The most interesting data points from today's digital marketing news
The last few days in digital marketing news have delivered a few interesting stats around the ever-changing digital platforms. Here is a recap of some of the highlights.
1. Amazon
Marin Software's Q4 2018 report showed that advertisers spent five times more to advertise on Amazon’s platform in 2018 through it's ad management platform. At $10 billion in advertising, Amazon is clearly a leading advertising platform right behind Facebook and Google.
2. Facebook
The same report by Marin also had a revealing stat about Facebook advertising. Some 35% of all ad revenue is associated with 'Dynamic Product Ads' These ads automatically are delivered to users who have expressed interest in a marketer's website, app, or via other triggers. And Facebook makes it super easy to set this up, which starts with uploading an entire product catalog, among other steps. That over one-third of ad revenue are product-based shows that Facebook is capturing a significant chunk of lower-funnel advertising (similar to Amazon, in many ways).
3. Spotify
The streaming music service, Spotify, announced it was acquiring podcast network and producer Gimlet Media, and the podcast platform and service provider, Anchor. These moves underscore Spotify's confidence in the podcast space, which continues to see phenominal growth. The IAB released a report last year projecting that annual podcast ad revenue would reach $659 million by 2020.
4. Snap
The popular messaging platform, Snap, reported a 43% year-over-year growth rate in ad revenue, with over 1,400 brands now advertising on its platform. The dual strategy of offering more premium content as well as a self-service ad platform is moving the platform closer to profitability, according to the report.
5. Gmail
Google's Gmail's service is blocking 100 million spam emails per day, according to The Verge. Google is using its AI-powered platform, TensorFlow, to optimize the effectiveness of spam blocking. TensorFlow works on top of Gmail's rule-based spam filters, and provides another layer of performance. Most importantly, as the definition of 'spam' varies, this AI-based tool helps determine what is (and what isn't). Google claims it's blocking 99.9% of all spam. Now, here's a great example of the value of AI in today's world!