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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.

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.

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.

Cloud computing: to the sky and beyond

Delian Partners
Nov 19, 2020
3 min read

Cloud based platforms are virtual networks which have been on the market since the early 2000s. In recent years they have experience a staggering growth as organizations globally have started looking for agile and scalable solutions to store, analyze and share an exponentially increasing amount of data.

The traditional company’s IT infrastructure seems increasingly inadequate to properly manage the massive flows of data generated daily, due to its non-scalable data storage capability and high management costs. The migration towards cloud-based technology solutions is becoming mandatory for organizations to stay ahead of the competition.

The global lockdowns experienced this year have only accelerated this trend due to the pressing need for companies to provide flexible solutions to allow employees to work efficiently from everywhere. Cloud computing systems can potentially have an impact on any business in the world, by enabling companies of all sizes, needs, and industries to embrace the digital transformation and avoid fixed costs such as equipment, staff training, or tools development.

Cloud technologies allow companies to scale up and speed their data management system from the get-go by sharing all information through the internet connection, rather than requiring implementation of new software or hardware. At the same time, the acceleration in deployment of technologies such as IoT and 5G are enhancing cloud systems to keep the latency to the minimum and increase the connectivity performance also in areas which previously would not have been accessible.

An example of an innovative cloud computing platform is Snowflake, an open data warehouse providing businesses across industries with easier and secure data access thanks to its virtual architecture, without hardware or software to configure. Thanks to its integrated cloud platform, Snowflake helps companies to maximize their efficiency by using and paying for storage and computation separately, which means companies can scale up and down the service ladder according to their needs. As Snowflake reports, a total of 250 petabytes of data runs through Snowflake’s cloud platform every day, an impressive performance when compared with tech giant Google which manages “just” 20 petabytes per day.

Microsoft is also heavily investing in the market: through its Azure Space division it is working on a new, space based, cloud ecosystem aiming to make the transmission of information easier by offering high-intensity cloud computing and secure satellite connectivity worldwide.

In the current and future scenario characterized by the rise of digitalization, the need for data analysis, storage and sharing is expected to increase massively. As reported by Markets&Markets research, the cloud industry is projected to continue its strong growth over the next years, growing from $371.4B in 2020 to $832.1B by 2025, at a CAGR of 17.5% during the forecasted period. In summary, cloud computing will act as a key enabler for companies by providing them with the flexibility, agility, and efficiency to accelerate their digital transformation and enhance their chance of survival in an extremely competitive environment.