Tag: google
⚠️WARNING DATA BREACH⚠️There has been a lot of news surrounding the increased concerns behind tech platforms’ use of data. The recent Netflix documentary ‘The Great Hack’ is bringing this into the spotlight even more.
As a response to the increasing scrutiny, tech platforms have been making moves to put the power back into the hands of the users and creators. Facebook have finally allowed users to turn off data gathering from outside websites and apps. Meanwhile, YouTube changed their copyright enforcement policies around music, meaning creators no longer have to claim music rights for their videos.
Bad news for the music industry and data miners, but power to the people!
Disrupt to sell? Retailer Kohl’s connects with Instagram to help bring Insta-famous brands into its stores.
Find out why Vimeo is thriving as the anti-YouTube and what the CEO’s plans are for the future
How Google’s AI Lab have created a real hand tracking algorithm that could transform sign language forever.
Coming soon… Facebook’s new cinema ad format set to increase buzz around studio releases.
6,5,4,3,2,1… Twitter launches a viewable ad bid which only charges brands for videos viewed for at least six seconds.
Google host the second Stadia Connect live event at Gamescom showcasing exciting partner developments.
Can you co-exist with robots? Reports show that by 2022 more than 54% of employees will require upskilling or training in order to compete.
Not a snap decision! A Snapchat business report shows that 59% of users are more likely to consider multiple vehicles in their buyer journey.
In the new “Data Never Sleeps” report, it was revealed 694,444 hours of Netflix are watched every minute. But competition is heating up, as the ‘streaming wars’ get more intense.
This week, news broke that Disney+ is set to launch before the end of the year, Netflix has poached the Game of Thrones creators, and Apple TV’s upcoming show ‘The Morning Show’ is reported to be worth a whopping $240 million. Facebook also want a piece of the action, testing subscriptions on Facebook Watch.
With so many players entering the game, who will be dominating the streaming service market come 2020?
Mixing music with a twist…Bacardi ‘hacks’ YouTube to launch The Beat Machine.
Search and press play! Google now includes podcast episodes in search bar
The future of TV is going mobile: ‘vertical dramas’ are being created specifically for phone viewing.
Keep up with your favourite Twitter rant, as the platform tests a ‘subscribe to thread’ feature.
Hip-hop dancers paint Paris in a new light with Google’s ‘Dance View’ to celebrate Gare de Lyon’s 170th anniversary.
Have you cut the cord? Report shows streaming services have gained 13.3 million subscribers in the UK.
Going, going, gone! Verizon sells Tumblr to WordPress owner Automattic Inc. for $3 million.
The future of Snapchat is bright! ‘Spectacles 3’ is here, with a hefty price tag of $380.
From Netflix recommendations to the rise of voice assistants, AI is increasingly finding its way into our daily lives. Just yesterday, Nike announced that they are buying an AI startup to predict what consumers want. You can’t deny AI is everywhere.
How do we accept, understand and trust AI in our day to day lives? Look no further than our very own Retail Revolution research study, which this week was featured in Business Insider series How AI Is Changing Everything.
The Tik Tok takeover continues! By partnering with Giphy, fans of both can now import stickers and create memes.
Are third party schedulers a thing of the past? Instagram rolls out their very own post creator studio.
Alexa, close your ears… Amazon are now giving users the option to opt out of human review of their voice recordings.
Social media marketers rejoice as Snapchat’s new tool makes it easier to create vertical video assets.
Pin, pin, pin. Shop, shop, shop! The number of retail products on Pinterest was up by 50% in Q2 of 2019.
This report of high-subscriber YouTube channels finds that children’s content received more views than other videos!
The 4 giants unite in their goal to simplify data migration between platforms, as Apple joins Google, Facebook and Twitter in The Data Transfer Project.
Introducing WhatsApp Pay! Messenger services plans to make sending money between their 400 million active users as easy as sending a voice note.
From Netflix recommendations to the rise of voice assistants, AI is increasingly finding its way into our daily lives. Just yesterday, Nike announced that they are buying an AI startup to predict what consumers want. You can’t deny AI is everywhere.
How do we accept, understand and trust AI in our day to day lives? Look no further than our very own Retail Revolution research study, which this week was featured in Business Insider series How AI Is Changing Everything.
The Tik Tok takeover continues! By partnering with Giphy, fans of both can now import stickers and create memes.
Are third party schedulers a thing of the past? Instagram rolls out their very own post creator studio.
Alexa, close your ears… Amazon are now giving users the option to opt out of human review of their voice recordings.
Social media marketers rejoice as Snapchat’s new tool makes it easier to create vertical video assets.
Pin, pin, pin. Shop, shop, shop! The number of retail products on Pinterest was up by 50% in Q2 of 2019.
This report of high-subscriber YouTube channels finds that children’s content received more views than other videos!
The 4 giants unite in their goal to simplify data migration between platforms, as Apple joins Google, Facebook and Twitter in The Data Transfer Project.
Introducing WhatsApp Pay! Messenger services plans to make sending money between their 400 million active users as easy as sending a voice note.
