Amazon has another double play – advertising on its one oasis’s ecommerce. We had formulated the one oasis strategy (PDF) on Amazon with AWS(Amazon Web Services) which was initially built  to improve the ecommerce business before it became a money maker itself. Today, Amazon is growing a serious advertising business which will become a Fortune 500 company soon if it were a separate company.

Amazon’s advertising business is a brewing industry force, and ad buyers and competing retailers and platforms are only starting to come to terms with its weight in the industry.

Now worth $2.5 billion as of Amazon’s third-quarter earnings in October, an increase of 123 percent, Amazon advertising’s growth has turned the company into a soon-to-be rival of the duopoly, Google and Facebook. According to eMarketer, advertisers are forecasted to spend $4.6 billion on Amazon’s platform this year, which would give it 7 percent of market share. That’s a sliver compared to the market share of Google, at 37 percent, and Facebook, at 20 percent, but Amazon’s business is growing at a much faster rate. In the third quarter of 2018, brands’ ad spend on Amazon increased by 250 percent over the third quarter of 2017.

There is a reason Amazon ad business is doing well: Amazon advertising delivers better results than Google’s. If Amazon begins to automate that process at scale, it could pose a huge challenge to Google. When you search on Amazon.com, you are actually in the process of spending money. Google delivers traffics to websites of merchants; Amazon is delivering revenue in dollars to them. That is why this is exciting for this company, and investors like the Amazon Advertising vision.

All Together

Amazon is building a solid business using the one oasis strategy. This business will challenge the duopoly which currently exists between Google and Facebook. The advertising business, just as Amazon Web Services, is improving the ecommerce with the pay and play model: the more money you spend on advertising, as a merchant, the more you sell as your wares will appear on searches at the top. The Amazon search was originally created to make the ecommerce business better. Now, it is earning revenue because it has become an advertising business. Simply, this is the typical one oasis strategy playbook.

The Central Bank of Nigeria has reached a truce with MTN on the alleged illegal repatriation of funds from Nigeria.

But MTN is a clear winner here. CBN looks like a baby lost in a mall writing that MTN “supplied additional material, not previously offered to the Bank, satisfactorily clarifying its remittances.” Come on – a big shame they did not do this privately.

I hope MTN does not sue CBN for triggering unnecessary confusion which severely affected its market value. We keep saying: Automate everything in Nigeria so that everything would be transparently visible to all. This will prevent new documents emerging from behind!

The Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on Wednesday wielded the big stick on mobile telecom firm, MTN Nigeria Communications Limited, and four commercial banks for alleged financial infractions.

The CBN’s spokesperson, Isaac Okorafor, in a statement sent to PREMIUM TIMES on Wednesday said the apex bank wrote to MTN Nigeria demanding a refund of about $8.13 billion (about N2.5trillion at N306.15 to $) allegedly repatriated illegally out of Nigeria.

Mr Okorafor said the affected banks, including Standard Chartered Bank, Stanbic-IBTC, Citibank and Diamond Bank, would refund various amounts totaling N5.87 billion.

Standard Chartered was asked to refund N2.5 billion; Stanbic IBTC (N1.9 billion); Citibank (N1.3 billion and Diamond Bank (N250 million).

The letter below…

In few hours, the Messiah would be born for the most important project – the Redemption project. Across nations, synods and churches, there would be ecclesiastical choirs with angelic melodies singing HE IS BORN.

Cherubim, seraphim, and ophanim, and all the angels of power – the constituents of the “host of God” –, and guardians of His throne, will sing welcoming this special remembrance of the new Adam who must redeem nations as old Adam was obedient unto death. Blessedness to the Lord of Spirits, and peace to all nations, Emmanuel is Born and God is with us.

As He begins the Redemption project, He called to Mission. We can learn so much from His preparations, His challenges, His project executions and His triumphs.

The Call to Mission

Merry Christmas.

Africa has problems with continuity and succession in our family businesses. And when bad things happen (yes, the company collapses), the usual thing to say is that the family member that took over was not well “prepared”. Personally, I do not think that is the main issue. If you check, some of the sons who took over from their fathers spent time in those companies. Yes, some worked excess of 10 years at different “leadership” positions. Sure – holding a big title does not make you a leader: you simply have a nice commanding business card for conferences.

Instead of looking for preparation from the lens of experience, we need to focus on Capability [edited out natural as it was tripping people] which goes beyond work experience to energy, vision, intellect and raw leadership. Some people are great followers while few others are great leaders. If your son is a follower, and you make him a leader, he will fail. It takes more than a title to lead a company.

