So we’ve hit the halfway point for 2021. The Mobile World Congress right around the corner in Barcelona as one of the biggest events of the year, and finally an event in person too! We’ve also been celebrating our 15th anniversary, it’s been great to hear the outpouring of good wishes and thank yous from our GMS family and our friends and partners.
Future operator revenues will be driven by the rich media standards
A new study by Juniper Research has found that global operator-led mobile messaging revenue will increase from $87 billion in 2020 to $88 billion in 2025. At the same time, the report predicts that due to declining P2P traffic, SMS messaging, a long-established source of operators’ revenues, will drop from $66 billion in 2020 to $61 billion by 2025.
According to Juniper, operators will increase their investments into rich media messaging standards, including RCS and MMS to take advantage of the growing interest in omnichannel strategies. Additionally, the ability of RCS to authenticate enterprises directly will provide more efficient anti-fraud detection and mitigation of mobile business messaging traffic over established SMS traffic analysis.
Viber brings its customer service capabilities to a new level with a recent feature update
Viber, one of the world’s most popular messaging apps, is rolling out new functions that will allow brands to serve customers better and let users chat with brands like they would with friends. This follows Viber introducing an option for users to share different types of files with businesses.
Now users can exchange photos, videos and GIFs with brands using Viber’s internal camera. As part of this new feature, Viber has aligned the design of the business conversation page with the private conversation page that a user can have with their family and friends by adding the camera and gallery buttons.
The new feature will help customers manage meaningful conversations with businesses and quickly solve ongoing issues, streamlining the support. For instance, users can now send photos of their ID cards to authenticate themselves or shoot videos to demonstrate malfunctions in previously purchased goods. This, coupled with the two-way capabilities of Viber Business Messages, significantly decreases the necessity of personal appointments, bringing the quality of support and customer satisfaction to a new level.
Conversational commerce spends over RCS messaging to reach $27 billion globally by 2025
A new study from Juniper Research indicates that the global conversational commerce spends over RCS messaging will rise from less than $10 million in 2021 to $27 billion in 2025. This growth will be driven by increasing RCS support from operators and growing interest from enterprises wishing to capitalise on this emerging channel.
RCS is a communications protocol that enables rich media messaging services, including chatbots and in-app payments, over cellular networks. According to Juniper forecasts, RCS will be the fastest-growing conversational commerce channel over the next five years. By 2025, the technology is anticipated to account for 10% of conversational commerce spend, rising from less than 1% in 2021, with retail, media and FMCG being the most active adopters of the technology.
Pandemic boosts mobile marketing budgets
The accelerative impact of Covid-19 on digital transformation has led to significant improvements in mobile marketing capabilities for advertisers, says a recent report by WARC and MMA EMEA.
The State of the Industry 2021: Mobile Marketing in EMEA report, also found that growth in m-commerce and use of social media provides brands with new opportunities to reach consumers. This will drive up mobile marketing budgets, which are set to be worth $230 billion globally in 2021.
With 42% of respondents naming the uptake of m-commerce as one of the most significant changes in consumer behaviour, we are likely to witness brands, agencies, media owners, and tech vendors come up with new exciting ways to adapt, raising the budgets higher and higher.
Additionally, the report revealed that 62% of marketers believe the ‘death of the cookie’ will significantly impact their mobile marketing strategy since every year brands spend more than $200bn on consumer data-based ad campaigns.
If you enjoyed our digest, make sure to subscribe to our blog for latest updates and tips on messaging, mobile marketing, and multichannel communications.