make sure, once you have your own representation on social media through a page or a group, you engage your audience and target customers to help build a community for your business that would stay loyal to you for long-term.

Keep a track of your progress

When you have just started climbing the stairs of growth, it is very important to keep track of your foot-steps. One of the ways to measure your effort is through effective monitoring sales channel, future predictability of revenue streams and the consumer engagements through marketing campaigns.

Through this tracking procedure, you would be able to make better decisions for yourself in the future and having a data-driven approach will help you create sustainable and measurable outcomes.

Also Read: Can social impact be growth hacked?

Taking the first step of launching a start-up is daunting but beyond that, it is an effort, which can be surrounded by risks and failures, but leveraging the available opportunities whole-heartedly will help your business grow in the long-run. 

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If you’re a fan of Shark Tank and Kevin O’Leary, you would have probably seen this video on CNBC. Also known as Mr Wonderful, O’Leary is a tough investor, persistent with a go-getter attitude that has gotten him global recognition as a trust-worthy entrepreneur. 

So it’s no surprise when O’Leary told CNBC Make It – “I work every day”. And he expects his employees to do the same. 

How employees see it

While it’s understandable, even acceptable on some levels for entrepreneurs, business owners and highly paid executives to be constantly tuned-in to work, most if not all employees aspire a work-life balance.

Employees are people and people are driven by different things, and those drivers aren’t necessarily money, fame, or accolade. On the other hand, flexible hours, options for remote working, commitment to health and wellbeing are just some of the findings revealed from the 2018 Global Talent Trends study by Mercer. 

No matter what drives you or the type of workplace culture you find yourself in, expectations are almost always to achieve more, with less. 

Meetings: by numbers

This doesn’t simply mean meetings, emails or phone calls are work-place hazards. In fact, it can be productive when applied in the right doses. Overdoing any of these, however, is significantly counterproductive. A Verizon Business  whitepaper reveals some startling discoveries about business meetings: 

Also Read: The millennial force: changing the workplace and its culture

1. Meetings dominate life in America. 37 per cent of employee time is spent in meetings.

2. Busy professionals attend over 60 meetings each month. However, most say they cannot attend all meetings to which they are invited due to the tremendous demands on their time. 

3. Most of the respondents (over 90%) admit to daydreaming, missing meetings or parts of meetings. 

4. Over 70 per cent say they have brought other work to meetings.

5. Almost 40 per cent say they have dozed off during meetings.

6. USD 37b in salary cost for unnecessary meetings for U.S businesses. 

Despite the existence of thousands of productivity and collaborative apps available at our disposal, the question remains – why are businesses struggling to improve employee productivity? How do we stop this madness?  

It’s not doom and gloom 

The truth is, no two businesses operate in the same way. What works for a start-up in Silicon Valley may not necessarily work for another located in Kuala Lumpur, nor the gridlocked city of Jakarta or the exuberant Ho Chi Minh.  

Asian businesses are unique. So are the people managing these businesses. Messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Line, and WeChat are widely used by employees to communicate with suppliers, colleagues, customers, etc. on a daily basis blurring the lines between work and personal messaging. 

Also Read: Sex in the office stairwells: the importance of company culture

While these apps were never built with true collaboration in mind (except for group chats perhaps?) more and more Asian businesses and startups have adopted various team messaging applications (Slack, Microsoft Teams, etc) to complement other productivity tools (Trello, Asana, Google Calendar, Monday, Click Up, HubSpot, etc.) over the last several years. 

Bottom line

Of the 2,319 knowledge workers using JANDI surveyed, the biggest problem cited at the workplace in relation to communication and effective collaboration is the use of personal or consumer messaging apps. 

When you put unproductive meetings, consumer messaging apps and emails in a typical work environment it’s no surprise there is a massive gap between expectation and reality in terms of productivity. 

Whilst emails and meetings won’t go away anytime soon, it’s in the best interest for start-ups or enterprises to look at ways to improve efficiencies and productivity. The future of work is here and now. 

A good place to start is looking at communication and collaboration tools that fits your team. Don’t let outdated messaging apps confuse busyness with productivity for your business. 

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appoints ex-Airbnb & Carousell exec, Chai Jia Jih as CEO- Press release

SE-AsiaTech startup xto10x Technologies announced that it has set up its Singapore office to serve Southeast Asia startups, with Chai Jia Jih (JJ) leading its SE-Asia business as CEO, SE-Asia.

