India’s $600 billion market is not big enough for it to top global retail rankings

American retailers such as Wal-Mart Stores, Costco Wholesale, and The Kroger top Deloitte’s “Global Powers of Retailing 2017” ranking by turnover, followed by Japanese and German companies. In all, revenue for the top 250 retailers studied by Deloitte totaled over $4.3 trillion in financial year 2015.
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But organised retailers, who form only 10% of India’s $600 billion retail industry, are still only catching up.

https://qz.com/916568/indias-600-billion-market-is-not-big-enough-for-it-to-top-global-retail-rankings
https://www2.deloitte.com/au/en/pages/consumer-industrial-products/articles/global-powers-of-retailing-2017.html#

Mobile ad blocking firm Shine is rebranding to 'Rainbow' and will stop selling ad blocking to carriers

On Friday, Shine announced it had stopped selling ad blocking solutions to mobile carriers and it was rebranding to "Rainbow."
Rainbow says it has "quietly" been working with the mobile advertising industry over the past few months to create a consumer mobile ad blocker that only blocks ads that don't meet industry standards (Such as the Interactive Advertising Bureau's "LEAN" principles). The previous version of Shine aimed to block all ads.
Consumers sign up for the Rainbow ad blocker by opting in through their carrier or internet service provider, via a web portal, SMS, or call center.

http://www.businessinsider.com/shine-rebrands-to-rainbow-stops-selling-ad-blocking-2017-2?r=US&IR=T&IR=T
https://getrainbow.com/

Where does the Ivanka Trump brand go from here?

Panjiva, a global trade data company, says that imports of products that bear the Ivanka Trump name were 54.4 percent lower in the three months ended Jan. 31 compared with the three months that ended Sept. 30, the period that represents the peak of imports of that brand in Panjiva’s records.

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 And on social media, the boycott campaign called Grab Your Wallet is gaining momentum. According to data from Captiv8, a social media analytics firm, there have been more than 496,000 “engagements” — likes, retweets, and so on — since October on Twitter and Instagram posts that use the #grabyourwallet hashtag. After a burst of activity in November and a cool-down in December and January, engagement on the hashtag soared to its highest level in early February.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2017/02/13/where-does-the-ivanka-trump-brand-go-from-here/?utm_term=.30c9551f14c1

https://grabyourwallet.org/

A Surreal Trip to a Domain-Names Conference

Perhaps I shouldn’t have been shocked by the cold financial reality I watched unfold at this auction during NamesCon, an annual conference for the domain-names industry. Why would approximately 1,400 people voluntarily come to Las Vegas for four days to talk about domain names if there wasn’t money involved?

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 The comparisons are pretty hard to ignore—in their idealized forms, the domain name industry and Las Vegas are manifestations of the fantasy of making something from nothing, wealth seemingly conjured from thin air but dependent on very old, very fraught infrastructure. 

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Some TLDs are hot right now (.io), and some single words are always a good investment (lotions.com, furs.com), but good TLDs and good words together don’t always work (as was explained to the owner of furs.io and lotions.io in one session). Long-time domainers also had oddly specific advice—”Hyphens make your domain less valuable—unless you’re in Germany” and “.info is a dead zone.”

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Michael Cyger, the operator of domain industry website DomainSherpa.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/02/domain-names-dot-horse/516438/ 

http://www.domainsherpa.com/ 

http://thedna.org/ 

 

Förlust för tidningarnas Spotify – tvingas byta strategi

Konkurrensen med bland annat Readly är stenhård. Nu parkerar förlusttyngda tidningsappen Ztory sin ambition om att växa globalt. För att få intäkterna att växa ytterligare ändrar de i stället sin strategi – och börjar licensiera ut sin tekniska plattform i andra länder.

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 Tidnings- och boktjänsten Ztory lanserades officiellt 2014. Målet med tjänsten är att få fler att läsa böcker och tidningar i en app – ett sorts Spotify för den som vill läsa. Men hittills har tjänsten inte riktigt lyft.

