The global spend for OTT (over-the-top) based conversational commerce is expected to rise from $13.3bn in 2022 to $25.1bn in 2023, according to a report from Juniper Research.
This 89% growth is expected to be driven by verticals, such as retail and e-commerce, which provide increased online presence and product availability as retailers refine their online customer experience.
OTT-based conversational commerce, which includes services like WhatsApp and WeChat, enable users to make purchases or transfer money directly in OTT messaging apps.
The report found that e-commerce and retail will account for over 35% of spend via OTT conversational commerce channels in 2023, accounting for $9bn of spend globally.
That said, it identified regional fragmentation in the OTT messaging space as a major hurdle to growth. To overcome this, it urges conversational commerce vendors to onboard messaging app individually, while adhering strictly to varying financial regulations in each country.
Some of the other issues for conversational commerce vendors include the varying types of payment methods in use across countries. It stated that vendors need to account for these differences to support various digital wallets.
Through this flexibility, it will enable vendors to offer a complete omnichannel experience by providing payments across OTT apps, chatbots, voicebots and RCS business messaging.
Research author Elisha Sudlow-Poole said, “Supporting a sufficient number of communication channels is no longer enough to ensure the success of omnichannel experiences. Vendors must look to include additional value-added services into their business model to create depth within existing communication channels.”
Finally, Juniper Research offers advice to increase market share. It stated that conversational commerce platforms must invest into value-added services to provide differentiation from existing conversational services.
As an example, digital loyalty programmes can offer personalised and incentivised messages to increase digital engagement.
Alongside this, vendors should facilitate features, such as link tracking and call-to-action support to monitor engagement.
Juniper Research has released a number of reports this year. A recent report found that The total number of unique contactless mobile payment users will reach one billion for the first time in 2024.
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