Wednesday, June 26, 2024

2024's Indispensable Digital Marketing Tools: What You Need to Succeed

Digital marketing tools have made the reach of online businesses easier and more comfortable. These cost-effective digital tools not only are a helping hand in establishing the digital presence, but also boosting up the range of online businesses by providing digital marketing opportunities, customers’ feedback, surveys, quality content, web optimization, customers’ experience, fast communication, customer support service and insightful data.

To save your time, the scrutinization of all categories of tools has been carried out, and the top five most widely used tools from each category are listed below for you to choose from.

1) For Site Audience Comparison

Similarweb

The tool is utilized to analyze website performance, competitor analysis and audience research behavior. It helps in getting the idea of your competitor content and web traffic.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is used for link building, competitor analysis and keyword research. Like other SEO tools, it helps in ranking your site on Google.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows audience behavior on different devices and platforms and also helps in digital marketing and improving your website.

Semrush

The tool allows you to do content marketing, competitor analysis, digital marketing and to increase organic traffic of your website.

Comscore

Comscore provides marketing data and analytics to allow you to make better decisions for your website and consequently build traffic.

2) Digital Analytics Tools

Google Analytics

Google Analytics shows audience behavior on different devices and platforms and also helps in digital marketing and improving your website.

Analytics 360

Google Analytics 360 allows you to gain deep insights regarding your websites from provided data; it also gives access to advanced tools like Unsampled Reports etc.

Adobe Analytics

The tool analyzes and matches data from a customer’s journey and helps in building better customer experiences. Also, it provides in-depth analysis of provided data.

PIWIK Pro

The tool is utilized to connect and integrate data ; it also allows the analysis of given data in a simple way and helps in campaign optimization and performance.

Mixpanel

Mixpanel allows the tracking of users’ interaction with the web and mobile applications; the analytics helps in engaging and retaining users for a long time.

3) SEO Keyword Analysis

Google Adwords

Google Adwords allows its users to place their ads in their desired market, which helps the growth of their business.

Google Trends

This Google website finds a number of web searches done over a specific period of time; it also does the analysis of famous search queries across regions and languages.

WooRank

WooBank uses Google to judge your site to generate an audit of your site’s off-page and on-page SEO; it helps users by giving analysis and allowing them to know what needs to be done for their sites.

SEMrush

The tool allows you to do content marketing, competitor analysis, digital marketing and to increase organic traffic of your website.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is used for link building, competitor analysis and keyword research. Like other SEO tools, it helps in ranking your site on Google.

4) SEO Rank Checking

Google Search Console

Google Search Console enables users to maintain and monitor their sites’ presence on Google Search; Users can track the performance of their sites vigilantly.

WooRank

WooBank uses Google to judge your site to generate an audit of your site’s off-page and on-page SEO; it helps users by giving analysis and allowing them to know what needs to be done for their sites.

Advanced Web Ranking

It is an advanced keyword-tracking tool; it enables its users to track down their sites’ performance on Google Search.

Search Metrics

Search Metrics provides search engine ranking keyword, content information and competitor data to its users; it allows users to know about web traffic behavior.

Brightedge

Brightedge provides users with search volume and competition, and it enables them to find out the intent behind users’ behavior.

5) SEO Site Crawling

ScreamingFrog

It is a site crawler that allows its users to find any technical issue holding back a site from being ranked higher on the search engine.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console enables users to maintain and monitor their sites’ presence on Google Search; Users can track the performance of their sites vigilantly.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is used for link building, competitor analysis and keyword research. Like other SEO tools, it helps in ranking your site on Google.

XML SiteMaps

The tool organizes your sites and URLs under all sections and finds data for you faster and more efficiently; it helps users in maintaining their sites.

Yoast

Yoast helps users by organizing their webpages and takes care of technical SEOs; it also provides AI optimization.

