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A new study by Juniper Research has found that the global spend via conversational commerce will near $135 billion by 2027; rising from $39 billion in 2023. It found that in 2027, 47% of spend will be attributable to OTT-based channels, including WhatsApp and WeChat.
RELATED: Mobile operators to lose $2.5B of business messaging revenue to OTT apps globally by 2023 – Juniper
Specifically, as superapps increasingly provide multiple services within a single interface, including payments, commerce and messaging, greater engaging commerce interactions will be orchestrated. The research urges OTT apps to fully integrate such features in order to reduce friction or risk losing traffic.
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Asia Pacific to Dominate
The new research, Conversational Commerce: Business Model Analysis, Value-added Services & Market Forecasts 2022-2027, found that Asia Pacific will account for 75% of total spend over conversational commerce channels in 2027. This will be driven by country-specific apps such as WeChat, LINE and KakaoTalk embedding in-house payment solutions. The research identified that the versatility of these apps, which combine features from WhatsApp, Twitter, PayPal and Uber, will be key to developing a strong digital marketplace; offering an improved user experience.
Research author Elisha Sudlow-Poole commented: “As the development of ‘superapps’ will create a new ecosystem for business messaging, communication service providers must ensure that they have strong, proactive partnerships with the most popular superapps to maximise their role in the conversational commerce value chain.”
How Must the West Emulate this Success?
The research forecasts that the total number of OTT-based conversational commerce users in Europe and North America will rise by 179% to reach 33.4 million by 2027. For these regions to emulate the success of Asia Pacific, communication platform providers must ensure that they are able to support the influx of traffic from OTT messaging apps, as well as the ability to provide depth within these channels through the use of value-added services. This will ensure they remain an integral part of the ecosystem, as the capabilities of OTT messaging apps increase.
COVER PHOTO: MessengerPeople
