On-Point Links: June 12

 In Front Page, On-Point Links

This week’s top tech and marketing articles.

API Management Solutions is a Business on the Rise

Businesses are struggling to adopt data integration strategies as we move into the analytics, digital and mobile age. APIs are a crucial element within this ecosystem, and there is a fertile market for API management and sourcing players.

Forrester:  The API Management Solutions Market Will Quadruple by 2020 as Business Goes Digital 

“Forrester recently released a report that sizes and projects annual spending on API management solutions. We predict US companies alone will spend nearly $3 billion on API management over the next five years. Annual spend will quadruple by the end of the decade, from $140 million in 2014 to $660 million in 2020. International sales will take the global market over the billion dollar mark.”

“We found that nearly 40% of enterprises are well on their way in developments around mobility, IoT, and big data, while the remaining 60% are flat across the board. This reality has dire consequences. With dwindling revenues and profit margins for firms that fail to keep up with the demands of an increasingly digital business environment, many of the firms that fall behind will ultimately face consolidation and buyouts.”

New Developments in the Murky World of Digital Advertising

Digital advertisers face challenges as the consumer base grows increasingly sophisticated.

loyalty360:  Digital Fraud Threatens the Customer Engagement of Online Advertisers 

“As new technologies like mobile are advancing and becoming increasingly entwined with everyday customer experiences, tracking and measuring threat levels is now crucial, especially because the sophistication of criminal bot technology is also rapidly advancing in tandem.”

“This is becoming a very serious concern for marketers. If digital ad fraud continues unabated, trust among the advertising clients will eventually erode. Until these issues are properly addressed, there will be varying degrees of fear about transferring further revenue into this arena.”

NiemanLab:  A Blow for Mobile Advertising: The Next Version of Safari will Let Users Block Ads on IPhones and IPads

“Adblocking — running a piece of software in your web browser that prevents ads on most web pages from loading — has moved from a niche behavior for the nerdy few to something mainstream. A report from 2014 found that adblock usage was up 70 percent year-over-year, with over 140 million people blocking ads worldwide, including 41 percent of 18- to 29-year-olds. You can understand why that would be troubling to the publishers who sell those ads. But until now, adblocking has been limited almost entirely to desktop — mobile browsers haven’t allowed it.”

“Publishers already make tiny dollars on mobile, even as their readers have shifted there in huge numbers. To take one example, The New York Times has more than 50 percent of its digital audience on mobile, but generates only 10 percent of its digital advertising revenue there. Most news outlets aren’t even at that low level. If iOS users — the majority of mobile web users in the U.S., and disproportionately appealing demographically — can suddenly block all your ads with a simple free download, where is the growth going to come from?”

The Age of the Algorithm

In the future, algorithms rule the world.

The Economist – Intelligent Life:  Slaves to the Algorithm

“Algorithms decide what we are recommended on Amazon, what films we are offered on Netflix. Sometimes, newspapers warn us of their creeping, insidious influence; they are the mysterious sciencey bit of the internet that makes us feel websites are stalking us—the software that looks at the e-mail you receive and tells the Facebook page you look at that, say, Pizza Hut should be the ad it shows you. Some of those newspaper warnings themselves come from algorithms.”

“The problem, [Dave Cliff, professor of computer science at Bristol University] says, is that not enough people understand how it works yet, and there is no proper regulation. His report, which has been endorsed by John Beddington, Britain’s chief scientific officer, recommends the creation of forensic software tools, to analyse the market and help investigations. ‘The danger is an over-reliance on computer systems which are not well understood,’ he said. ‘I have no problem with technologies. I like flying, I like to give my kids medicine. But I like my planes certified safe, my medicine tested. I prefer to be engaged in capital markets where there are similar levels of trust, and meaningful and incisive investigation when things go wrong.'”

What Do You Think?

Post Your Recommended Reads to the Comments Section Below!

Recommended Posts

Start typing and press Enter to search