Facebook’s ad block test

Christmas is almost here!! And we know exactly what you did those 2 last weeks: you spent a great part of your time in the Internet looking for the perfect gift for your relatives, comparing prices on dozen of websites, reading comments about products… It takes time, a lot of time! Now Christmas is in few days and you cannot take the risk to order online anymore because it will probably never arrive on time. So, you will shop from online to offline.  Congratulations, you finally bought everything you wanted!

But, have you noticed yet? The red dress that you bought for your sister is on every web page you go through! One big advise: do not let anyone touch your computer before Christmas because just by opening a webpage they will see all the ads about gift you plan to offer! Surprise!!!!

One of the leader website for the use of retargeting ads is Facebook! When you go on Facebook you see ads everywhere. At least, most of the time on Facebook they are related to things you like. Facebook shows you ads in which you might be interested in.  But it is not the case on every website and more and more people are upset about ads. According to an Ipsos study, the use of ad blocker is increasing. In France, 1 out of 3 Internet user is using an ad blocker. The three main reasons are that ads are too repetitive, non-contextualized and that people fear about their personal data and being tracked.

The use of ad blockers raised a lot of debates this year. Indeed, a lot of social network have a business model based on ads. So, if everybody uses ad blocker those website can’t be “free” anymore.  Actually, Facebook has a new weapon to fight ad blockers and it decided to the fight fire with fire. Indeed, Facebook is currently fighting against Adblock Plus by running a new experiment that allows people to turn off select ads that they judge upsetting. It allows Facebook users to customize their ad preferences in regard to their broader interests (as identified by the social network).

http://www.ramstondigital.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Facebook-Ads.png

Sources :

http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/plus-d-un-tiers-des-internautes-francais-a-installe-un-adblocker.N467103

http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/facebook-ad-block-test/

Marine Esposito

Julia Ibrahim Ouali

Public transportation is getting digital: good news for ecommerce!

Change is coming very fast regarding transportation today. Public transportation has to grown and change significantly to face the growing number of users and their new expectations. A bunch of carpool startups have been created in the last decade such as Uber, Lyft, Heetch making public transportation old-fashioned for a lot of people.

To take part in the smartest-cities of the world race, Paris announced this month that it plans to have the most digital metro in the world by 2025 with new innovative infrastructures such as optical fiber, data centers, telecom networks, Wi-fi and geolocation system. Parisian subway is getting digitalized in order to help people gain a lot of times when they have to go from a point A to a point B. But this is not the only issue.

Paris metro has always been an important place for advertisers. Indeed, there is almost 5 millions of users everyday. Those users are consumers and you can easily grab their attention : when their are in the metro they do not have much to do, people are waiting their train and then, they wait in the train to arrive at their destination. Well... that was before. Today, everybody is on its smartphone. That’s why bringing wifi, geolocation and big datas where millions of consumers pass everyday  will revolutionize ads in public transportation.

Users experience will be improved and users will be able to buy anything during their journey : 1 online purchase out of 4 is made with a smartphone today and this figure keeps on increasing. Today, it is complicated to buy while you are in the metro because you do not want to take the risk to see your connection shut down. With big data analyse, retargeting and Wifi, you’ll find that your journey in the metro will probably become the right place and time for you to do your shopping.

Be able to track people on public transportation will have a big impact on digital marketing. Indeed, public transportation says a lot about you: where you live, where you work, at what time, where you go for shopping. It means that we can deduce your social background, define your favorite brands, push ads for you that matches your preferences, inform you to go out at a certain station for a special event etc… But who can gather all those data? Well, on the road, companies such as Waze already deals with a huge amount of datas and has an important impact on advertising. An other app, Moovit could become the Waze of the metro.

Actually, startups like Waze and Moovit (an israelian app created in 2014) had the idea that the most efficient way to simplify rides does not lie into high technology object but definetly onto people who are using those transportation system every day. They are creating a network where everyone can be a stakeholder. Waze’s business model is based on advertising using CPM and it has been bought by Google for 1.15 billion $ two years ago. 

Moovit works directly with the parisian public transportation company RATP to help it improve their service in cities and in return the RATP is promoting the company. Nowadays, every companies are looking for this kind of win-win situation.

 To attract people using the app, they provide virtual reward to users who are helping improve the service. They main interest is to create a community.

Will Moovit know the same success story as Waze ? If it expends to other big cities metros, we can bet that Google will look closely at their activities. 

Marine Esposito 

Julia Ibrahim - Ouali 

Sources : 

http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/le-grand-paris-veut-se-doter-du-metro-le-plus-digital-du-monde.N453497

https://dataparis.io/

https://siecledigital.fr/2016/08/01/waze-accelere-monetisation/

http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/moovit-s-appuie-sur-les-usagers-des-transports-pour-construire-l-appli-de-mobilite-ultime.N456477