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I Sverige finns också tjänsten Readly, som tagit in uppemot 300 miljoner kronor i riskkapital. Som jämförelse har Ztory tagit in drygt 15 Mkr vilket gjort det svårt för bolaget att konkurrera, speciellt på de internationella marknaderna.

 

http://digital.di.se/artikel/forlust-for-tidningarnas-spotify-tvingas-byta-strategi

https://www.ztory.com/sv 

 

Ad blocker usage is up 30% — and a popular method publishers use to thwart it isn't working

Ad blocker usage surged 30% in 2016, according to a new report from PageFair, a company that helps publishers regain revenue lost to the software.
There were 615 million devices blocking ads worldwide by the end of 2016, 62% (308 million) of those mobile. Desktop ad blocker usage grew 17% year-on-year to 236 million.
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The largest geographical driver of mobile ad blocker use has been in the Asia-Pacific, where 94% of mobile ad blocking takes place.

http://www.businessinsider.com/pagefair-2017-ad-blocking-report-2017-1?r=US&IR=T&IR=T
https://pagefair.com/blog/2017/adblockreport

Winter is Coming

In 2012, there were just 350 marketing technology companies. Today, there are nearly 4,000.

Companies are growing tired of relying on so many vendors to fulfill their advertising and marketing needs. The average marketing stack has around 17 siloed, underused applications. 
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While companies like Disney, Viacom, and Time Inc. have been spending heavily on content, they’re now turning to technology to maximize their content investments. Disney’s accelerator is investing in a number of companies that help marketers and advertisers increase viewer engagement.
http://venturebeat.com/2017/01/26/winter-is-coming-for-marketing-technology/
http://chiefmartec.com/2016/03/marketing-technology-landscape-supergraphic-2016/

Israeli Cybersecurity Industry Grows as Global Threats Multiply

Last month, the U.S. approved legislation that will expand joint cyber research with Israel. The stakes are high: The global cyber security market will grow to more than $200 billion by 2021 from $122 billion last year, according to the MarketsandMarkets research firm. 

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-01-26/israeli-cybersecurity-industry-grows-as-global-threats-multiply

http://finder.startupnationcentral.org/

Button, the marketplace for app integrations, lands $20 million in Series B funding

Button, the NY-based startup that lets mobile apps integrate with one another, has today announced the close of a $20 million Series B round.

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Though a bit technologically challenging, the premise behind Button is simple: Apps work better together.

A great example is Button’s integration between Foursquare and Uber. Anyone who is checking out restaurants or clubs on the Foursquare app can simply tap an Uber button to call a car from their current location.

You can almost think of Button as an ad product within the app landscape.
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Publishers who have loads of content (like Foursquare) can choose to integrate any one of the merchant Buttons available on the Button Marketplace. These publishers drive consumers to make transactions through Buttons (like on Uber) and Button takes home a slice of the pie.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/25/button-the-marketplace-for-app-integrations-lands-20-million-in-series-b-funding/
https://www.usebutton.com/publishers

Strossle vill bryta mediernas beroende av Facebook - ökar till 100 miljoner

Strossle har tagit fram en teknik som låter medier dela innehåll med varandra.

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Strossles modell fungerar såhär: De publicister som ansluter sig till tjänsten lägger in en Strossle-ruta  under artiklarna på sajten. I den rutan visas dels artiklar från andra medier, men också annonser.

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På så vis bildas ett ekosystem där olika nyhetssajter kan skicka trafik till varandra.

http://www.breakit.se/artikel/6190/strossle-vill-bryta-mediernas-beroende-av-facebook-okar-till-100-miljoner

https://strossle.com/ 

 

 

The cost of hot selfie app Meitu? A healthy dose of your personal info

You’ve probably seen a Meitu selfie in your Instagram or Facebook feed in the past 24 hours. The app smooths skin, slims down faces, and even applies a layer of virtual blush and lipgloss, adding a beautifying effect to your photos. And although the app has been popular in China for years — Meitu went public in Hong Kong last month — it only recently caught on with American users.

