Category Archives: oud

Facebook Revs Engine On Multibillion-Dollar Market Opportunities

A series of announcements by Facebook ( FB ) at its conference for developers this week puts the company on a solid path toward adding billions to its revenue stream. CEO Mark Zuckerberg set a 10-year strategy for Facebook on Tuesday that emphasized pushing its Messenger chat platform deeper into the business world with chatbots and by enhancing Live video with virtual reality. Zuckerberg presented his vision in a keynote speech at the start of Facebook’s two-day F8 Developer Conference on Tuesday in San Francisco. Analysts say the monetization strategy of Messenger will closely follow that of Instagram, with both platforms seen becoming multibillion-dollar businesses. That will be followed by its Oculus Rift virtual reality business and its WhatsApp messaging platform. “We see Facebook’s revenue growth visibility being enhanced by Instagram this year, Messenger in 2017, and more mass-market virtual reality and maybe WhatsApp by 2018,” wrote Rosenblatt Securities analyst Martin Pyykkonen in a research note Wednesday. He estimates Instagram’s ad revenue will reach $1 billion this year. “It’s still very early, but Messenger could become that single app interface for multiple mobile payments and be a competitive issue for the likes of PayPal ( PYPL ), Square ( SQ ) and credit card companies,” he wrote. Cowen analyst John Blackledge wrote in a research note that, given Messenger’s sheer user scale, it could potentially be another transformational platform for Facebook. Messenger has 900 million users, up from 800 million in January. “Facebook will continue to follow its proven playbook of building great products, achieving scale and then building ecosystems around those products/apps in order to monetize,” Blackledge wrote. Facebook Messenger Can Be Added Feature For Ads Facebook provided a glimpse as to how it might monetize Messenger at the F8 conference. Examples included businesses placing an ad on Facebook and then, when the ad is clicked, the user is taken over to Messenger, where that user can communicate with the company and transact on the platform. As widely expected, Zuckerberg announced a program for developers to write apps that are powered by artificial intelligence, known as chatbots. The digital assistants will help Messenger users communicate with businesses for services, perhaps to fix a problem or to buy goods. Demonstrations on how bots will be used by businesses included ordering flowers through the chatbot of 1-800-Flowers ( FLWS ). Facebook highlighted over 40 existing partnerships that included Shopify ( SHOP ) and Hyatt Hotels ( H ). While ads and promotions are not currently allowed in the bot platform, Facebook has begun testing “Sponsored Messages” in small groups. Facebook also said it will be able to earn revenue through “Click to Message” links in News Feed ads. Another major focus at the F8 conference is on live video streaming, which generates 10 times more comments than regular videos. Facebook is already pumping up revenue from standard video ads placed on its website. The addition of Facebook Live video will accelerate that opportunity. Blackledge estimates Facebook video revenue will hit $10 billion by 2021, up from $1.8 billion last year. Facebook Live is comparable to the Twitter ( TWTR ) Periscope app, which launched last year and has logged more than 100 million broadcasts. Twitter has integrated Periscope into the Twitter app feed. The vast majority of Facebook revenue comes from ads on its main website, but the company is looking to build on that with Instagram, Messenger and Live. “Messenger is clearly increasingly important, in our view, but its vision of the post-app world will be a challenge to pull off,” wrote Pacific Crest Securities analyst Evan Wilson in a research note. “It has a real opportunity with Live video in the near term.” Facebook stock was down more than 2%, near 108, in early afternoon trading in the stock market today . Facebook is set to report Q1 earnings after the market close on April 27. Analysts expect revenue will rise 48% from the year-earlier quarter to $5.25 billion, while earnings per share minus items also are expected to rise 48%, to 62 cents.

