Tuesday, October 27, 2015

Facebook's War for Push Notifications



Recently, a German Article in the magazine "Online Marketing Rockstars" made me think about mobile push notifications as a not completely new advertising space that might be swirled up again soon. It is about Facebook's new app "Notify" and the key features the media expect. Basically, publishers and advertisers can partner up with Facebook in order to send push notifications to the app user's phones. So this is not just about breaking news, but also about creating purchasing pressure with pushed deals and offers.

That's why it can be seen as a general approach to conquer the push notification game - a very hot space as it is not yet overcrowded and information comes between private messages on the user's home screen. Very few apps like Yo! have tried to gain a stake in this market which is and most likely always will be dominated by the mobile OS giants Google and Apple. The whole topic is about the opportunity to "tip 2 billion people on their shoulder", as an Israeli mobile entrepreneur says.

A crucial aspect of this race for the user's attention is getting the permission to send push notifications to phones - a challenge with a 42% permission rate, according to the US service provider Urban Airship. As Facebook allocated an impressively sized team of developers to that project, one can see the relevance of the push notification space. This is nothing less than the race for the last white spots on the map of advertising space.

I think it is really exciting how one environment after the other gets in the focus of publishers and tech companies. In my opinion, audio messages being send to your earphones will be one of the next things. Ultimately we could talk about VR glass projections, wearable vibrations and more.

Again, the implications for marketeers and service providers in the space are still unclear. Ultimately, Apple and Google still control the mobile world and are the ones with the last word.


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