Founded by Saikiran Krishnamurthy (former McKinsey director & ex-Ola, Flipkart executive), Binny Bansal (Flipkart co-founder & former CEO), Neeraj Aggarwal (ex-Flipkart, Curefit executive), the Bangalore headquartered startup provides software, knowledge, and capabilities across several critical areas of scaling up, such as translating strategy to execution, hyper-growth, operations, data science, HR, strategic business finance, and putting in place operating systems for effective governance.

“After startups have found product-market fit and created serious business momentum, there is still significant work to scale into large, profitable, world-class companies,” said Mr. Krishnamurthy, xto10x Co-founder, and CEO. “There are many more SE-Asia startups now at the scale-phase and we see the opportunity to help them with significant 10x opportunities. We’re excited to have JJ onboard to deliver our solutions to startups in this region”

“After working through 10x growth at both Airbnb and Carousell, I’ve seen that startups face unique challenges in the scale-up phase that they hadn’t needed to solve in earlier stages. I am thrilled to take up this role to help more startups in SE-Asia, bringing expertise from experienced practitioners like Saiki, Binny, and Neeraj to founders in this region” said Chai.

Delivery Hero to buy S Korea’s Woowa Brothers for US$4b- Reuters

German food delivery company Delivery Hero has agreed to acquire its South Korean rival Woowa Brothers for US$4 billion, said a Reuters report.

Woowa Brothers said the companies will also create a joint venture in Singapore to tap into the booming food delivery market in Asia and compete with Grab, UberEats and Gojek. The deal comes as Woowa Brothers Corp, which owns South Korea’s biggest food delivery service “Baedal Minjok”, faces growing competition from rivals such as e-commerce firm Coupang, backed by Japan’s SoftBank Group.

Delivery Hero ranks second in South Korea’s food delivery market. Delivery Hero will acquire an 87 per cent stake held by investors such as Goldman, GIC, Hillhouse Capital and Sequoia Capital, while the remaining 13 per cent owned by Woowa’s management will be converted into the German company’s stake. Reuters

Singapore-based Acronis acquires software firm 5nine to bolster cloud services- DealStreetAsia

Singapore-headquartered cybersecurity firm Acronis has acquired 5nine, a global provider of Microsoft Hyper-V and Azure cloud management and security solutions, for an undisclosed sum as per a DealStreetAsia report. Following the deal, 5nine will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Acronis, per a company statement.

Also read: Goldman Sachs invests US$147M in cybersecurity startup Acronis, gearing up for acquisitions

Acronis will integrate 5nine’s technology into the Acronis Cyber Platform. Founded in 2009, 5nine helps manage and secure workloads across the Microsoft Cloud – public, private or hybrid. Its software is designed to reduce costs, increase productivity, and mitigate security risks. Acronis provides cyber protection, catering to areas such as safety, accessibility, privacy, authenticity, and security (SAPAS).

“By adding 5nine’s solutions to our portfolio of cyber protection products and services, we’re giving our partners and customers an easy way to adopt the Microsoft hybrid cloud platform,” said Acronis founder and CEO Serguei “SB” Beloussov. Founded in Singapore in 2003, the company claims that it has 5 million consumers and 500,000 businesses worldwide.

YouTube’s Music App Outpaces Spotify and Local Rivals in India- Bloomberg

YouTube has signed up more than 800,000 subscribers for its paid services in India since debuting in March, according to people familiar with the matter, said Bloomberg in an article.

The services are growing faster than rival paid music offerings in India, including Spotify and local players Gaana and JioSaavn, according to the people, who asked not to be identified because the subscriber data hasn’t been released. The one paid service that could have more users than YouTube is Apple Music, which has been tight-lipped about its subscriber figures.

YouTube has long struggled to gets users to pay for its services, especially since the company’s main website is synonymous with free videos. But the Google division has started to gain traction, and the numbers out of India suggest it’s having particular success in the world’s second-most-populous country.

YouTube sells two paid services in India: YouTube Music Premium and YouTube Premium. The music service offers a library of songs on-demand, much like Spotify, as well as the ability to download tracks, listen to music without ads and play tunes while using other apps. YouTube Premium offers the traditional YouTube video service without ads — and the ability to play clips offline. But music is the driving force behind YouTube’s appeal, especially in India.

The post Today’s top tech news: ex-Carousell executive joins xto10x Technologies, Youtube popularity surpasses Spotify in India appeared first on e27.

With its rising popularity, it is understandable that your business might want to include cryptocurrency as one of the available payment options –assuming that it is legal in the market that you operate in, of course.

But before you decide to jump on the bandwagon, there are some points that you need to consider.

Let this infographic by Fundera be with your guide in making that decision.

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Image Credit: Stanislaw Zarychta on Unsplash

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