Our interlocutor has more than 25 years of international experience in online space, digital media, telecommunications and consulting. The last two decades he spent in Asia and, as of recently, Vasiljev is Centili Group Executive Director in Serbia, one of the most advanced global tech companies doing business in more than 80 countries in the world.
Zoran Vasiljev is a serial entrepreneur, founder and investor of numerous companies, with three exits, and three spin-offs evaluated at US $ 550 mn, he managed portfolio of as many as 32 digital investments and a leader in different companies Apigate, Akiata Digital, StarHub, Arthur D. Little, Value Partners and Peppers & Rogers Group.
We discussed current monetization trends and channels with Zoran, the “winning formula” of digital monetization, his business tips for small and big “players” on a digital scene, potentials of the blockchain technology when it comes to monetization as well as all other aspects of monetization processes in a digital ecosystem.
A complete interview is available in a video clip in the continuation of this article.
WebMind: In your statement for Technology Magazine you explain that you help “your clients unlock still unrealized revenue flows”. You said that two years ago. How successful you are today, having in mind all the changes and progress in different industries, especially digital and tech industry?
Zoran Vasiljev: I believe that in a short two-year period, great progress has been made in the realization of such ideas, namely in the monetization in different sectors
Why?
Because all of us who participate in the monetization industry are investing a lot of efforts to understand issues our clients and partners have in their sectors in order to satisfy the needs and provide for their customers. I believe that the time we spend understanding stumbling blocks, issues with their vendors, suppliers, partners etc. makes a great difference and helps launch new products, new methods, and simply shorten the time we call the “conversion to cash” on platforms for monetization and in the monetization sector in general. The time needed for the “conversion to cash” is the time needed to start an interaction and before monetization has been completed because that is something that has become important and I believe that the progress has been made in that regard.
For startups and people who are just beginning and considering products and services to get monetized, it is very important to find something with mass market or global appeal because monetization starts at the very moment when there is enough demand and enough mass.
There is still a lot to be done, some industries are more advanced when it comes to digital content, digital monetization, and their transformation in general whereas some sectors are trying to do this internally, and they maybe depend less on partners such as digital platforms for monetization of such experience.
WebMind: You say that people are using their phones for two reasons: for entertainment and conversation. And if we succeed in embedding monetization and payments (payments as instant booking, instant buying, instant betting etc) in that dialogue, we would have a “winning formula”. Namely, as you already said, you believe that the “combination of conversation and payment is something that is to explode tech-wise”. Do you still believe that this is the direction in which we should go when it comes to monetization?
Zoran Vasiljev: Conversational commerce, namely conversational payments are the future. It is something that already exists and something that we can already demonstrate. I am deeply convinced that all of us who really use mobile screen as our primary screen are still doing that, in my opinion, for two reasons. One of them is to communicate quickly, via e-mail or, ever more often, in a chat or messaging we use 80% of the day, and to entertain ourselves while we are waiting in queues and watching sports, video, music or some e-commerce. In that context there is no better real estate for monetization of any user, i.e. in her/his environment, where s/he spends most of the time. Therefore, if I spend most of my time in an SMS, Viber or WhatsApp, I accept to be contacted there, I accept to be found here by a business partner and a private partner and so on, and then I probably have this inclination to get engaged in a transaction. If it is a promotion, a voucher, if there is a reminder to pay for something I forgot to pay or finalize a transaction I started on an e-commerce website, so I placed five items in a shopping card and I’m still there, and someone tells me, I know you have five items in your shopping cart, would you like a 20% discount, just finalize the purchase, and if I can do that with a click, in the same environment, if I can finish this, then that is conversational commerce I’m talking about, and I’m not redirected to a different portal where they would ask me to add 5 more information about myself because we all know what happens then.
At the very moment when such an experience starts, we are closing this window, six minutes of our time for this have expired and we are leaving to do something else and never finish the transaction.
So yes, yes. Conversational commerce is here and I really think it’s a hit waiting to explode.