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But security experts quickly pointed out that Meitu, which is free to download in Google Play and the App Store, requires way more data from users’ phones than is necessary for a simple photo app.

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It’s normal for a photo app to require permission to access a phone’s camera and camera roll, so that it can take pictures or edit ones already on the device. But, as information security researcher Greg Linares notes, the Android version of Meitu wants a lot more than that: the app can access information about what other apps users are running, their precise locations, their unique device identifier numbers (IMSIs), call information, carrier information and wifi connections.

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Meitu did not respond to questions about why it requires certain types of user data, and what it does with the information. Some researchers noted that Meitu may be required to collect IMSI numbers under Chinese law.

https://techcrunch.com/2017/01/19/meitu-app-collects-personal-data/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mt.mtxx.mtxx&hl=sv

Is the global sync market set to explode for indie labels and unsigned artists?

According to IFPI figures, record companies accrued $335m from licensing their tracks to video games, movies and TV in 2015 – up 6.6% year-on-year.
The US is the world’s largest sync market, accounting for 57% of 2015’s revenue with $203m, while other standout territories included the UK ($33m), France ($30m) and Japan ($30m).
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Since being founded in 2011, Music Gateway has made its name matching musicians and songs with specific projects online – be that a manager looking for an artist, a DJ in need of a stem for a remix or a movie searching for a soundtrack.
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To better capitalize on these relationships, Music Gateway has this month launched an online Sync Portal to assist music supervisors, brands and ad agencies – offering tailored search tools to uncover the exact sounds they’re looking for.

http://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/global-sync-market-set-explode-indie-labels-unsigned-artists/
https://www.musicgateway.net/sync-licensing 

The paperless library

Sep 22nd 2005

The value of knowledge and the return on the public investment in research depends, in part, upon wide distribution and ready access. It is big business. In America, the core scientific publishing market is estimated at between $7 billion and $11 billion. The International Association of Scientific, Technical and Medical Publishers says that there are more than 2,000 publishers worldwide specialising in these subjects. They publish more than 1.2m articles each year in some 16,000 journals.

http://www.economist.com/node/4423646 

http://publishers.org/sites/default/files/uploads/infographic_scholarly_publishing_process_7.25.2016.pdf 

http://www.stm-assoc.org/ 

Indian shoppers turn to overseas e-commerce

Despite the growing success of domestic e-commerce platforms, a new PayPal and Ipsos study finds that Indian shoppers are also spending heavily through overseas e-commerce sites, Quartz reports.
In fact, Indian shoppers spent more than $8.7 billion on international e-commerce sites in 2016, a 6.7% increase compared with 2015, the report found.
That amount is still less than the $31 billion domestic e-commerce market, but it shows that Indian shoppers are regularly turning to overseas sites for certain shopping needs.

 http://www.businessinsider.com/indian-shoppers-turn-to-overseas-e-commerce-2017-1?r=US&IR=T&IR=T
https://www.businessinsider.com/intelligence/research-store?IR=T&utm_source=businessinsider&utm_medium=content_marketing&utm_term=content_marketing_store_text_link_indian-shoppers-turn-to-overseas-e-commerce-2017-1&utm_content=report_store_content_marketing_text_link&utm_campaign=content_marketing_store_link&vertical=ecommerce#!/New-E-Commerce-Strategies-Report-&-Slide-Deck/p/59687895

Lägre tillväxt i år för svensk näthandel

E-handeln fortsätter att öka men tillväxten ser ut att minska. Siffrorna är inne för 2016 och intäkterna ökar förstås i vanlig ordning. Totalt ökade svensk e-handel sin försäljning med 13 procent. Detta kan jämföras med 2015 då ökningen endast låg på 8 procent, jämfört med året innan. Allt enligt färska siffror ifrån Ehandel.se Analytics som mäter runt 300 nätbutikers försäljning direkt via deras egen transaktionsdata.

http://www.ehandel.se/Lagre-tillvaxt-i-ar-for-svensk-nathandel,9427.html

http://analytics.ehandel.se/ 

 

How We Found All Of Optimizely’s Clients

For those who aren’t familiar with Optimizely, they are a leader in the growing A/B testing industry.

