Billion Dollar Unicorns: Rapid7 Delivers a Successful IPO

A recent MarketsandMarkets report projects the global cybersecurity market to grow 10% annually from $106.32 billion this year to $170.21 billion by the year 2020. The researcher reveals that while North America will be the largest market for the industry, the growth will actually be driven by the Latin American and Asia Pacific markets. Billion Dollar Unicorn club member Rapid7 is a recently listed player in this industry.

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Facebook Delivering Strong Advertising Growth

According to a report by media agency Carat, the global advertising market is projected to grow 4.6% this year to $540 billion. The growth will be driven by increased spending on digital media which is projected to grow 15.7% this year. Overall digital media is expected to account for 24% of advertising market spend for the year. The researcher projects mobile advertising to grow 50% this year and video advertising to grow 22% over the year. Social media giant Facebook (Nasdaq: FB) is using impressive moves to deliver in this high growth market.

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Twitter Fails to Recover

According to a recent report published by the Business Insider, the global online video ad revenues are projected to grow from 2.8 billion in 2013 to $5 billion in 2016. Video ads with a 1.84% click-through rate (CTR) ranks the highest among all digital ad formats. Social media companies like Facebook and Twitter are both embracing these video ads to drive revenues higher. Online advertising giant Google is already successfully leveraging this video growth as was evident from YouTube’s blow out quarter reported earlier.

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Angie’s List Faces Tougher Competition

Competition in the home services market is heating up. Not only tech giants like Amazon and Google appear interested in the market, but smaller vendors like Thumbtack are also growing rapidly. All this competition is making it difficult for established players like Angie’s List to stand their ground.

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No Respite for Yahoo Yet

Yahoo’s (Nasdaq: YHOO) results sound like a broken record now. The company continues to disappoint the market and keeps floundering around in the hope of finding a strategy that will work.

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Way to Go, Amazon

This quarter appears to be a record quarter for many. Google saw its stock soar to a record high driven by their impressive results and YouTube’s performance. Microsoft reported a record loss despite a booming cloud business. Even Apple delivered record performance on iPhone sales, but failed to deliver on financial metrics that has sent their stock tumbling. Etailer Amazon (Nasdaq: AMZN) broke several records. Surprisingly, the company announced a profitable quarter, sending the stock soaring high – so much that Amazon is now bigger than Walmart.

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Apple Fails to Deliver a Rosy Quarter

Earlier this year, the Apple Watch was released with much fanfare, but the customers are still to take to it the way they have taken to the prior iOS devices like iPhone or iPad. Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) announced their quarterly results earlier this week which reflected the tepid response that the market had toward their Watch. Despite registering a record breaking quarter for iPhone revenues, Apple also fell short on market expectations on the number of units shipped.

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Microsoft Posts Record Loss Despite Booming Cloud Business

The recent quarter result was a new kind of a record quarter for Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) as the company recorded its biggest quarterly loss ever. While Microsoft continues to make several advances in the cloud technology, it is still being bogged down by its acquisition of Nokia. But its recent results were a clear indicator of how the company is continuing to shift its focus from the consumer to the enterprise business.

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Netflix Reports Record Highs Driven by Subscriber Growth

According to a research report by MarketsandMarkets, the global Video on Demand market is expected to grow 19% annually over the period 2014 through 2019 to $61.40 billion. The report reveals that while the American markets will be the largest revenue contributors for the industry, the emerging markets of Asia Pacific and Middle East and Africa will see the highest growth.

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Google Kicks Ass With YouTube

Last quarter, Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) added a new CFO to their management cadre. Ruth Porat, alumnus of Morgan Stanley, has been known for being fiscally conscious. The recent results announced under her guidance spell that sentiment. Google delivered better than expected results and instilled confidence in the market by ensuring that costs, revenue, and accounting systems are reviewed with much rigor. >>>