Jury Out On Whether Ad Blocking A Help Or A Hurt To Programmatic

The jury’s still out on whether ad blocking will help or hurt the expansion of programmatic advertising, a survey of U.S. marketers has found. Wall Street has expressed off-and-on concern that Apple ‘s ( AAPL ) decision to let users install apps that prevent ads from appearing in its Safari mobile browser could cut into the business of ad-tech companies, but an industrywide decline has not materialized. A March survey by investment bank RBC Capital Markets and Advertising Age found that 58% of respondents believe ad-blocking technology will have a “somewhat negative” effect on the programmatic advertising ecosystem. Another 20% of respondents said ad blocking will have a “significantly negative” effect on the programmatic advertising space, said the survey, which was reported by research group eMarketer on Wednesday. Still, some marketers believe ad blocking could be good for programmatic, with 6% of the marketers surveyed saying ad blocking would have either a “significantly positive” or “somewhat positive” effect on automated ad buying. Even so, some senior ad buyers in the U.S. are bracing for trouble as programmatic advertising expands. The RBC survey found that 57% of ad buyers listed multidevice measurement as a problem for programmatic, followed by fraud (47%), ad blocking on smartphones (35%) and privacy issues (18%). Gaming, social networking and tech-related websites are said to be most affected by ad-blocking software. Gaining Steam Seven months after Apple made ad blocking possible on iOS mobile phones , eMarketer says that the trend is gaining steam. That could mean companies including Alphabet ( GOOGL ) search unit Google, French ad firm Criteo ( CRTO ) and others that rely on advertising to make money aren’t totally in the clear, though they’ve said that ad blocking isn’t affecting their business. Ad sales conducted by machines rather than ad salespeople — so-called programmatic ads — take less time to execute and cost advertisers less, which accounts for their popularity with advertisers, though it tends to lower revenue for online-ad platforms. Ad blockers serve to reduce the amount of bandwidth that a user needs by cutting down the amount of content — seen and unseen — that a page has to load. They can also help with privacy by blocking programs that track users’ browsing habits — good for users, bad for advertisers who want to show their ads to people who are the most likely to buy their products. Mobile is driving programmatic advertising growth, with mobile accounting for more than two-thirds of all programmatic digital display-ad spending this year, says eMarketer in a report on Tuesday. Facebook ( FB ), Google-owned YouTube, LinkedIn ( LNKD ) and others are helping to drive the trend. Declining Growth Rate U.S. programmatic digital display-ad spending is projected to rise to $27.4 billion in 2017, up 24%, eMarketer said last week. But that growth rate is declining from a projected 39% this year and 53% in 2015, the research group said. Mobile programmatic spending will reach $15.45 billion in the U.S. in 2016, representing 69% of all programmatic digital display-ad spending, according to eMarketer. That’s up from 60% in 2015 and 46% in 2014. Apple stock climbed 1% in midday trading in the stock market today , near 112, and is up more than 20% since touching an eight-month low early this year. Alphabet stock rose by a fraction, near 770 and approaching a cup-with-handle breakout buy point at 777.41.

Verizon CEO Fires Back At ‘Uninformed’ Bernie Sanders

Verizon Communications ( VZ ) Chief Executive Lowell McAdam fired back at Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders, who has criticized the phone company in support of two unions that went on strike on Wednesday. Sanders has also been at odds with General Electric ’s ( GE ) CEO Jeff Immelt. “I read with interest Jeff Immelt’s spirited response to Sen. Bernie Sanders putting GE on his hit-list of big corporations that are ‘destroying the moral fabric’ of America,” wrote McAdam in a post at LinkedIn. “In fact, I share his frustration. Verizon is in Sanders’s bull’s-eye, as well. The senator’s uninformed views are, in a word, contemptible.” The two unions represent about 39,000 Verizon landline workers, including FiOS TV and broadband services. The Communications Workers of America (CWA) and the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) have been negotiating a new contract with Verizon since June. Verizon’s wireless workers are not unionized, except for roughly 100 employees. Verizon has a total workforce of nearly 178,000. Sanders has been campaigning vs. Hillary Clinton in New York, a key battleground, where Verizon is headquartered. Sanders has also accused Verizon of not paying enough taxes and asking workers to take unneeded reductions in benefits. “(Sander’s) accusation — that Verizon doesn’t pay its fair share of taxes — is just plain wrong. As our financial statements clearly show, we’ve paid more than $15.6 billion in taxes over the last two years — that’s a 35% tax rate in 2015, for anyone who’s counting,” said McAdam. “Sen. Sanders also claims that Verizon doesn’t use its profits to benefit America. Again, a look at the facts says otherwise. In the last two years, Verizon has invested some $35 billion in infrastructure.” Verizon’s wireline workers also walked out in 2000 and 2011. Verizon’s unionized workforce has shrunk from about 85,000 in 2000. “I understand that rhetoric gets heated in a presidential campaign,” McAdam continued. “I also get that big companies are an easy target for candidates looking for convenient villains for the economic distress felt by many of our citizens. But when rhetoric becomes disconnected from reality, we’ve crossed a dangerous line. We deserve better from people aspiring to be president.”