There are different levels of leadership. Head of Cleaning is a leader to cleaners in a company. But when you come at the level of that disruptive leadership, you do not prepare people into it with a manual. You can make people better but you cannot move someone who does not have it to become it. I doubt if there is anyway you can prepare any person not Elon Musk to become Elon Musk.  But you can create many CFOs in SpaceX and Tesla. My point is this – watch the person to know if he/she has it before you start throwing efforts if you expect that TOP leadership to thrive. It is not about biology – it could be life experiences, training, education and exposure.

[…]

But anytime biology comes in over competence, few quarters will decide the outcome of the debate. In Qualcomm, the son of the founder grew to become the CEO of a public company. FOX 20th Century is run by families. Yes, families can have the greats inside. See the Agneli in Italy (Juventus owner). I am simply saying – take away biology and follow competence.

[…]

But note that “natural” in my piece did not mention anything “biological”. My point is this: you cannot prepare any other person to become Elon Musk. In companies, the CEO is the leader. It is better you have your son or daughter as assistant to the CEO than ask your either to run the show when that person is not naturally ready for it.  While you can prepare me to be  a fair footballer, I am not sure I will be a great one. CEOs must be great to thrive. It is better as Huawei founder is doing to look for greats for that #1 job.  Willingness and Preparation is fair. But I can say that there are things we cannot do well as humans while others can do them better. You may be willing and ready to be prepared but you may never be great. But you could be a leader at your level. This does not mean that son/daughter can’t be that great. My point is this – do it on merit.

Look at Huawei, one of the finest companies in Asia. The founder had already said that none of his children has the intellectual vision and business capabilities to lead the company. But he is confident they would support any CEO as they are good at their own levels. The founder could have pushed for his daughter (now CFO) to become CEO and then mess up the company. You cannot say she is not well prepared after working for years in different “leadership” positions in Huawei.

The Chinese telecoms giant won’t be listing itself on any public exchange, and the founder’s kids won’t be taking up the reins either – as their dad reckons they’re not up to the job.

Ren Zhengfei, who founded Huawei with a fistful of cash back in 1988, is now 68 years of age. Rumours have been circulating that he’d pass control to his daughter (the firm’s current CFO) or his son (who works at the company in an unspecified role), but in an email to staff seen by Sina Tech he scotches that idea – along with any thoughts of a public listing.

So, let us move away from this “preparation theory”. Let us focus on if the person has it. No matter how well you prepare me for 100 meters dash, I will never win the race if decent competitors are lined up. Yes, I was always coming last in secondary school during inter-house sports heat. At the end, I would smile at the winners – “I won from the back”.

Simply, preparation is not the only thing: you have to check if the person has the natural capability. If that person does not, no amount of preparation will yield great impacts. And holding prior big title does not mean preparation. Until we understand that, we would continue to see great companies go down after the father-founder exits and son takes over.

This is a fascinating piece written for the believers of Bitcoin as a money doubler. 2018 was expected to be the year hodl (not selling Bitcoin) would have taken many young Africans to the big money club. But the year turned out to one to forget as Bitcoin crashed from close to $20,000 to about $4,200 it is presently trading.

Yet, despite my skepticism on crypto as a money doubler, I do think what Facebook plans to do with cryptocurrency is the way to go. You use it as a currency it was designed to be and not as an investment asset that keeps growing. That distinction is critical if one wants to understand many use applications of blockchain and cryptocurrencies especially the stablecoin flavors.

This time last year, people gathered around the dinner table for the holidays and avoided discussing politics by explaining cryptocurrency to each other. Digital tokens and their various schemes were exploding after a year of steady gains, reaching a precipice on December 16, when bitcoin hit a high of $20,000.

Heading into the new year, virtually everyone believed in one way or another that cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology had a bright future. For masters of the universe like Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, the talking point changed from “bitcoin is a fraud” to “blockchain is real.” Mid-level Wall Street traders were suddenly excited to engage in futures betting for or against bitcoin. Thomas Lee, head of research at Fundstrat Global Advisors and someone mainstream finance analysts paid attention to, predicted and kept predicting that bitcoin would hit $25k. And John McAfee still has a bet going that bitcoin will hit $1 million by 2020—he’s promised to eat his own genitals if he’s wrong. And no predictions could top the run-of-the-mill enthusiasts who simply screamed “hodl” (meaning don’t sell) because it’s all going “to the moon.”

It did not go to the moon.