6) SEO Backlink Analysis

Google Search Console

Google Search Console enables users to maintain and monitor their sites’ presence on Google Search; Users can track the performance of their sites vigilantly.

Ahrefs

Ahrefs is used for link building, competitor analysis and keyword research. Like other SEO tools, it helps in ranking your site on Google.

Majestic

The tool provides users with link-intelligence data to help them dominate the market; it also monitors link building.

Cognitive SEO

This tool helps in increasing traffic and sites’ performance, and provides high level backlink analysis and content audit.

MOZ

MOZ provides keywords and content optimization; it also tracks down and solves all technical SEO issues and monitors your competition in the market.

7) Google Ads and Paid Search Analysis

Google Ads

Google ads allows you to expand and advertise your business by placing business ads wherever you want them to appear.

Search Metrics

Search Metrics provides search engine ranking keyword, content information and competitor data to its users; it allows users to know about web traffic behavior.

WordStream

The tool enables you to track down your ads over the internet and to know how your ads are performing or whether you are just wasting your money or not.

Semrush

The tool allows you to do content marketing, competitor analysis, digital marketing and to increase organic traffic of your website.

SpyFlu

Spyflu searches keywords and adwords that are used currently in the searches by competitors.

8) Influencer Outreach and Management

Followerwonk

Followerwonk analyzes twitter data to find out famous trends and to increase followership of users.

Buzzsumo

It tracks down trends on social media and then analyzes data to spot outreach opportunities; it also helps in finding new content ideas.

BuzzStream

The tool provides link building and content promotion, and helps in building lists; it makes email outreach far easier.

Analytica

Analytica builds and shares visual environments to provide quantitative models to help users make better decisions; in its functions, it is way better than its alternatives.

Traackr

Traackr makes sure the authenticity and value of the influencer audience; it tracks down any pretentious activity involved to establish better influencer audience relationships.

9) Data Management Platforms and Audience Targeting

Salesforce

It automates sales and marketing processes; it keeps the history of customer interactions and sales data. The tool also provides email outreach.

Google Marketing Platform

It combines analytics and advertising to provide better marketing and faster action on insights provided by the data.

Nuestar

The tool is used to do marketing as well as communication; it also provides security against any potential cyber threat and fraud.

Oracle Marketing Cloud

The cloud allows marketing solutions of all types to enable higher returns on investment and better online campaigns.

Adobe Experience Manager

It enables users to design and maintain web solutions as per business needs. It can be used for web pages as well as for mobile applications.

10) Website Interactions and UX Tools

PIWIK Pro

The tool is utilized to connect and integrate data ; it also allows the analysis of given data in a simple way and helps in campaign optimization and performance.

Hotjar

Hotjar provides analytical data of customers behavior and their feedback to understand customers. The insights from data helps in future planning.

Clicktale

Clicktale allows users to track down and analyze customer behavior; the insightful data sheds light on customers needs and issues.

Crazyegg

The tool enhances customers' experience by optimizing web visitor behavior, and also boosts up conversion rates.

Tealeaf

Tealeaf visualizes customers’ experience to enable you analyze and study their experience to get insightful data for the future.

11) Content Management Systems

Acquia

It is a cloud platform to build, maintain and optimize websites and digital experiences; it also helps in governing content.

Optimizely

Optimizely helps users with commerce tools and content management; it helps in placing content in front of the right audience.

Adobe Experience Manager

It enables users to design and maintain web solutions as per business needs. It can be used for web pages as well as for mobile applications.

Oracle Marketing Cloud

The cloud allows marketing solutions of all types to enable higher returns on investment and better online campaigns.

Sitecore

The tool creates, manages and maintains digital content on the web; it also analyzes customers’ experiences to provide insightful data.

12) Blogging Tools (CMS)

Hubspot

It is a marketing, sales and customer service software, helping users to increase their sales and growth.

Wordpress

Wordpress allows the creation of websites and their management; it provides a variety of tools to organize and publish content.

