GANDT Fireside Chat #008 | Food delivery with Google Maps and the opportunities of eSports in marketing

True to our motto “Working Out Loud”, we at GANDT Ventures we exchange our thoughts and ideas on current news topics in the world of online marketing, digital retail, and e-commerce. This helps us uncover opportunities that can be used for companies and our clients as part of our daily business.

Food delivery now directly via Google Maps

The search engine Google announced that food can now also be ordered via Google Maps and payment is made conveniently via Google Pay.

“Order to take away” or “Order and have delivered” are the selectable options. It also shows whether contactless delivery is possible.

The number of partners is currently small, only Lieferando has been integrated in Germany so far. With the new feature, Google wants to speed up food delivery.

However, we wonder what advantage ordering via Google Maps has compared to ordering directly from Lieferando?

Online Gaming – Fortnite sets all-time record

The online game Fortnite, conducted a live stream concert with the American rapper Travis Scott on April 24, 2020.

12.3 million people attended the astronomical concert live. It was the largest online concert in human history.

It is important to note that this 12.3 million includes only those who have witnessed the concert live in the game. Travis Scott’s YouTube views are already at 21 million a week after his appearance.

Back in February this year, Marshmello was live on stage at Fortnite, with 10.7 million players who watched him live in-the-game.

The number of views on YouTube after the event rose to 27 million.

The relevance of eSports in marketing

A new form of entertainment – eSports inspires a large quantity of people, often young target groups, and continues to grow strongly.

Looking back at the beginning of eSports, we can see that in the first World Championship of the game “League of Legends” in 2011, only eight teams competed, for a prize money of 100,000 USD.

What a gigantic leap eSports has taken since then can be seen when we look at the numbers from the World Championship 2018: 24 teams were playing for a total prize money of 6.45 million USD, of which 4.2 million were financed by the fans.

Prize money in comparison – “Real” Sports vs. eSports

To put these KPIs in relation, we compare the Fortnite Championship 2019 with a live sports event, the most famous and most important cycling race in the world: the Tour de France.

The total price money at the Tour de France in 2019 was 2.3 million Euros, the winner received about 500,000 Euros.

The price pot of the online game Fortnite was USD 30 million, of which the winner of the Championship received USD 3 million. That’s six times more than the winner of the Tour de France has received.

With these facts, eSports is considered an unstoppable phenomenon and the numbers speak for the enormous marketing potential.

To use athletes as advertising faces for marketing is not uncommon. The already strongly represented Energy Drink Red Bull, used a cooperation with the streamer Tyler Blevins, also known as Ninja in the game Fortnite.

How important he is as an advertising figure is shown when EA paid him a million dollars to play in a game released by EA – Apex Legends.

However, the streamer is not only available in live streams, but also in the supermarket: You can see his printed face as a limited edition on a Red Bull can. In April 2018, he overtook LeBron James and Cristiano Ronaldo and became the athlete with the most social interactions globally.

Facebook wants paid live streams and donation options

To support developers and small businesses, Facebook now wants to add the ability to charge for accessing events with live videos on Facebook – from online appearances to courses to professional conferences.

This means that without a prior payment you will not get access to the videos. This applies per event and is not on a subscription basis.

Another feature of Facebook is already underway.

Wherever charitable fundraisers are available, Facebook now allows you to raise money for charity by adding a donation button to live videos.

StudiVZ – reviving the sleeping network

StudiVZ has been around for more than 15 years, but it has been considered lost online in recent years. The once serious Facebook rival is now disappearing and closing its digital doors at the end of June.

But an alternative has already been developed and is now being revived asa vz.net. The managing director of the small start-up, Agnneta Bindiger, launches the beta version during the quarantine period.

More than 300 million files are still available from studiVZ and vz.net wants to give users the opportunity to port them to the new site, because at the end of June all data on StudiVZ will be deleted.

In vz.net, the focus is on group communication, they want to enable people to exchange ideas with each other and the data should not be commercialized.

VZ has a great recognition value and will probably make many people curious.

Agenda | GANDT Fireside Chat Video #008