What is an online platform? An Introduction to Online Platforms and Their Role in the Digital Transformation

The importance of mobile marketing is rising, as it is expected that by 2024, the number of mobile shoppers will rise to approximately 187.5 million users. With the clear move to mobile, digital marketers need to think about how they can optimize their current marketing efforts for mobile to be able to deliver a seamless and user-friendly experience. Digital experience platforms http://to420.ru/article_7.html help disseminate content across websites, email, mobile apps, social platforms, e-commerce sites, IoT devices, digital signage, POS systems, and more. Beyond simply delivering content for each of these channels, digital experience platforms help enable marketing automation and develop a consistent digital experience, leading users towards a clearly defined outcome.

During their early years, digital platforms tended to enjoy light regulation, sometimes benefiting from measures intended to help fledgling internet companies. The „inherently border-crossing“ nature of platforms has made it challenging to regulate them, even when a desire has been there. Yet another difficulty has been lack of consensus about what exactly constitutes the platform economy.Critics have argued existing law was not designed to deal with platform based companies. They expressed concern about elements such as safety and hygiene standards, taxes, compliance, crime, protection of rights and interests, and fair competition. In 2019, Africa’s digital platforms recorded a robust growth in form of 365 unique platforms, making up a 37% increase year on year. However, as the platform economy in the continent continue to grow, and new platforms enter the market, there is a high level of churn .

What is meant by a digital platform

It’s vital to think about the moment that matters most to each type of user. The ability to create customized workflows that match how you and your team like to work is essential — your platform should be working for you, not against you. Plus, as everyone can see the end-to-end process, you crowd-source suggestions for its improvement from the people who know it best.

The transition has economic benefits to Hollywood, making distribution easier and making it possible to add high-quality digital effects to films. At the same time, it has affected the analog special effects, stunt, and animation industries in Hollywood. It has imposed painful costs on small movie theaters, some of which did not or will not survive the transition to digital. The effect of digital media on other media industries is similarly sweeping and complex. It was recognized as a significant work even at the time of its publication.

Mobile OTT Devices

Today, digital marketing often focuses on reaching a customer with increasingly conversion-oriented messages across multiple channels as they move down the sales funnel. Ideally, marketing teams will be able to track the role each of these messages and/or channels plays in reaching their ultimate goal of gaining a customer. Data storage and management have always been critical components of a technology platform. Legacy ERP systems worked well in the past but cannot keep up with the current explosion of Big Data.In-memory databasesprovide the speed that is required, but until recently, they have been expensive. However, thanks to new technological advancements, the cost of in-memory databases has lowered and they have become a more viable alternative for large systems. Using digital media helps establish the brand using all the channels that customers use.

What is meant by a digital platform

Today’s technology platform is critical indigital transformation, providing functionality that improves processes and drives business value for customers. Digital transformation may look different for every organization, but it will always affect all areas of a company – introducing critical changes to the way business units operate. Digital media has also allowed individuals to be much more active in content creation. Anyone with access to computers and the Internet can participate in social media and contribute their own writing, art, videos, photography and commentary to the Internet, as well as conduct business online. The dramatic reduction in the costs required to create and share content have led to a democratization of content creation as well as the creation of new types of content, like blogs, memes, and video essays. This spike in user created content is due to the development of the internet as well as the way in which users interact with media today.

But the rise of digital journalism has also created thousands of new jobs and specializations. E-books and self-publishing are changing the book industry, and digital textbooks and other media-inclusive curricula are changing primary and secondary education. In the 2016 GCE survey of platform companies valued over $1 billion, a total of 107 privately owned companies were found, versus 69 public companies .

Nieborg and Poell have defined the concept as „the penetration of economic and infrastructural extensions of online platforms into the web, affecting the production, distribution, and circulation of cultural content.“ One of the keys to driving growth with a platform business model is the ability to identify common processes across the organization and to turn these into shared automated services within the technical landscape. Digital content is a cost-effective and efficient method for brands to engage with their customers and users. Historically, delivery systems include television advertisements or print media to get a specific digital marketing message across to potential customers. Digital marketing is on the rise – since 2015, marketing professionals report spending steadily more of their budgets on digital marketing methods, while at the same time, reducing spending on traditional marketing outlets.