WebMind: Do you expect this to be a dominant monetization model in the near future?
Zoran Vasiljev: In terms of payment methods, everything is ready, since there are integrations both in banks and credit cards and carrier billing, namely charging via mobile operators, via vouchers, so everything is ready when it comes to that.
Namely, now it is important to have enough companies and merchants who recognize that it is a good thing to include a charging opportunity in any messaging model when they already have interaction with their users. But this is not only transactional collection of payment. I believe that we can have both Booking and Reminder there, and a giveaway method of some kind, within the same model, to prolong the engagement.
Children, our future generations, are already spending so much time in front of the screen that it might be a good thing to do something of a substance, interesting or intelligent while engaged in a game, and earn some money instead of scrolling some random feed on TikTok or somewhere else and thus earn money for someone else.
Not every interaction is related to a transaction, engagement is important, for us to realize that if someone wants to have one-on-one interaction, that the system recognized us, that we had an interaction before, we were watching, we were reading, and possibly we even wanted to buy and if we didn’t, at least they reminded us and remained in contact with us, and it did not seem aggressive, because we did give some kind of permission to be contacted in our window, in the window we use most frequently, and we most probably won’t refuse such an interaction.
WebMind: Is the world ready for such an interaction?
Zoran Vasiljev: I believe that globally already there is such awareness. We are aware of our interactions in the last 2.5 years. The pandemic accelerated education and some of these services and technologies are helping us change our experience and we do some things much faster and more efficiently than before. I believe that this is applied both locally and regionally. Tech-wise, there is not a region in the world that is lagging behind.
It is my opinion technologies do exist, integrations exist and we have companies doing that at this moment, and they simply want to have that as one of primary methods and interactions and, eventually, transactions.
And all of us, in the ecosystem, we have an obligation to deal with this and talk about this, because by doing this we simply accelerate both the economy and consumption and everything else that starts to depend on each other and I believe this will very quickly spread and skip both local and global borders.
WebMind: What would be your “hint” for those who are now entering the digital world (for startup entrepreneurs, freelancers, digital nomads and all those with an ambition to become great) on one hand and, on the other, “for big players” who would like to transform themselves digitally, namely to digitalize their processes and products?
Zoran Vasiljev: Let’s start with large-scale organizations, companies that have an opportunity to seize the moment, transform themselves and then, eventually, skip a couple of steps and reach some digital transformation more quickly and then monetization in this process as well.
My advice for them is not to try to do things internally, but to choose partners, to look around and see who they can do this with and whose resources they can use and don’t think of that as competition, or rivalry, but simply work with a partner and reach a moment that contributes to their value and gives additional benefit.
For startups and people who are just beginning and considering products and services to get monetized, it is very important to find something with mass market or global appeal because monetization starts at the very moment when there is enough demand and enough mass. Then you can choose different business models to test and reach transactions and pivot a business model because if it is done in smaller groups, some local groups, then you cannot get the real picture of this business potential. I always tell startups and those in the B2C segment, especially those in the B2B segment: be braver, think globally, now when everything is online, now when we have access to all the information and different channels, there is no reason to be satisfied with a local story, a local ambition, because for the same investment, for the same development, for the same budget, you can now communicate globally and simply learn and get feedback and pivot business and, of course, monetize.
You should also work with people who did this before, hire smarter than yourself, share your ideas with people from the industry. It is a good thing to have an idea, creativity. However, without any real client, this is hobby, and without expertise, we remain with our own idea which sometimes prevents our growth.
WebMind: Is the gaming industry a leader in monetization? What about the future?
Zoran Vasiljev: The gaming industry is a huge industry in terms of monetization. Mobile gaming is currently worth more than US$ 110 bn per year. However, video and other kinds of entertainment such as music and any other streaming are not really behind much either. In the last 2.5 years, gaming exploded because a lot of people, especially children, stayed at home and gaming expanded both in term of user experience and launch of new things. The industry has become smarter and more experienced. Especially in South East Asia where mobile screens are used as the only screen for all kinds of entertainment, or any kind of engagement and monetization.