Moveable Type

Moveable Type offers a friendly user interface. It provides solutions to the creation and management of web content.

Expression Engine

Just like Wordpress, it allows the creation and management of websites and their content, providing additionally a variety of tools.

Drupal

It is a CMS. Drupal users can create and manage websites by using it; it also builds and manages ecommerce stores and intranets.

13) Content Curation and Authoring Tools

Evernote

Evernote organizes all your notes as well as sync them timely to make sure that they are up-to-date; it also allows users to store and edit notes on their devices.

IFTTT

The tool allows its users to connect different web applications to automake tasks. You can write just once and post on many networks at once using the tool.

Feedly

Feedly provides up-to-date data on any given topic after collecting information from across the web. In this way, users can know about the new trends.

Scoop.it

Scoop.it allows users to create a journal on a specific topic and to discover, curate and classify content on a given topic.

Seismic

Seismic provides users with the necessary tools to make clients inclined towards your business to let your business grow.

14) Landing Page Creation and Testing Tools

Unbounce

The tool helps you create, manage and optimize landing pages quickly, without the help of a professional.

Leadpages

Leadpages is helpful in creating landing pages easily without much skill.

Click Funnels

It is a great business tool. ClickFunnels converts a series of pages into a conversion event: it can make all potential shoppers into buyers.

Ion

Ion enables marketers to target high-level leads and convert them using data-driven solutions.

Optimizely

Optimizely helps users with commerce tools and content management; it helps in placing content in front of the right audience.

15) Digital Asset Management

Filecamp

Filecamp is a cloud platform that enables businesses to share their digital content like images and videos.

Bynder

Bynder provides an easy way for businesses to manage their digital content across multiple platforms; it provides the right assets to people when required.

Adobe Experience Manager

It enables users to design and maintain web solutions as per business needs. It can be used for web pages as well as for mobile applications.

Libris

Libris provides its users with the best possible solutions regarding the usage and management of their digital assets; it helps in developing a practical strategy to enhance web content.

Widen

A cloud platform allowing access, management and delivery of digital assets across various platforms, and managing marketing copy.

16) On-Site Push Notification

Hello Bar

The tool enables more conversions and engagement with visitors on a website. Also, the tool is not intrusive.

Optinmonster

Optinmonster helps in increasing your sales from traffic you have, increases leads and grows email list. It is highly recommended for businesses online

SaleCycle

Salecycle provides on-site remarketing and email remarketing to businesses that have lost their customers. It helps businesses by reconnecting with ex-customers.

Wunderkind

The tool helps businesses in enhancing their web content to connect them with their potential customers and to increase their revenue.

Salesforce

It automates sales and marketing processes; it keeps the history of customer interactions and sales data. The tool also provides email outreach.

17) Personalization for E Commerce

Freshrelevance

Freshrelevance provides tools to commerce websites to generate revenue across websites, apps, emails and ads; it also boosts up conversion rates.

Barilliance

The tool provides real time personalization; it creates powerful incentives through advanced segmentation and tracks down customers’ behavior.

Ominiconvert

It provides personalization and helps in converting traffic into customers with advanced tools; it also has lower acquisition cost.

SaleCycle

Salecycle provides on-site remarketing and email remarketing to businesses that have lost their customers. It helps businesses by reconnecting with ex-customers.

KIBO

KIBO breaks down the complexities of modern commerce, ranging from management and ecommerce. It helps retailers in personalizing the whole order cycle.

18) Notification and Email Retargeting

SaleCycle

Salecycle provides on-site remarketing and email remarketing to businesses that have lost their customers. It helps businesses by reconnecting with ex-customers.

Freshrelevance

Freshrelevance provides tools to commerce websites to generate revenue across websites, apps, emails and ads; it also boosts up conversion rates.

Klaviyo

The tool helps in increasing and retaining customers by sending automated SMS and emails to them.