Moreover, the note puts an emphasis on the protection of customers’ information, which is regarded as a key corporate asset in the current competitive market. Second, certain guidance should be implemented for helping platform companies to strengthen negotiations with workers in new forms of employment. To ensure the openness and transparency of the system, employment directly related to the rights and interests of laborers shall be released to the public. Third, the proposal suggests strengthening the supervision of the financial sector, and strictly scrutinizing improper payment practices and any illegal operations are important to maintain the market order. Fourth, key industries and fields that are closely related to platform business require improved competition supervision and law enforcement in the entire chain.

Gig economy

In this article, we’ll chart the history of digital platforms, look at the benefits digital platforms bring and look at how their features can improve the way we work. There are over 3.78 billionsocial media users — nearly 50% of the world’s population. Significantly reduce the time it takes to launch new products by automating and streamlining workflow processes and implementing custom rules for testing and usage.

An example of affiliate marketing can be seen in something as simple as a social media user enthusiastically sharing a link to a product they love in one of their posts. “It gives me all the energy I need with none of the jitters – and it tastes so good! An online presence, particularly across social media platforms, increases appeal for consumers and establishes trust between buyers and sellers. However, today’s enterprise can utilize a modern technology stack with world-class components that work together on one integrated platform. This leaves the responsibility of designing, developing, and maintaining the integration up to the technology platform provider.

  • Digital platforms can add value by enabling service innovation for customers and clients, fostering more efficient ways of working, revealing new insights from operational data – or likely a combination of all three.
  • A computer platform — also called digital platform or computing platform — generally refers to the operating system and computer hardware only.
  • E-books and self-publishing are changing the book industry, and digital textbooks and other media-inclusive curricula are changing primary and secondary education.
  • Optimizely provides you with all the tools required to ensure you can deliver digital contentthat creates meaningful experiences and optimizes the entire digital journey for every customer.

A third set of firms may not run their own platform, but still have a platform strategy for utilising third-party platforms. Mckinsey found that firms with a platform presence – either their own or via a third party – enjoyed on average an almost 1.4% higher annual EBIT growth. „Platform economy“ is one of a number of terms aiming to capture subsets of the overall economy which are now mediated by digital technology. The terms are used with diverse and sometimes overlapping meanings; some commentators use terms like „sharing economy“ or „access economy“ in such a broad sense they effectively mean the same thing. Other scholars and commentators do attempt to draw distinctions and use the various terms to delineate different parts of the wider digital economy. The term „platform economy“ can be viewed as narrower in scope than „digital economy“, but wider in scope than terms like „on demand economy“, „sharing economy“ or „gig economy“.

They also help lead a conference on ICT4D, and ​this site ​has information on the conference as well as helpful resources and relevant news events. For more information on ICT and its related principles, review ​this short article ​on ICT technologies. GDPR is a model policy addressing the digital principle of privacy & security. For more information on what EdTech is, you can review the terminology ​here​. For examples of its place in development programs, the World Bank published a ​blog ​about upcoming trends and activities in the space. Additionally, this candid ​article on EdSurge​ explains some of the challenges and drawbacks of EdTech.

Ways to Deliver a Transcendent Customer Experience

The first modern, programmable, digital computers, the Manchester Mark 1 and the EDSAC, were independently invented between 1948 and 1949. Though different in many ways from modern computers, these machines had digital software controlling their logical operations. They were encoded in binary, a system of ones and zeroes that are combined to make hundreds of characters.

What is meant by a digital platform

Platforms tend to be a strong beneficiary of network effects; phenomena that can act to increase the value of a platform to all participants as more people join. Sometimes it makes sense for a platform to treat different sides of their network differently. For example, a trading platform relies on both buyers and sellers, and if there is say a shortage of buyers compared to the number of sellers, it might make sense for the platform operator to subsidize buyers, at least temporarily. Perhaps with free access or even with rewards for choosing to use the platform. Sometimes the benefits of network effects can be overestimated, such as with the so-called „grab all the eyeballs fallacy“, where a large audience is attracted to a platform, but there proves to be no profitable way to monetise it. Therefore, the more partners an ecosystem has, and the more industries they come from, the stronger and more productive the ecosystem will be.

