Where Will eBay’s Growth Come From?

A recent Forrester report on US online retail sales projected online holiday sales to grow 15% over the year to $78 billion spurred by the availability of features like free shipping, deals and discounts. That may still be a conservative estimate when one compares National Retail Federation’s projections of online holiday sales to grow to $82 billion. In reality, on Black Friday, according to an IBM research, web sales grew 21% over the year as retailers like Amazon and eBay both “siphoned consumers from brick-and-mortar stores”. But surprisingly, eBay’s (Nasdaq: EBAY)  recent quarter’s bigger news was driven by their payment segment business, PayPal.

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BlackBerry Counting on the Emerging Markets

If BlackBerry (Nasdaq: BBRY) was hoping that a name change would improve their performance, then they must have been disappointed so far. But things seem to be improving a bit in the new year. Recently, Pentagon announced plans to purchase 80,000 BlackBerry smartphones as BlackBerry continues to be known as the most secure mobile phone in the market. The new announcement has helped improve their stock price, which had fallen more than 35% last year.

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Pivotal Riding High on PaaS Growth

Cloud computing is expected to be the big driving force in IT spending in the coming years. In fact, it already is. According to a Gartner report, cloud computing will account for the bulk of new IT spending by 2016. Gartner estimates that nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017. In another report, IDC maintains a similar understanding. IDC expects global spend on cloud computing to exceed $100 billion in 2014. Within the market, they also predict that companies will start shifting their interests from Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offerings to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).

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Is Marketo Next on the Acquisition List?

According to a report by research firm Custora, e-mail as a medium of customer acquisition grew from 0.88% in 2009 to 6.84% in 2013. Email marketing is on the rise due to its significantly low cost and ability to reach out on a massive scale. However, the media faces several challenges. Not only does it have weaker customer engagement metrics, but the increased use of smartphones is also hurting its already low click-through rates. Marketers believe that as email marketing campaigns improve, the opening rates will improve as well. Recent reports reveal that opening rates are now hovering around 30%. The increasing importance of email marketing campaigns has also led to product innovations and acquisitions in the space.

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TubeMogul Gearing Up for an IPO This Year

According to an eMarketer report on online video advertising published in early 2013, the spending on online video ad market in the US is projected to grow from $4.14 billion in 2013 to $8.04 billion by 2016, a 25% compound annual growth rate. The growth is driven by the increased adoption of social media services and online video streaming options.

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GrubHub Seamless Taking Local Restaurants to the Internet

According to a research study by Cornell University, 40% of all adults in the US have placed food orders through an online platform. Restaurants are also seeing a growing adoption of online media in their business. Nearly 16% of the restaurants studied had a mobile app, but a mere 35% of these mobile apps let consumers place orders through them. There are a few players in the market who are trying to address this issue.

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Zoosk On 2014 IPO Roster As Well

According to a Pew Research Center report, 11% of adult Americans have used an online dating site or mobile dating app. Of these, nearly 66% have gone on a date with someone they met through these dating sites. In 2005, that share was a comparatively low 43%. Further, the online dating sites have helped nearly 23% of these people to find their life partners, compared with 17% in 2005. Another report estimates the online dating market to have grown 3.5% annually over the five-year period from 2008 to 2013 to be worth $2.1 billion in the country.

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Lending Club – 2014 IPO?

The Internet has led to the creation of several alternate business models. One such interesting business model is that of the online lending platform, Lending Club. Lending Club was founded in 2007 by entrepreneur Renaud Laplanche who was annoyed that he was paying 18% interest on his credit card bill and earning just 1% in interest on his savings account. The company was established with the mission of offering an alternative to the traditional banking system to both borrowers and investors. The San Francisco-based company is now among the world’s biggest peer-to-peer lenders. It was also named in The World’s 10 Most Innovative Companies in Finance by Fast Company in 2013 and Forbes’ America’s Most Promising Companies in 2011 and 2012. Long before the buzz word ‘crowd funding’ became trendy, Lending Club started doing exactly that.

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Ebates On The 2014 IPO Roster

According to an eMarketer report, more than 100 million users in the US will use digital coupons this year compared with 96.6 million users in the previous year. Another report by IDC estimates the consumer e-commerce market to grow 18% annually over the period 2012 through 2017, with mobile commerce growing 36% annually during the same period. As the share of online transactions increases, more and more shoppers are turning to discount sites like eBates.com to make better purchase decisions.

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HomeAway Seeing Strong Growth

According to market reports, the global travel and tourism industry is projected to grow 4% annually over the ten year period from 2012 to be worth $10 trillion in 2022. The growth will be driven by emerging markets and the Asia Pacific regions. Online vacation rental site HomeAway is counting on this market growth.

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