Pure 360

Pure 360 offers automated campaigns, email segmentation and customizable templates to its users for detailed analytics.

Airship

The tool allows its users to create personalized messages for their customers to be sent through SMS and push notification.

19) A/B and Multivariate Testing Tools

Google optimize

The Google tool allows its users to create personalized experiences on their websites, which is helpful in conversion rates.

Visual Website Optimizer

VWO creates digital experiences for your whole optimization; it helps in studying customers’ behavior and boosts up conversion rates.

Optimizely

Optimizely helps users with commerce tools and content management; it helps in placing content in front of the right audience.

Oracle Maymiser

Oracle offers website testing, behavioral targeting and product recommendations across various platforms. It claims to be more advanced than the others.

Adobe Target

The tool allows tailoring of customers’ experience to enhance it and revenue on websites and apps.

20) Ecommerce Management

Opencart

Opencart enables users to start an online store; it provides advanced features and is affordable, with a variety of themes.

Shopify

Shopify allows users to build and manage an online store, with a variety of features available. It also accepts debit and credit cards.

Spree

Spree is an ecommerce platform to build a marketplace. It offers multistore, multi-language and multi-currency features.

PrestaShop

It allows third-party developers to sell modules and themes. Users can also add more features to it by using add-on module.

WooCommerce

WooCommerce is for wordpress based websites. It allows users to build online stores to do business, with a volume of features available for tailoring.

21) Products and Customer Review Tools

Feefo

It is a customer review and feedback management system, allowing users to collect and analyze authentic reviews and feedback.

TrustPilot

TrustPilot improves and increases the number of reviews. It also analyzes reviews for better results in the future.

YotPo

The tool is helpful in retaining customers for a long time through quality reviews, sms, referrals and email marketing.

Bazaarvoice

Bazaarvoice employs tools to reach customers to gain their trust by providing quality content.

Reevoo

Reevoo is now owned by Feefo. Just like Feefo, it allows users to collect and analyze reviews and feedback.

22) Call Tracking

Convirza

The tool tracks calls and decodes conversation with the help of conventional tracking and AI powered calls analysis.

Infinity

Infinity provides call analysis and insightful data from conversations to make better business decisions in the future.

Responsive Tab

Responsive Tab provides keywords and runs campaigns that lure users to pick up your phone calls, making your marketing better.

CallTrackingMetrics

The tool informs users about the source of calls and what made calls happen. It has modern call tracking features, which provide good insights into conversations.

CallRail

CallRail provides marketing channels generating more calls; it has features that depict the quality of marketing campaigns done through emails, newspapers and T.V.

23) Customer Messaging and Live Chat

Intercom

Intercom provides support, help desk and live chat at a simple platform to its users. This leads to a better customer service experience.

Olark

Olark provides live chat and customer service to its users for marketing and sales. It drives sales and lures more leads.

Liveperson

It enables online businesses to interact with their customers via sms, chat and voice. The interaction can enhance outcomes.

LiveChat

The tool allows customers to interact with a human support service in no time via messaging.

Nuance

Nuance provides speech recognition to people and businesses; it is the first company to introduce conversational AI.

24) Social Media Publishing Focus

Buffer

Buffer is a social media manager that schedules posts and engages with customers. It is mostly used by small businesses.

Hootsuite

The tool allows scheduling of posts, curation of content and publishing of content on social media.

Sproutsocial

It is an optimization platform, which enables its users to publish all their content across all social media platforms; it collects data from users’ profiles and then employs analysis and publishing.

Cision

The tool offers publicity services and social media engagement, analysis and monitoring.

Falcon.IO

Falcon.io provides digital solutions to all businesses. The tool helps in interacting with customers to receive data from social media to optimize marketing strategies.

25) Social Media Listening Focus

Talkwalker

It is a social media analytical platform which listens and monitors media with the latest technology; it also does social benchmarking.

