Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD.
As we enter May with the British April showers still in the air, we wake up unsure whether to pack our umbrella or our sunglasses and Summer seems like a distant dream. Talking of dreams, MIT Researchers have developed a system for controlling dreams. Little did they know, this was achieved almost a century ago in Mary Arnold-Foster’s Studies in Dreams.
How many of you have had multiple likes, bizarre comments and follow requests from unfamiliar Instagram accounts? Well the answer is more of us are turning our Instagram accounts into bots, for money (of course).
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
As always, please share anything you find interesting using #OMDFWD
This week momentum has been building around Google’s reported plans to introduce its own ad-blocking feature, in both the mobile and desktop versions of Chrome. At first glance, the feature seems counter-intuitive, since Google’s annual online ad revenue exceeded $60 billion, yet it is clearly a defensive move. The focus is on the improvement of user experience and ultimately the reduction in fast growing third party ad blocking software. Elsewhere, at Facebook’s F8 conference, augmented reality continues to gain prominence, as they launched their strategy and intent for developing the Metaverse.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
As ever, please tag and share anything you spot with #OMDFWD.
This week momentum has been building around Google’s reported plans to introduce its own ad-blocking feature, in both the mobile and desktop versions of Chrome. At first glance, the feature seems counter-intuitive, since Google’s annual online ad revenue exceeded $60 billion, yet it is clearly a defensive move. The focus is on the improvement of user experience and ultimately the reduction in fast growing third party ad blocking software. Elsewhere, at Facebook’s F8 conference, augmented reality continues to gain prominence, as they launched their strategy and intent for developing the Metaverse.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
As ever, please tag and share anything you spot with #OMDFWD.
The season may have changed, but tech companies dominating the news certainly have not. This week sees fresh products from Facebook, a potential new revenue stream for Twitter, as well as custom sports gear from Adidas and a ‘Magic Calendar’ from Google.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS
As always, please share anything interesting you see via #OMDFWD.
A sophisticated marketing technology and advertising technology stack has had a transformative impact on performance marketing over the past 15 years, but we are now starting to see a similar scale of impact on marketing further up the funnel. To gain attention, change perceptions and drive desire, we need to adopt cutting-edge automation and cognitive technologies to the realm of content distribution and customer engagement strategies.
Yesterday at the OMD Oasis I joined Twitter’s Global Head of Content Strategy, Stacy Minero, The Weather Company’s CEO, Cameron Clayton, The Washington Post’s Director of Strategic Initiatives, Jeremy Gilbert and Quartz’s Co-Founder Zach Seward, to discuss Bots, APIs and AI.
The rise of the bot
Over the past five years, we have seen the rise of a range of new digital technologies that are transforming the way that we interact with content and services. The website and the mobile app have now been joined by the bot and the voice based skill in platforms, such as Amazon Alexa.
Bots enable us to automate various tasks, such as shopping bots that guide users through purchases or chat bots that enable more conversational interactions. After much discussion, we concluded that bots are over-hyped because the most effective bots are the ones we don’t notice, that pass under the radar to a great extent.
Both publishers and brands have been utilising bots at scale over the past year. Quartz, for instance, have a conversational news bot that delivers news like a messenger conversation, dialling up detail as requested by the user. Bots enable the automation of much of the low-level interaction required to drive a more personalised experience. Brands too are experimenting with bots. Last year at OMD EMEA we have worked with clients to deliver bot based interactive story lines and shopping services in Facebook messenger and we expect many more brands to experiment with bots to drive deeper more immersive experiences throughout 2017.
Imbedding AI in bots
The cutting edge of bot technology has AI embedded within. That AI can be in many forms, such as natural language inference, meaning a bot can understand, ‘will I need my umbrella in Miami’ is a question about expected rainfall. Equally, it may be machine vision that recognises key elements in photos and video, or smart home connectivity that anticipates the consumer’s need to switch their lights on or heating off when they are more than 10 miles from home.
It was commented that every brand should now record and transcribe every conversation or interaction with their consumers. In those conversations, are the non-typical interactions that define the specifics of a brand’s purpose, that will ultimately drive the differentiation of their AI over any potential competitors. Waiting for someone else to solve those problems for you will be a significant business risk.
APIs
APIs (application programme interfaces) are the plumbing that connects these diverse services together. Solving problems like the translation between languages, or the ability to recognise faces is very hard, but once it has been perfected it becomes an API open to all, thus massively reducing the cost to implement such a service.
