Brands staring at GAFAs.
Money talks: Thanks to Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon (GAFA), it has become very easy for marketers around the world to achieve their goals. With Look-alike modeling and attribution, programmatic advertising is constantly optimized and accelerated. Excellent results are guaranteed — as long as the delivered creatives and the investment in the campaign is right.
This is very different from the beginnings when Facebook offered free user engagement including an interactive feedback channel. At that time, some DAX marketers wanted to move their entire platforms to Facebook, since distribution was free of charge and access to the young target groups was cheap. This worked well in the short term until the organic reach declined continuously. Content flooded the timeline and had to be prioritized. Monetization on Facebook could finally begin.
But then Facebook once again changed the algorithm to the detriment of reach — not just for brands. And this is just one example among many.
The fact is: today, closed systems are growing fastest and GAFAs control digital access. Now that the Internet has democratized communication and business models for 20 years, is the vision of the old AOL world becoming reality? At the turn of the millennium, AOL had established a closed AOL network as an alternative to the open Internet but ultimately failed.
All of this would not have been so bad if many brands hadn’t neglected their own platforms so criminally in the meantime: Many are already proud of a responsive website — even if it takes more than 15 seconds to load at a data transfer rate of 3G.
Speed is one of the most important digital product features; according to current studies[1], 40% of users bounce from the page after 8 seconds of waiting time. Not to mention the SEO aspect: Google has officially announced that from July 2018 Page Speed will be a significant ranking factor for mobile search. A good starting point to measure its presence is PageSpeed Insights from Google or www.webpagetest.org.
So it’s time to rethink reach: we need to pay more attention to our own platforms again and ultimately, the OpenWeb!
The OpenWeb still offers the greatest potential for organic reach. Technically fueled by HTML’s evolution and the extended possibilities of progressive Web Apps with push notification, offline functions and the fast introduction of the Payment API, the user experience has now almost reached the native app level.
Without App-Installs, without App Review Guidelines, without fees to the App-Store operator.
However, the OpenWeb without GAFAs is not imaginable. They continuously push the technological possibilities of the network.
One Example: To ensure that the web also works convenient and fast on the move, Google has launched the AMP initiative (Accelerated Mobile Pages) as an OpenSource project, which fuels two billion pages under 1.2 million domains and is one of the most successful projects of recent years. Thanks to AMP, it will be easier for companies to develop fast mobile platforms and accelerate search access. The page behind the search result is delivered with AMP technology directly from Google, the loading time here is often less than a second. Platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn also support AMP and link directly to the quickly loaded versions of the pages.
AMP + PWA = exciting web experience
By combining AMP with PWA (Progressive Web App) technologies, the user is offered a quick introduction to requested topics — and an exciting web experience thanks to extended functionalities. AMPs swipe feature as implemented on the BMW.com is providing a compelling experience, and even more combined with a service worker. But AMP is certainly only a transitional technology to accelerate the mobile web. There is more to come.
But let’s get back to the GAFAs: Why are they so successful? For me, it is the consistent focus on recruiting and to retain the best developers, designers and data analysts. Hiring the best team makes 10 times the difference.
The responsibility to invest in an outstanding project and development team cannot be taken over by any company, this is the core task of every company in the digital transformation.
So brands are recommended to take a look at them in a differentiated way and weigh up exactly where one of the big players from Silicon Valley can help — or where not. Where they can definitely help has been described above: in building an ultra-performance platform.
Investing in technology, in a great team and in one’s own digital access is often more worthwhile in the long run than blindly falling into the hands of a closed network.