Brand24

The tool is utilized to identify, monitor and analyze conversations about your own product or business across social media platforms.

Mention

Mention allows users to crawl across the web to find and analyze any mention of their product and business to form marketing strategies.

Agorapulse

Agorapulse has an advanced listening tool, allowing you to find any mention of your brand across social media.

Brandwatch

Brandwatch listening allows users to listen to what people are commenting about their products and brands across social media; it lets users monitor all online campaigns about things that mean something to you.

26) Generative AI

ChatGPT

Developed by OpenAI, it is a virtual assistant, answering any query with a detailed answer just like a human being.

Gemini

It is generative AI developed by Google to answer any query in any language with a detailed answer.

Jasper

This generative AI helps by providing AI assistant content in article writing, blog posts, sales emails and social media posts.

Writesonic

The tool provides AI content including images to its users. The content is high quality and ranks well on search engines.

CopyAI

It helps website owners with quality content. It does creating and posting of content in a lesser amount of time. It is also simpler to use.

27) Online Customer Service Tools

Zendesk

Zendesk offers a variety of tools to its users, from email marketing, sales management, live chat to helpdesk.

Helpscout

The tool provides customer support to people via emails. It also integrates live chat and phone systems to make things smoother.

Freshdesk

It provides customer support via helpdesk having automations to make things happen faster.

Groove

Groove provides smoother and streamlined communication to customers, so website owners can concentrate on their business.

Sprinkle

It provides users with website management, content marketing, social media management, social experience and paid advertisement.

28) Marketing Cloud, CRM and Campaign Management Tools

GetResponse

GetResponse delivers professional emails, automates campaigns and creates sales funnels. It helps in converting contacts into customers via email marketing.

Hubspot

It is a marketing, sales and customer service software, helping users to increase their sales and growth.

Salesforce

It automates sales and marketing processes; it keeps the history of customer interactions and sales data. The tool also provides email outreach.

Oracle Marketing Cloud

The cloud allows marketing solutions of all types to enable higher returns on investment and better online campaigns.

Adobe Marketing Cloud

Adobe marketing cloud is a combination of various online marketing and web analytics, allowing users to manage sales and digital marketing.

29) Email Service Providers Marketing Automation Services

Mailchimp

Mailchimp allows users to interact with potential customers and parties. It employs strong data analysis and well designed emails.

Dotmailer

The tool allows users to create and send emails in no time; it grows email marketing of businesses.

GetResponse

GetResponse delivers professional emails, automates campaigns and creates sales funnels. It helps in converting contacts into customers via email marketing.

Adestra

It is an advertising network for businesses to deliver ads to potential customers. It also helps in managing their email campaigns.

ActOn

ActOn allows users to manage their email marketing; it employs segmentations, personalization, automation and analysis.

30) Survey and Voice of Customer Tools

SurveyMonkey

SurveyMonkey is a professional tool used to create and run surveys. These surveys and their feedback allows users to analyze data and make better decisions.

CrowdSignal

The tool is employed to create surveys, polls and quizzes and are sent via emails for data analysis.

Typeform

Typeform is used to create surveys as well as apps; Both can be created without any prior knowledge of code writing. The tool makes the collecting of information easier.

Alida

Alida allows users to create and distribute surveys to get constructive feedback. It is user-friendly, and surveys can easily be created by using it.

Confirmit

It is used to create and manage research projects and feedback programs. It gathers data about markets for businesses to help them grow.

The above-listed tools cover all aspects of customer experience and business growth. Now you know which tool to utilize for your digital campaigns, so bookmark them and start executing your ideas one by one.

2024 essential digital marketing tools [Infographic]

Must-Have Digital Marketing Tools for 2024: Your Essential Guide

Chart Courtesy of Smart Insights.

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by Ehtasham Ahmad via Digital Information World

Google Search Reverts to Pagination on Desktop

Google Search has opted to switch off its continuous scroll experience for users when searching through the desktop.