We can also add a range of immersion technologies from 360-video to Augmented Reality through to Virtual reality to the list of options available to the modern marketer. They may not scale instantly but they are showing huge potential to drive deeply immersive experience. The technology announced at CES such as the Intel Project Alloy VR headset should be watched closely. These technologies have been complex and unstable until recently, only now can we think of them as strategic platforms that can scale and be relied upon.
So how should brands think about the opportunity?
Whilst the technology is complicated the task remains simple. We need to identify the potential sources of growth and solve issues for the audiences that represent that growth. A clear insight about consumer behaviour and beliefs, aligned with an understanding of the technology will enable us to define solutions that create value; to minimise purchase friction, maximise salience and impact and drive experiences that are both memorable and shareable. Traditional advertising has an enormous role, signposting at scale to these great experiences and services where and when they are most relevant to the specific consumer segment.
All of the required pieces are now available so that we may be able to transform brand and content marketing to the same degree as we have already with the performance element of the marketing mix.
To find out more about the OMD Oasis programming at CES 2017, please visit CES.OMD.COM
Unusual things are happening this week, from people freezing for the mannequin challenge and UFO emoji’s, to futuristic vending machines appearing in towns to sell spectacles (but after the result of the recent US election, we should be prepared to no longer be surprised). If you are lucky enough to be strolling down the road and catch sight of one of these unusual-looking vending machines, you could be forgiven for thinking that you have walked onto the set of Despicable Me 3, but draw a little closer and you discover that this vending machine is in fact a very cool bit of tech. Left unattended the machine is just “sleeping”, but motion sensors wake it up as you approach. You are met by a big digital eye that interacts with you…it’s not a Minion, it’s a vending machine and it wants to sell you a device for $130 – The Snapchat Spectacle. Whether this new product will become more popular than the Google Glass is still to be decided; however, there are certainly some interesting opportunities for brands wanting to reach an audience of Snapchat loving millennials.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
- You will never have seen a vending machine quite like the Snapchat Spectacle offering
- OMG! Here is the latest set of planned emojis to be rolled out
- Pinterest has a mighty useful ‘tried’ button to share when you have sampled or experienced previously
DEEP READS
- Not the deepest of reads, but here are best Mannequin Challenges to date
- While you can’t get much more ‘native’ Google search ads, Google has partnered with native content ad partner to shift landscape and expand native offering
- A look at how Buzzfeed and Twitter used the existing strength of their platform to showcase election content
Share anything you see through the week with the hashtag #OMDFWD
As Vine prepares to shut down, its users respond to the loss of their beloved platform. Thousands of fans including digital influencers, industry leaders and media members spent last Thursday mourning the platform. However, some Viners are choosing to look at the bright side. Despite increasing their social footprint on other growing and more lucrative platforms, Vine has allowed them to set up a format. Thomas Sanders, who won best Viner of the year at the 2016 Steamys, says “I continue to make content on other platforms. But Vine is a wonderful place for me to start with my social media and branch outward from there”. The news can perhaps serve as a reminder to us all that a single channel approach could be a risky strategy for brands and influencers.
HEADLINES
- As Vine prepares to shut down, its users respond to the loss of their beloved platform
- Facebook is getting all Snapchatty with an in-app camera and lens style Halloween masks
- The bots are (still) coming and they can now take payment
INSIGHTS
COOL STUFF
DEEP READS
During the announcement of Google Home at the opening of the Google I/O conference, Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, mentioned that 20% of mobile queries are now voice searches. While the market for virtual assistant slowly heats up, a MindMeld survey found that there has been a significant increase in the number of people now using voice assistant and voice search capabilities within the past 6 months. Transactional queries will become even more common as virtual assistants integrate a range of third-party services such as OpenTable, Spotify, WhatsApp, Uber and Ticketmaster. While the topic of voice and virtual assistants can be a conversation starter with tech hobbyists, it is also true that the general public is now starting to take interest in this field.
HEADLINES
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DEEP READS
Share anything you see through the week with the hashtag #OMDFWD
Until recently Robyn Ewing was a writer in Hollywood, developing TV scripts and pitching pilots to film studios. Now Robyn is applying her creative talents towards building the personality of a different type of character- a virtual assistant animated by artificial intelligence, that interacts with sick patients and sends the data straight to a real doctor. As the creation of virtual assistants increases, Silicon Valley is being inundated with poets, comedians and fiction writers who are charged with engineering the personalities for a fast-growing crop of artificial intelligence tools. Share anything interesting you spot with #OMDFWD.
HEADLINES
INSIGHTS
COOL
DEEP READS