As we say goodbye to 2017, we look at who ended the year on a high:
AirBnB was the hottest ticket in town as 3 million people partied the night away in AirBnBs on New Year’s Eve (compared to just 1,400 eight years ago).
WhatsApp set a new messaging record with 75 billion messages sent globally using the service on New Year’s Eve.
Spotify started the new year with 70 million paying subscribers, as it files to become a public company.
However, it is also time to look forward to the year ahead as we hear predictions from experts from the ecommerce world, The BBC and The Guardian on what will be the biggest tech and media trends in 2018…
HEADLINES
Spotify gains 10 million new paid members every 6 months and files to go public on the New York Stock Exchange
On New Year Eve, three million people partied the night away in Airbnbs, compared to just 1,400 eight years ago and many of them were WhatsApping – a massive 75 billion messages globally were sent using the service
Instagram is letting a select few users post directly to WhatsApp
The BBC, The Guardian and Fast Company give their rundown of what they think will happen in media in 2018, including consolidations, fake news and politics
Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD! With so many questions flying around the tech world on what we have to look forward to in 2018, we have picked our top 3…
Q1. Are you a kindle-user or like nothing better than an old-fashioned book? Both could be a thing of the past as BBC launches interactive fiction for smart speakers, with sci-fi comedy “The Inspection Chamber” now available on Amazon Echo.
Q2. Online shopping has become the go-to for most of our purchases, but can you guess what the one thing we still refuse to buy online is? Find out here.
The one thing that most of us still refuse to buy online
Holiday shoppers spend three hours reading online content before committing to a trip, with a quarter then booking their summer holiday on their smartphone
Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD! With so many questions flying around the tech world on what we have to look forward to in 2018, we have picked our top 3…
Q1. Are you a kindle-user or like nothing better than an old-fashioned book? Both could be a thing of the past as BBC launches interactive fiction for smart speakers, with sci-fi comedy “The Inspection Chamber” now available on Amazon Echo.
Q2. Online shopping has become the go-to for most of our purchases, but can you guess what the one thing we still refuse to buy online is? Find out here.
The one thing that most of us still refuse to buy online
Holiday shoppers spend three hours reading online content before committing to a trip, with a quarter then booking their summer holiday on their smartphone
Welcome to the CES 2017 OMD FWD special. As the dust settles on the Mojave Desert, there’s a quiet acknowledgement of Amazon’s Alexa triumph as the most widely integrated technology. But it’s still early days in voice technology, with little platform loyalty and leadership positions yet to be cemented. We expect 2017 to be an incredibly exciting year for voice AI. Bloomberg reports that the potential is huge as the technology is exponential, with voice AI reaching 40 million homes by 2021.
Elsewhere mobile devices explored 3D cameras, smart home technology merged with mobility, cars got smarter and televisions became thinner. With so much coverage of CES, explore our round-up of the most interesting news articles.
HEADLINES
In the final tally of the show, Amazon Alexa reigns as the ‘Grand Winner’, and they didn’t even have a booth. Quartz summarises the best in show
One of the biggest brand stories was from Mattel who launched a kid-focused Echo alternative which is due to launch June 2017. Our children will use these technologies from a very early age as more competitors come into the market
Robots were everywhere and here are 4 robots you might want in your home. Our money is going to Kuri
HTC wants to drive the VR revolution by introducing a subscription service: ‘The Netflix for VR’
A digital sole which learns your running patterns and adapts to support you during terrain changes, or if you began to pronate due to tightness of muscles
A mechanisation of a human being came in the form of the exo skeleton which has the promise to give mobility to the disabled.
For a full run down on the coolest gadgets in the show, read our round-up here
Sport and television have had a very long, and very productive, relationship. Since the first sports event, Wimbledon in 1937, was aired on TV the two have grown together, creating the industry as we know it today; an industry worth an estimated $35billion (PWC 2015).
TV audiences for global sports events are staggering. The World Cup in 2014 reached an estimated 3.2 billion people, while the London Olympics in 2012 was the biggest ever national television event with over 90% of the population tuning in over the course of the Games, and this growth has been reflected in the cost of broadcast (and brand partner) rights for major sports.
So there seems to be no reason to suggest that the dominant relationship between TV broadcast and sports is going to change…
Well, I’m certainly not going to start predicting the death of TV as the main channel for sports viewership (at least in the short-term). However, if we take a closer look at some of the changes in the industry it becomes clear that the model is being disrupted and that the future for sports content does look increasingly digital.