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With one simple query we uncovered a total of 577,395 sites containing that Optimizely JavaScript library.

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That’s a lot of clients! But, we wanted to dig even deeper and find all distinct Optimizely CDN URLs which contain their Optimizely client numbers. Using a regular expression search we were able to extract a list of over 12,000 URLs used on the top 1 million sites.

http://nerdydatablog.com/2016/12/04/how-we-found-all-of-optimizleys-clients/

https://nerdydata.com/search

 

En mötesplats för svenska digitala nomader

Nu i veckan lanseras plattformen Svenska Nomader som en mötesplats för svenska digitala nomader.

http://www.dagensanalys.se/2017/01/en-motesplats-for-svenska-digitala-nomader/
http://svenskanomader.se/lediga-jobb-for-digitala-nomader/

 

Omega leverages Instagram for limited-edition purchase path

Swiss watchmaker Omega has turned to Instagram to facilitate sales of a newly released, limited-edition timepiece.
Omega will, for the first time, offer online sales of its newest timepiece, the Omega Speedmaster “Speedy Tuesday,” also the moniker of its Instagram sales promotion. In the past, watch brands have been hesitant to embrace online selling, but recently watchmakers have launched campaigns that emphasize social commerce.

https://www.luxurydaily.com/omega-leverages-instagram-for-limited-edition-purchase-path/
https://www.omegawatches.com/speedytuesday/ 

A double dose of data

Jul 14th 2005

 While many big pharmaceutical firms are ailing, IMS Health, which measures the industry's vital statistics, is in great shape. IMS is the leading supplier of research on the world's $550 billion prescription-drug market, tracking everything from broad industry trends to how many prescriptions for a particular drug a particular doctor in America wrote last week.
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With $1.6 billion in revenues last year [2004], IMS's dominant market position has made it an attractive takeover target. On July 11th, VNU, a Dutch market-research firm, made its move, announcing its acquisition of IMS for €5.8 billion ($7 billion).
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VNU, which earned a profit of €3.8 billion in 2004 from a portfolio of businesses including AC Nielsen, a consumer-market researcher, and Nielsen Media Research, a TV ratings group, has been flush with cash following the sale of its telephone directories business in 2004. Buying IMS Health will help the Dutch firm to diversify out of the cyclical, and currently sluggish, world of fast-moving consumer goods into the more lucrative field of health-care information.
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The company was renamed The Nielsen Company in 2007 [Wikipedia].
http://www.economist.com/node/4174879
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verenigde_Nederlandse_Uitgeverijen
http://www.nielsen.com/se/sv.html

Rise of the image men

Dec 16th 2010

As Stuart Ewen notes in “PR! A Social History of Spin”, the standard businessman's attitude towards the public was one of “hardened arrogance”.

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Lee observed that the rise of national newspaper chains and syndicated journalism in America since the 1880s, combined with the extension of the franchise, had profoundly changed society. Now, for the first time, there was something that could accurately be called “public opinion”, a shared consciousness and conversation across the country—and it was to be feared. Lee noted how the emerging mass media were acting as the conduit for the anti-capitalist message of Progressivism, the liberalising reform movement that peaked in America in the early 20th century. He realised not only that it was essential for businesses to counter this message, but that the same conduit could be used to spread pro-business sentiment.  

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In “A Century of Spin”, another history of the industry, David Miller and William Dinan note how PR conquered China in the 1980s, in the wake of Deng Xiaoping's reforms. In 1984 the first state firm set up an internal PR department, followed a year later by the country's first PR agency, a joint venture between Burson-Marsteller (a big American firm) and the Xinhua news agency. These days PR enjoys as heady a growth rate as any other industry in China.

http://www.economist.com/node/17722733
http://www.bokus.com/bok/9780745326887/a-century-of-spin/ 
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/distributed/C/bo21638631.html