Creative studios have published new content, new monetization channels appeared, new business models, where gamers themselves have something to compete for, they earn something by participating, judging by that, it is becoming very interesting to see further development.
WebMind: What is your opinion about the play-to-earn monetization model?
Zoran Vasiljev: I believe that the play-to-earn model will be revolutionary. And not only in gaming. In terms of other content as well. That model is something that is becoming pretty dominant in emerging markets in Africa, Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, namely Southeast Asia and Africa, where we can see the entire families, women who do not work, stay-at-home moms, elderly people, with engagement on their screens which earns them a dollar, or two, three dollars, just by being in gamification or an environment where the play-to-earn is just starting to function.
I also believe vouchers and coupons are back. That is something that people lost a bit in the past. They thought it was a physical card, 10, 12 or 15 years ago. However, they have returned in digital forms, and they are becoming pretty flexible.
In my opinion, it is a business model which altered the traditional earning method a bit, as well as the traditional engagement and that is something that I believe will become relevant. If we think more carefully, we use resources in our phone, our data, our batteries, our time and, in the meantime, we’ve made money for some third party, an agency or someone else who published the content. Maybe now it’s time to use the time we spend using these screens, the engagement we give, to be something that brings some reward to us. In this context, this can mean earning money.
WebMind: What kinds of repercussions this might have on the future generations? If our children see that we spend our days playing games with our devices, what’s the message we are sending to them?
Zoran Vasiljev: It’s really a social issue. I believe it all starts with an example we set. I don’t believe that we will change our old ways when we start playing all of a sudden, and gain some new sources of income by doing that.
Children, our future generations, are already spending so much time in front of the screen that it might be a good thing to do something of a substance, interesting or intelligent while engaged in a game, and earn some money instead of scrolling some random feed on TikTok or somewhere else and thus earn money for someone else.
So, I don’t believe it is such a big issue if we succeed in explaining why this makes sense, and other things will not make sense any more but I don’t believe that we, our generation, will change that.
WebMind: What can we expect in the future when it comes to digital monetization, first of all in 2023, and then beyond?
Zoran Vasiljev: I believe the year 2023 is an excellent year for investments, an excellent year to launch quality ideas.
In 2022, we saw developments on stock exchanges, we saw what happened with some hypes in crypto as well etc. I believe that evaluations of companies have been reduced to some level where 2023 is becoming very interesting for new platform models where, I believe, interesting monetization business models will appear as well.
One of the ideas is this reverse business model which will give people an opportunity to make money by watching content and not only by subscribing and paying for subscriptions. I believe that there are sectors that are becoming ever more interesting to become both digitalized and monetized. Even in our region, we can see what is happening with e-commerce which is becoming pretty active and that is something that has to have not only physical content inside, but also digital content, to become interesting. It lacks, if we are talking about our region, super APP, something that contains several business models and allows us to function via one or two apps and not 20 because we don’t have time for 20. And I believe that this is something that will be interesting to see, who and how it can be done, and whether it will be launched in this region and all of us in the ecosystem, we are here to help and maybe even participate in some of these startups.
WebMind: What monetization channel you expect to prevail?
Zoran Vasiljev: I believe that there are two channels which will be very interesting, namely two methods. I’m still pretty bullish when it comes to subscription economy and everything related to it, as well as the share model. I believe that to be very interesting.
And I also believe vouchers and coupons are back.
That is something that people lost a bit in the past. They thought it was a physical card, 10, 12 or 15 years ago. However, they have returned in digital forms, and they are becoming pretty flexible.
Different currencies can be employed, different sizes in the context of their value, they can be used for digital and non-digital content and remain online, or used as gifts.
It will be very interesting to see companies and platforms that can do distribution of voucher and coupon systems and complement the real transaction both online and offline.