The desire for information, entertainment and conversation from fans makes sport very well suited to the faster-paced and more personalised media environment that now exists, with broader changes in media consumption patterns clearly reflected in sport.
Over the past decade, the explosion of social media has enabled audiences to consume sports content when, where and how they want. Highlights, statistics, live updates, commentary and opinion (often synced to live matches) are now easily and immediately available. The more established social platforms have been the first to capitalise on this, with twitter even planning live broadcasts of NFL games on Thursday nights for the coming season.
But a wealth of new technologies have also begun to change the way we can engage with our favourite sports. Periscope is a particularly relevant example of a new technology that is being quickly embraced withinsport.
There is clear evidence that audiences see this as a positive influence, with 72% of Brits claiming that new technology and media helps connect sports fans in exciting ways (OMD 2016).
The trend is, unsurprisingly, particularly pronounced amongst younger audiences that demand more control and flexibility in their content, as reflected by the chart below (provided by Ovum’s digital Consumer Insights, 2015) which shows the increasing importance of mobile in the consumption of sport for younger audiences.
Europe, devices used to access sports content
Younger audiences are also driving the growth of “new” sports and alternative content platforms. Content owners and creators such as Whistle sports, Copa 90 and Dude Perfect are now drawing audiences in their tens of millions.
However, it’s not just age that affects the impact of social and digital media on sports consumption. It’s also how “big” a sports fan someone is. The average sports fan spends around 40% of their social time on sport-based content, with that figure shooting up towards 70% for “massive” fans (according to research by socialsportsfan report 2015).
These changes are beginning to have an impact on traditional forms of sports media, with the importance of TV clearly diminishing for younger audiences (data below provided by Ovum’s digital Consumer Insights, 2015).
Looking at the current Rio Olympics, we are seeing that TV viewing is down across key European markets compared to London 2012. This is partly due to time zone differences and digital migration – 14.9 million tuned into BBC digitally for the second day versus 8.3 million in 2012. Research by Allianz has also discovered that 7.6% of Americans prefer to follow the Olympics on social media – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, SnapChat and Periscope – over both TV and streaming platforms. Social media is especially interesting because of the modifications to the Olympics’ Rule 40 that affects how non-sponsor brands can leverage the games.
The growing value fans place on speed, ease of access and relevance of sports content points to this trend becoming even more pronounced, with social media increasingly central to fans’ engagement with sport (leading up to Rio 2016, Facebook, Twitter, Google and Snapchat all launched Olympic promotions to draw in fan participation).
As I said at the start, this is by no means the end of television. TV audiences are growing at a global level, especially for major events, and TV still delivers live viewership much better than anything else but there is a clear shift happening; a shift that suggests the future of sports content is increasingly digital.
Interested in more information – feel free to contact [email protected]
Tim Shank can guarantee he’ll never leave home without his keys. Why? His house keys are located inside his body. Shank, the president of the Minneapolis futurist group TwinCities+, has a chip installed in his hand that can communicate electronically with his front door and tell it to unlock itself. Shank is one of a growing number of “biohackers” who implant hardware ranging from microchips to magnets inside their bodies. Some biohackers use their implants in experimental art projects whilst others who have disabilities or medical conditions use them to improve their quality of life. Whilst the long-term health risks of the practise are still unknown, many biohackers claim that, if done right, implants can be no more dangerous than getting a piercing or tattoo. With 25% of Australians found to be “at least slightly interested” in paying for purchases through a chip implanted in their bodies, it looks like we could be looking at a very advanced future for contactless payment. As always, share anything interesting you spot with #OMDFWD
HEADLINES
Top stories from Apple’s #WWDC event including iOS 10, Apple Pay for websites, introduces Memories and opening Siri to developers
Fed up of sitting on hold? New app Hero lets users message questions and queries directly to restaurants, shops, cinemas, gyms and hotels. Next time you want to check if your favourite restaurant has a free table; whether that stylish shop has those shoes in stock; or what time the latest blockbuster hit is screening at the cinema, you won’t have to spend valuable minutes of your life listening to Coldplay on hold. Read, learn and share away….!!! #OMDFWD
HEADLINES
Rolling news from SXSW can be found here (and all over Twitter)
Welcome to the first OMD FWD of 2016, your weekly fix of future gazing stories from the world of tech, innovation and the digital space. This week Pinterest entices users to purchase by tracking price drops on pinned items, McDonald’s unveils a short film scripted and directed by over 3 million consumers and The Harvard Business Review advises on how data can be better used to tell brand stories. Read, learn and share away…!