The search engine giant recently mentioned how the old feature would enable more results to load when users scroll past the initial page for search results. Instead, the classic and old bars located at the footer would be visible now on Google Search, it explained.

The change would come into play starting today as the search giant first rolled out continuous search in December of 2022 and then on mobile in October of 2021. So it would not be wrong to mention how the feature only lasted 1.5 years on a desktop.

As far as the change taking place on mobile search is concerned, that will be sunet by next month or so.

The news was confirmed by the company’s spokesperson who added recently how the Next button would arise at the page’s bottom on Desktop while the More Results feature would show up across mobile phones.

Google mentioned how this kind of change is designed to enable search companies to serve results at a faster pace across different searches, instead of the usual automated loading results feature that users did not request.
The company also mentioned how such changes were designed to ensure users get faster search results across different searches, instead of continuous result loading for searches that were never requested to begin with.

So if you happen to be on page two while searching through your desktop, you might see fewer clicks across a particular website. It all depends on whether or not the searcher scrolls and clicks to the next page or if they don’t. Also, this could affect data seen on the Search Console as many searchers attend to this feature than the Next feature.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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• NCMEC: Instagram, Snapchat Lead in Child Sextortion Cases, Boys Now More Vulnerable

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by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

Tuesday, June 25, 2024

NCMEC: Instagram, Snapchat Lead in Child Sextortion Cases, Boys Now More Vulnerable

According to a report by National Center of Missing and Exploited Children(NCMEC), there has been an 82% increase in the financial sextortion of children between 2021 and 2022. These kinds of incidents have been seen for many years now where scammers ask kids for their compromising pictures and blackmail them with the pictures in exchange for money. NCMEC receives about 812 reports of this kind of blackmailing weekly on average and most of the blackmailers ask for money.

NCMEC says that about 3.5 to 5% of the children have gone through financial sextortion before reaching adulthood. Girls get impacted from this more than boys but now NCMEC is getting reports of boys between the ages of 14 and 17 being more impacted with financial sextoration than girls.

Most of this crime is being done on Instagram where scammers lure innocent children into sending their compromised pictures. Snapchat is the second closest culprit. 75% of the times scammers send the messages first on these two social media apps while Facebook is in the third position with 7% reports.

65% of the victims are asked to move to a private chat from a public chat to make the victim vulnerable enough to share their data. The scammers then blackmail them with the pictures and ask them to transfer money on different payment apps like Venmo, CashApp and PayPal. NCMEC says that social media should improve their reporting methods so the arrest of these scammers can be possible.




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• Study Uncovers Risks in AI Models: Multimodal Systems Highlight Unsafe Outputs

Is ChatGPT Is Bias Against Disable People?
by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World

Study Uncovers Risks in AI Models: Multimodal Systems Highlight Unsafe Outputs

Almost a decade ago, when AI was starting to get wind of its progression, there was a lot of skepticism around the idea of machines with AI taking over human beings. But slowly and gradually, AI grew at such an exponential rate that the mere possibility of machines taking over humans is now a reality dawning upon us.

As the progression of machines gaining superintelligence is an unstoppable process, the best that we can do is bind its growth with laws and regulations in the research and advancement stages of AI to prevent the machines from achieving Artificial General Intelligence, which will put the future of humanity at severe risk of being replaced in various domains of professional life.

To regulate AI and its progress, particularly after seeing the inevitable wave of ChatGPT's ability to reason and rationalize like a human, super alignment teams were set for all AI generative models to supervise and govern in restricted capacities to prevent harm to society. However, the superalignment teams were dissolved in May due to disagreements, mainly from the researchers, that AI should have free space without any restrictions to grow and adequately improve itself.

