This month’s roundup include consumer attitudes to data privacy, figures that show how often Australian marketers must get sign off from their CEO, and mindblowing numbers from Pinduoduo and WeChat.
WeChat mini-programs now number over a million
There are now more than 1m WeChat mini-programs.
Without the need to download a separate app, mini programs are fast and data-light, allowing WeChat users to play games and make purchases. Whilst gaming and ecommerce are the biggest categories, mini programs perform a variety of functions.
South China Morning Post reports that mini-programs numbered 580,000 in January, but have already surged to a million. The paper also reports a study from Aldwx.co saying mini-programs are helping WeChat retain users, with the proportion of users who return the next day to use the app increasing to 25.5& in June, from 13.2% in November.
Fewer than 10% of Australians understand how leading apps use their data
A privacy survey by Roy Morgan has found that 94.6% of Australians using Apple apps are either ‘not sure’ or only ‘somewhat understand’ how Apple uses or shares their personal data.
The figures were not much different for apps from Google (91.9%), Facebook (90.9%) and Instagram (94%), or indeed for smart home devices (94.4%). The chart below gives more detail.
Chart title: % of Australians who are either ‘not sure’ or ‘somewhat understand’ how they use and/or share my data
Source: Roy Morgan privacy survey in June 2018 with 967 Australians aged 14+.
Pinduoduo floats on NASDAQ, valued at $24 billion
Social commerce app and Alibaba rival Pinduoduo raised $1.6 billion in its IPO and saw shares up 40% on its first day.
The service has 195 million monthly active users, taking 5.2% of Chinese online retail sales. That makes Pinduoduo the third largest ecommerce platform in China on sales volume, despite being founded as recently as September 2015.
Only 17% of Australian marketers say building brand is most important objective
A new report from Deloitte and Facebook Australia (Shared stories: building brand in the digital age) includes a survey which shows that little more than a fifth of marketers in the country say their top marketing objective is to build their brand (see chart below).
The report asserts that “Focusing heavily on short-term metrics means that some businesses are potentially optimising their work towards the wrong signals.”
The study also revealed only 44% of businesses surveyed used cross-channel measurement to quantify marketing success. Furthermore, 68% of businesses are using campaign specific sales metrics (such as ROI) as one of their measures of overall marketing success.
61% of Australian marketing strategies had to be approved by the CEO
The same Facebook/Deloitte study revealed that 61% of respondent marketing strategies had to be approved by the CEO. The report authors believe that “while this is one way to deliver consistency, it creates additional time consuming layers of approval and can take consumer marketing decisions out of the hands of the individuals best qualified.”
Nearly three quarters of Australians would never share their mobile contacts with a third part
More interesting stats from the previous Roy Morgan survey now. It seems the majority of Australians are reluctant to share certain data with a third party, namely photos of family (80%), phone ID (79.6%), messages (77.2%), credit history (76.4%), contacts (74.9%), medical information (70%), location data (52.9%) and purchase history (51.6%).
Despite these concerns, the research details that only around 15% of Australians claim to ‘always’ or ‘often’ read terms and conditions when signing up for online services. More than half never read them.
Question: “How comfortable or uncomfortable would you be with an organisation sharing the following types of data about you with third parties? Very comfortable, somewhat comfortable, somewhat uncomfortable, very uncomfortable, I would never want this shared.”
Chart title: % of Australians who agree ‘I would never want this (data) shared [with a third party]”
Source: Roy Morgan privacy survey in June 2018 with 967 Australians aged 14+.
Technology priorities
Tofugear and Inside Retail Asia have surveyed 150 senior retail execs in Asia to find the technologies retailers are prioritising this year. Here are the top three:
- Business intelligence and data analytics – 43% of retailers say they will invest in this area over the next year.
- Mobile apps – just over a third of retailers will invest in mobile apps.
- Pop-up store solutions – 32% are keen on the format in 2018.
That’s your lot for July. Short but sweet. See you next month.
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