Posts made in August, 2017

on Aug 21, 2017

By Danielle Long Alipay, the Alibaba affiliated mobile payment service, has inked a partnership deal with Yelp to push its services to Chinese tourists in the US. The deal will enable Alipay’s 520 million Chinese users to access content, book restaurants and pay through the app in RMB while visiting New York City, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and San Francisco. Currently the content will be Yelp’s English language version, however, a translated version of the app is planned to launch at a later stage. Alipay, which is owned by Ant Financial, aims to roll out the service to additional cities and countries this year, as part Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Aug 21, 2017

By Danielle Long Peter Vogel, the current APAC CEO of MEC, will assume the role of CEO of the GroupM ‘NewCo’ agency for Australia and New Zealand. Vogel will also lead the South East Asia hub for the media content and technology agency which will be launch in January 2018 by the merger of MEC and Maxus. Vogel has been the regional CEO for MEC since 2015 and prior to this, was CEO of MEC’s Australia and New Zealand business. Vogel will be supported by MEC Australia’s current CEO James Hier, who assumes the role of chief growth & product officer for NewCo and will be Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Aug 21, 2017

By Stephen Lepitak This week’s 10 Questions With…is with Mr President’s chief creative officer, and co-founder of She Says and the VOWSS at Cannes this year, Laura Jordan Bambach, a former president of D&AD, and – as you will soon learn – a cheese counter assistant at Cut Price Deli. The Drum finds out more about the much lauded creative about some of her thoughts and experiences in life. What was your first ever job? At school, I worked on the cheese counter at Cut Price Deli, in the world’s first Westfield, in Hornsby in Sydney. At uni, as a taxidermist Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Aug 21, 2017

By Danielle Long Mobile gaming and advertising revenues were the key drivers behind Tencent‘s stellar second-quarter results, with the Chinese internet giant posting 59% growth in revenues and 70% growth in profits. The results, which again outstripped analyst expectations, build on a strong first quarter, with the gaming and entertainment giant posting revenue of RMB 56.6bn ($8.4bn) and profits of RMB 18.25bn ($2.7 bn). Tencent’s hugely popular Honour of Kings smartphone game helped boost online games revenues by 39% to RMB 23.86m. While overall revenues for Value Added Services (VAS) grew 43% to RMB 36.8bn year-on-year. Online advertising revenues jumped Read full story › Source: The Drum...

on Aug 21, 2017

By Danielle Long Alibaba has again beat analyst estimates reporting a 56% increase in revenues for the quarter ending June 30, as the ecommerce giant continues to grow. The ongoing strength of China’s ecommerce market was the main driver behind Alibaba’s robust results, with revenue of RMB 50.2bn ($7.4bn) and income of RMB 14.03bn ($2bn). Alibaba’s core commerce revenues grew 58% year-on-year to reach RMB 43.02bn ($6.3bn), while revenue from cloud computing surged 96% to RMB 2.4bn ($359m) Alibaba’s digital media and entertainment business increased 30% year-on-year to reach RMB 4.08bn ($602m). The ecommerce giant added 12 million annual active consumers to top Read full story › Source: The Drum...