To allow AI to progress in unbounded ways, ChatGPT in May gave its platform Open AI free access to multimodal, which means taking image and text input from the internet to its newly developed system, GPT-4o. But after some time, things begin to get out of hand. The study done by arXiv found that these models, like GPT-4V, Gemini 1.5, and GPT-4o, give dangerous outputs based on the text and image inputs.

To highlight the issue of unsafe outputs, a study named Cross-Modality Safety Alignment found safe inputs but pointed out unsafe outputs as per the benchmarks of nine safety domains such as morality, self-harm, privacy violation, harmful behavior, fake news and information misrepresentation, stereotyping, discrimination, and political controversy.

The study also found that LVLMs (Large Visual Language Models) faced a tough time spotting Safe Inputs and Unsafe Outputs during the receiving process of several images and text inputs. The visual language model systems were also incapable of giving a safe response to the unsafe outputs. As mentioned in the study analysis, 15 LVLMs were tested, and the accuracy of identifying unsafe outputs of ChatGPT-4v was 53.29%, GPT-4o had 50.9%, and Gemini 1.5 scored 52.1%.

To overcome these hurdles and to improve the accuracy of the models, the study further suggested that Visual Language Models should integrate information and insights from all modalities to have a generalized and universally applicable understanding of different situations. The system should also focus on building the ability to utilize cultural sensitivities, ethical considerations, and safety hazards in real-world conditions. One last thing that the study authors put a lot of emphasis on was the notion of identifying the intent of the user even if it's not directly mentioned, but through the reasoning of the text and images, they should be able to reach valid and accurate conclusions.

Image: DIW-Aigen

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by Ahmed Naeem via Digital Information World

Apple’s Misery In The EU: Company Becomes First To Be Charged For Violating DMA

Tech giant Apple is one of the first of many to acclaim several achievements but this next piece of news isn’t something the company will be proud of.

The Cupertino firm has been called out by regulators in the EU for being the first to violate the Digital Markets Act in the region. The DMA has had several tech giants scrambling to try and make sure their operations were in line with the law.

The latest on this front has to do with Apple stopping developers from freely steering consumers to other alternative channels with various other offers and content.

The entire investigation started in March and focused on the developer’s ability to combine alternative methods for payment across both of these stores. Moreover, the EU also wished to examine whether or not the fees from Apple for App Stores belonging to third parties violated the law and if its ability to sideload was actually acceptable.

It turned out that the answer to this could be a yes as investigators have been pointing out that Apple is not keen on giving others a chance and wishes to be the head of the competitive race by adding restrictions.

Steering is said to be a key function that forces app developers to be less dependent on app stores owned by gatekeepers so that consumers might be more aware of what offers are at stake.

This might be the very first time that the EU took action against a leading tech firm for DMA.

The EU has already taken action with Apple’s operations. For starters, app developers were said to have been barred from adding pricing details across app stores and channels owned by third parties. Secondly, it enables developers to link out of platforms to external browsers but does end up regulating what the developer is allowed to do when linking out. Thirdly, it charges developers for acquiring new clients via this link-out endeavor.

The company is going to be given a chance to argue with all of the findings brought up against it by the EU before the levying of penalties. In case there is an infringement, the Commission would impose fines that go as far as 10% of the whole gatekeepers’ turnover around the globe. And such fines might be up to 20% in those cases when infringements keep getting repeated.

In other news, we know that the European Commission is even rolling out new proceedings about the support of Apple’s alternative iOS app stores. The case focuses on a new Core Tech Fee which is a multi-step process needed for users to download the marketplaces and what eligibility the company has brought forward for developers in this respect.

They also vow to open up proceedings against the tech giant with core tech fees and different rules for enabling third-party stores as mentioned above. This is a major point worth mentioning because a lot of people and developers are looking forward to welcoming alternative options that go above and beyond the usual App Store.

Hence, rumors about Apple undermining such efforts are not going to be taken too well, sources mentioned.