Benefits of Having OTT For Your Business

As more users join and use social media sites, the relevance of content creation increases. The release of technologies such mobile devices allow for easier and quicker access to all things media. Many media creation tools that were once available to only a few are now free and easy to use. The cost of devices that can access the Internet is steadily falling, and personal ownership of multiple digital devices is now becoming the standard. Digital media is seen by many scholars as having a role in Arab Spring, and crackdowns on the use of digital and social media by embattled governments are increasingly common. Many governments restrict access to digital media in some way, either to prevent obscenity or in a broader form of political censorship.

What is meant by a digital platform

Following the widespread introduction of lockdowns across the world, platforms were credited for helping to keep economies running and society connected, with polls showing the popularity of platform companies among the public had increased. Late 2020 saw Russia pass a law that would allow large fines to be levied against platform companies for various reasons, including if they censured Russian citizens. Also in late 2020, the Chinese government announced an antitrust probe of Alibaba, with officials noting the importance of the platform economy to China’s development, but also expressing concerns about the risk for excessive market concentration. In February 2021, the Financial Times wrote that it was once again „business as usual“ for the Techlash. Despite criticism from media figures and politicians, as of early 2018 the large privately owned platforms tended to remain „wildly popular“ among ordinary consumers.

Benefits of digital content

By managing your content from a unified hub, you can centralize content creation, and track and measure customer engagement across various channels. Digital media copyright protection technologies fall under intellectual property protection technology. This is because a series of computer technologies protect the digital content being created and transmitted.

Examples of Digital Marketing Assets

Data insights have become a driving reason to move to modern ERP on a modern tech platform. Businesses today need to have accurate, real-time information at decision-makers’ fingertips. Unfortunately, companies found that the information they were getting from their legacy systems was out-of-date and incorrect. Today, more than ever, companies require self-service reporting andanalyticsthat make it easy for individuals to query the system for specific, up-to-the-minute data across multiple databases and rapidly turn data into insights to help make better decisions. Using podcasts companies can talk about anything related to a topic, trend or a product. Audience or Customers can access them whenever they want and if they like it, they can share it as well with others expanding the reach.

The platform economy facilitates this as a company can develop a digital platform that users can log onto to gain access to goods through a subscription. An example of this is Spotify, where users are not purchasing individual albums or downloading songs, but simply listening to them. Innovation platforms- These provide technology frameworks to customers that can be adapted to individual use. Examples of innovation platform companies include Microsoft, Oracle and Salesforce.

For example, matchmakers who helped men and women find suitable marriage partners operated in China since at least 1100 BC. Grain exchanges from ancient Greece have been compared to contemporary transactional platforms, as have medieval fairs. Such as geographic regions famous for particular types of production, institutions like Harvard Business School, or the Wintel technology platform that became prominent in the 1980s. Platformization is the increasing domination of the internet by a number of large companies whose products work as markets between users and other sellers.

CDPs allow you to better understand your users, complement marketing strategies, marketing automation and develop personalized customer journeys. Digital twin – A digital twin is a virtual representation of an object or system that spans its lifecycle, is updated from real-time data, and uses simulation, machine learning and reasoning to help decision-making. Organizations can develop digital twins that replicate entire company environments, offering insights into all touchpoints of an organization. These digital replicas give an organization the potential to simulate, analyze, and optimize customer journeys and employee experiences, thus creating a more cohesive and personalized digital experience. As the meaning of the name ‘OTT’ implies about services delivered ‘on top of the other platform, it depends on providing contended user experience at a wide range of network performance.

The term generally refers to the commercialized practice of streaming content on the world wide web. OTT stands for “over-the-top” platforms, which provide a simple and exclusive way to enjoy entertainment over the internet. For example, consumers would sign up for subscriptions or for one-time view added with in-stream ads in platforms like Netflix or Spotify to access thousands of content from anywhere at any time. In journalism, digital media and citizen journalism have led to the loss of thousands of jobs in print media and the bankruptcy of many major newspapers.