BuddeComm Intelligence Report - WhatsApp and Permission Based Marketing

Synopsis

Archived report. We started this report in the late 1990s, but archived it a decade later only to revive it again based on the acquisition of Whatsapp by Facebook for the incredible amount of US$19 billion, in early 2014.

Permission based marketing never really got off the ground as companies such as Google, Facebook and others were able to simply bypass that concept and used the private data of their users to build their own advertising businesses and largely ignored any permission needed from the customers. They simply overcame this by the ‘I agree’ button.

However, so far nobody has been able to crack the ‘mobile advertising nut’ and it is very clear that customers will not tolerate the level of advertising that is thrown at them on the Internet websites.

A new model will have to be developed and that’s why we have revived this report. Whatsapp delivers billions of messages daily and this might be a key for the developments of a new concept in mobile advertising, a concept where users will be charged - rather than the vendors or their advertising middlemen.

BuddeComm has been promoting the concept of permission-based marketing as the single most important business tool for the Digital Media, since the late 1990s. The principles behind the concept remain as valid as ever. Interactive Digital Media will bring one-to-marketing opportunities based on communications over broadband networks. It is important to realise that the users are at the centre of this concept; they are in control of the messages they want and don’t want to receive.

Our first expectation was that by 2015; 65% of all New Media revenues would be based on permission based marketing. This was clearly wrong, not in its percentage but in its timeframe, perhaps it will be 2020?

This time it is more preciously linked to the new mobile broadband developments which require new business models that are desperately needed Internet media companies such as Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Micosoft, Apple and so on in order to break into the mobile market.

This BuddeComm Intelligence report explores the evolution of permission based marketing and its importance to future developments.