We even saw the iPhone maker recently blame various regulatory uncertainties linked to the DMA as the reason for the delay in launching its iOS lineup across the EU states which many saw as shocking news. But Apple says that the blame lies on all the interoperability restrictions that it feels might undermine both the security and privacy of users.

Image: DIW-Aigen

Read next: ChatGPT Recorded its Biggest Revenue Because of ChatGPT-4o After Declining for Some Months
by Dr. Hura Anwar via Digital Information World

ChatGPT Recorded its Biggest Revenue Because of ChatGPT-4o After Declining for Some Months

ChatGPT recorded its biggest month of revenue ever since the release of its mobile app. It is all due to the new model of ChatGPT, ChatGPT-4o. ChatGPT had been seeing a decline in its revenue for the past few months. It was because ChatGPT stopped the subscriptions for ChatGPT+ which made the revenue down by 26% in April 2024 as compared to November 2023. In May, ChatGPT showed the peak in its downloads. It went from 13.9 million downloads in April to 18.7 million in may, which is the highest since November.

On both App Store and Google Play, ChatGPT’s revenue grew from $5.8 million in April to $20.3 million in May 2024. Most of the revenue growth of ChatGPT was seen on the App Store. ChatGPT is always growing in revenue now and has hit the $20 million mark. $20.3 million is the net revenue of ChatGPT in April which means it is the amount after deducting App Store and Google Play’s fee.

Most of the ChatGPT’s revenue was from USA and Germany. UK and Japan were just behind Germany for giving ChatGPT the biggest revenue. ChatGPT is still growing internationally and it’s not long until ChatGPT will grow in other countries too, especially with the release of ChatGPT-4o.


Chart: Appfigures.

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Can Esports rival traditional sports in the digital age?

The digital era is in full swing, and each innovation is having a profound effect on our lives. We are gripped by modern day tech and are becoming increasingly dependent on it. One of the main advantages of tech though is that it introduces something new into our lives. It does not necessarily replace things but changes and evolves everyday items like the mobile phone, computer, or payment devices further.

Our focus on this short piece will not be on a piece of tech, but an industry that has used tech and digital advancements for its gain. We are talking about Esports. It has enjoyed a phenomenal rise over the past decade and now organizes its own outright events with the world’s best athletes competing against each other for supremacy in the Esports world.

Just one glance at Esports betting markets at Cloudbet shows you how many games and events are already being organized and we can only expect this to increase. If we were to take the presence of Esports on sports betting platforms for example, one can argue that it ranks as a fully-fledged sport. But how far has Esports actually come? Can we talk about it in the same breath as traditional sports such as soccer and tennis?

Firstly, here are a few facts about Esports:

  • There are currently an estimated 286 million Esports enthusiasts around the world.
  • Nearly 300 million additional people are classed as “occasional viewers”.
  • The Esports market in the United States is expected to pass the USD1 billion mark this year.
  • The biggest prize pot in an Esports tournament ever is a whopping USD40,018,400.00. This was the overall prize pot for The International 2021 DOTA 2 tournament.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:EDG_Champion.jpg
Image: Wikimedia EDG Champion.

How far can Esports go?

The question of whether Esports can reach the levels of traditional sports is an interesting one and one that we can only hypothesize for now. The potential is most certainly there though. The numbers highlighted above are impressive, but they do not match up to the 5 billion people worldwide that follow soccer. However, the potential lies in what the future might bring. The reason Esports has such a high ceiling is that tech will only continue to get better. With tech improving, there will be an inevitable shift of people using digital devices even more than they do now.

The exposure is key for Esports to progress and having soccer icons such as Ruud Gullit promoting the recent eChampions League is a bold statement. The money to invest in gaming tech, training of athletes, and sponsorship of teams is clearly there, all Esports needs is time. Soccer, American Football, baseball, ice hockey all had to make the same small strides at one point, and although Esports is relatively new to the scene, the building blocks are there for billions to follow in the future.


by Asim BN via Digital Information World