Tag: Facebook

Alibaba is showing strong interest in acquiring Snapchat

Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce organization, may be looking to invest in photo messaging application Snapchat. The app has become widely popular, used heavily by those that want to share pictures and short videos with the people they care about. Alibaba is reportedly in talks with Snapchat regarding financing, which could value the application at $10 billion. Why Alibaba is showing interest in Snapchat is something of a surprise considering the company’s focus on commerce, but Alibaba has been growing increasingly mobile-centric over the past year.

Snapchat is resilient to the attractive offers produced by companies like Facebook

Snapchat has yet to show any interest in the acquisition proposals offered by other companies. Facebook recently offered to purchase Snapchat for $3 billion, an offer that was rebuked by CEO Evan Spiegel. Though Snapchat may not be looking to be acquired by a larger company, that does not mean these companies will stop trying to buy it. Alibaba has considerable financial clout, and the offer that the company makes to Snapchat could change the mind of Spiegel.

Alibaba could use Snapchat to compete with Tencent in the social space

Alibaba has an interest in mobile applications like Snapchat because its primary rival in China, Tencent, currently holds dominance in the social and gaming fields. Tencent’s WeChat application is one of the most widely used in the world, and the company has recently introduced mobile commerce services to the platform. Alibaba has missed out on the mobile messaging craze, focusing instead on e-commerce. Now, however, Alibaba may be looking into engaging in the mobile messaging space, and Snapchat may be the best tool through which to do so.

WeChat proves that a social application can become an effective mobile commerce tool

Snapchat does not support mobile payments in any way, but that could change in the future. The WeChat application had been nothing more than a messaging platform until very recently. The application can now be used to purchase products from certain retailers and order taxi services in some cities in China.

These ads will be able to follow a viewer from one device to the next.

As Facebook continues to work on broadening its social media mobile advertising possibilities, the company has started to view the new sequential ad method as a technique with a great deal of potential for boosting the ability to control branding message among consumers using the network.

Sequential video ads give marketers the ability to send targeted video ads in front of a device user when a device is clicked.

Based on what is specifically clicked by the smartphone user, and what the mobile advertising message happens to be, marketers become able to follow up on previous selections with similar video ads as the user moves from one device (such as a smartphone) to another (such as a laptop or a tablet). By being able to create a sequence of various ads targeted specifically to the user, a more complete sales pitch can be formed from one video in the sequence to the next.

This series can work its way to a final mobile advertising “sell” video that is meant to encourage an actual purchase.

When it comes to mobile marketing, video is playing a very important role that many believe will only become larger – much larger. As unique profile IDs can be generated, it provides marketers with an improved ability to sequentially target its content for the various device users as they use their social media accounts. This way, each following video in the sequence can build on the ones before it, offering considerably more control over the way that the message is ultimately delivered.

This will also give Facebook the opportunity to provide advertisers with a higher level of control in the way that their product messages are deployed. The social network is bringing together a number of different elements from its own analytics as well as those of partners in order to improve their overall ad targeting capabilities.

Facebook is capable of obtaining massive amounts of user data that is helpful to mobile advertising, based on the info held within the accounts of the various user profiles, in addition to their actual activity.