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Live Streaming is Replacing Traditional Media

Delian Partners
Jul 21, 2021
2 min read

Even if live streaming has been around for many years, it experienced a tremendous acceleration during the pandemic as people spent on average 30% more time engaging with their smartphones and media devices.

As technology and media consumption remains higher than pre-covid levels, the success of Live Streaming is growing on a global scale. One of the sectors in which it has been more successful is e-commerce: E-commerce consumption accelerated by three years during the pandemic, and the increased competition in the virtual space worked as a catalyst, pushing companies to improve their users’ online experience and catch their attention.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba was the pioneer of Live Streaming in e-commerce. Through the Live Streaming platform Taobao, Alibaba created a new personalized shopping experience, connecting companies with roughly 800 million monthly users who visit Alibaba’s e-commerce site. Taobao’s range of products available in live streaming has been growing massively and the platform is expanding its offer to those categories previously available only offline, such as cars and large appliances.

Live streaming has also become a key feature in the social media landscape. With 2.6 billion downloads, 1.6 billion worldwide users (including Duoyin), and 800 million monthly active users, TikTok is one of the fastest-growing social media platforms ever. What makes TikTok unique is its AI algorithm. Once a video is uploaded on the platform, the AI algorithm uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze and categorize the video – including audio, hashtag, and images, which allows TikTok to provide users with highly targeted content that they find most interesting. In this way, TikTok’ content can engage its new users for up to 10 minutes, which is three times the capability of Instagram.

Another example is the Amazon-owned platform Twitch, which hosts 91% of all video game streaming and provides the content of more than 4 million broadcasters, monthly. In a high-competitive video games landscape, Twitch differs for the “Just Chatting” category: Streamers can engage with the community and talk to viewers even when they are not playing any game. To understand the impressive growth of the platform, consider that Twitch peaked at around 1.7 billion hours watched in November 2020, versus Facebook’s all-time-high of 250 million in September.

The live streaming market can become the largest entertainment medium. As reported by TechJury, the global live streaming market is surpassing the traditional media ecosystem - such as TV or social media- and it is expected to be worth over $247B by 2027. The growth trajectory is supported by a secular shift in consumer habits, considering that 63% of people aged 18-34 watch live streaming content regularly.

The information in this article should not be regarded as a description of services provided by Delian Partners SA. The opinions expressed in this article are for general informational purposes only and are not intended to provide specific advice or recommendations for any individual or on any specific security or investment product. It is only intended to provide education about the financial industry. The views reflected in this article are subject to change at any time without notice.

Technology Innovation is Supporting the Digital Ad World

Delian Partners
Jun 17, 2021
2 min read

2021 so far is showing an acceleration of the strong growth trend in Digital Advertisement. As businesses re-open worldwide and previously canceled campaigns are resumed, advertisement budgets have been increasingly directed towards Digital Ad because the use of social media platforms and streaming services have risen almost everywhere.

Digital vs. Traditional Ad Spending (US)

Source: eMarketer

Not surprisingly, the main beneficiaries in the Digital Ad ecosystem are Alphabet, Facebook, and Amazon, which all reported strong growth in Ad revenue in 2020. Among these, Alphabet continues to dominate the Digital Ad market: In 2020, Google accounted for about 29% of the total Digital Ad revenue in the US, followed by Facebook and Amazon with 25.2% and 10.3% respectively.

US Digital Ad Revenue Share, By Company, 2019 & 2020

% of Total Digital Ad spending

Source: eMarketer

Google built its success in Digital Ad by leveraging AI software to collect and integrate data from users in a more sophisticated and faster way. While Google’s platforms connect businesses with billions of people every day through Search and YouTube, AI helps them to create highly tailored content based on consumers’ needs and preferences of the moment.

With an impressive 1.87 billion daily active users in 1Q21, Facebook can count on one of the largest and most diverse advertising audience ever and collect a huge amount of data for the benefit of advertisers. Facebook also introduced innovative features to its Ad service: The use of Machine Learning helps determine the likelihood that a given user will act as the advertiser wants, such as visiting the advertiser’s website, installing their app, or buy a product. And then, the algorithm will rank the quality of Ad content through an Ad quality score so that the advertiser can fix the campaign following the best way to achieve his goals.

In recent years, Amazon’s Ad business also experienced a tremendous growth, mainly fueled by the acceleration of online shopping: According to EMarketer, Amazon advertising revenue in the US will surpass $20B in 2021. To keep up with the competition, the e-commerce giant also implemented an AI driven algorithm which analyzes real-time data generated by shoppers’ behavior, allowing advertisers to provide specific content to a narrowly targeted audience.

Digitalization is changing consumers’ behavior and companies must be increasingly data-driven to be able to communicate with people who spend more time navigating through the Internet while scrolling social media, checking emails, or reading the news. Digital Ad is becoming mandatory for companies to attract new customers and build a relationship with their brand.

Democratizing Education thanks to E-learning

Delian Partners
Jan 7, 2021
3 min read

In 2020, the global education sector was deeply disrupted by the closure of schools, universities, and offices, which pushed for the implementation of new learning models completely different from traditional classroom courses, including online learning. However, even if it sounds like something new, E-learning has been around since 1990 and over the years has never stopped growing, supported by the evolution of technology.

Today people spend on average 11 hours a day in front of their devices while reading news, working, and studying. With this new paradigm, E-learning is increasing in popularity because it makes education not only available to a broader audience globally but it also makes the education experience more interesting and personalized. It is not a surprise that E-learning is a growing segment of education enthusiastically adopted by Millennials globally, who represent the largest population cohort ever. This digital-native generation wants to learn and apply new skills, rather than just simply memorize content through a book.

At the base of E-learning, there is a more dynamic and time-saving approach. In fact, through E-learning, students can follow courses, activities and access resources tailored to their individual needs: By using artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to analyze and process data, E-learning software can personalize content on an individual basis and understand where students need specific support and what content is necessary.

A growing number of Companies have recognized the potential of E-learning and are developing increasingly innovative services to facilitate the student’s access to the professional world. For example, social network platform Facebook launched its own digital marketing course to help students achieve certified skills to use for their job applications. Chinese tech giant Tencent also boosted its online education offering through its dedicated brand Tencent Education, aiming to achieve an equal, personalized, and innovative education globally.

The common denominator for courses offered by these companies is to provide modern-days Majors which are not yet the focus of traditional courses, such as big data, IT, and cloud computing, with the objective to reduce the gap between the academic and professional world.

E-learning is also important for employed individuals because it allows them to enhance their professional skills from everywhere and anytime, achieving their goals while balancing between their jobs and studying. Big tech company IBM, a pioneer in innovation technology, offers employees multiple online courses and programs to upgrade their skills in innovative fields such as artificial intelligence, big data, cloud, cybersecurity, and more. Thanks to its online learning courses, IBM allows employees to increase their knowledge base by offering a level of flexibility that would not be possible within the traditional education and training system.

For the next decade, e-learning will also be an exciting sector to invest in. As reported by Global Market Insights, the global E-learning industry is expected to be worth $375B by 2026. Through the combination of a rise in spending on supplementary education and the increasing penetration of smartphone and mobile devices, e-learning has the potential to change the lives of billions of people and potentially reduce the gap among students in different parts of the world by making education a more democratic industry.