“One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”
It has been almost 50 years since US astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first person to set foot on the moon. The anniversary of the moon landing gave brands an opportunity to celebrate mankind’s greatest achievement. Google’s Doodle was one of the best yet and Spotify took the opportunity to celebrate music’s place in space. The euphoria was only tempered by a recent study that found that kids would now rather be YouTubers than Astronauts.
Will you be using Pinterest’s new emotional health exercises and resources?
Binged out…Netflix is losing beloved shows, subscribers and confidence.
Amazon plans to talk it’s way into the automotive industry with it’s Alexa voice assistant.
Addicted to ‘likes’? Here’s how to quit: Instagram is trialing hiding likes in seven countries.
Another week, another massive data breach. This time for Equifax, slapped with a $700 million dollar fine!
Internet advertising is set to grow at 10%, which is the slowest rate since the dotcom bubble burst.
The Fall and Rise of VR and how it is now estimated to be worth a whooping $34.5 billion by 2023.
Insta- cravings! A recent Instagram report showcased that 39% of users spend time browsing food and drink.
Voice search is on the rise with more and more brands adapting their marketing strategies to incorporate voice functionality across Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Home and more.
With voice devices and services such as Google Home and Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri skyrocketing in use across 2018, consumers are increasingly comfortable with voice-driven, two-way dialogue with brands at unplanned times, often away from a mobile or computer; It’s a different kind of brand engagement, with a starting point that is usually a question (think ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why’) and responses more instantaneous and organic than ever. ComScore predicts that, by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches.
Voice search changes the nature of search, increasing the importance of questions and simplicity of responses. This, in turn, increases the need to ensure your brand is front of mind when the question is asked, and positioned as the top informer. It’s a creatively challenging format with potential for big results, especially for brands naturally attuned to answering the most-asked questions.
For example, many breakfast food brands are keen to position themselves as breakfast-time problem solvers. Should they not be vying to answer a likely voice-driven query of ‘How can I make breakfast more exciting?’
Ignoring the nascent new way of searching is a dangerous thing to do. Now is the time for brands to invest time and money into their voice search offering. This will involve many test and learn situations, a new breed of SEO specialist and a commitment to simplified UX, all in the name of further removing barriers to authentic audience connection.
Voice search is on the rise with more and more brands adapting their marketing strategies to incorporate voice functionality across Amazon’s Alexa, Apple’s Siri, Google Home and more.
With voice devices and services such as Google Home and Assistant, Amazon’s Alexa and Apple’s Siri skyrocketing in use across 2018, consumers are increasingly comfortable with voice-driven, two-way dialogue with brands at unplanned times, often away from a mobile or computer; It’s a different kind of brand engagement, with a starting point that is usually a question (think ‘how’, ‘what’, ‘where’, ‘when’ and ‘why’) and responses more instantaneous and organic than ever. ComScore predicts that, by 2020, 50% of all searches will be voice searches.
Voice search changes the nature of search, increasing the importance of questions and simplicity of responses. This, in turn, increases the need to ensure your brand is front of mind when the question is asked, and positioned as the top informer. It’s a creatively challenging format with potential for big results, especially for brands naturally attuned to answering the most-asked questions.
For example, many breakfast food brands are keen to position themselves as breakfast-time problem solvers. Should they not be vying to answer a likely voice-driven query of ‘How can I make breakfast more exciting?’
Ignoring the nascent new way of searching is a dangerous thing to do. Now is the time for brands to invest time and money into their voice search offering. This will involve many test and learn situations, a new breed of SEO specialist and a commitment to simplified UX, all in the name of further removing barriers to authentic audience connection.
We sent Piers Drake, our Head of eCommerce, and Chelsea Horncastle, our Senior Product Innovation Manager and AI/AR specialist, to Cologne to check-out DMEXCO 2018. Here they discuss what they found:
Piers Drake: So, Chelsea, that was a busy couple of days; my Fitbit tells me we covered 15miles lapping the halls of the Koelnmesse! Other than aching feet, the overall theme that jumped out for me was one of retrenching in these post-GDPR times. ‘Take CARE’ was the DMEXCO tag line, and every other booth had the words ‘Safety’ and ‘Transparency’ written large on their displays, with a somewhat apologetic tone!
Chelsea Horncastle: On top of which the keynotes were frequently referencing the disruption of data, gender inequality and the bleak outlook for retail! Quite negative thematically, but the atmosphere was actually very optimistic and buzzy, particularly when it came to the application of newer tech to consumer problems. And the halls were absolutely packed!
PD: Definitely. This was a transitional year for the industry I think. For me personally, the most interesting and positive stuff was when we dug below the surface and asked the exhibitors what they had coming down the pipeline for 2019. I think we found the seeds of some very cool tech and new approaches, but these weren’t always obvious from browsing the displays.
CH: The narrative that kept coming up with vendors, Google and AWS for example, was getting the appropriate infrastructure in place now to take advantage of the vast amounts of data – video, images, and more – already being collected. Also making voice and visual search technology more accessible, and using it to free up people’s time rather than for it’s own sake. I think the story of the next 12 months will be baby steps around implementation of these technologies at scale.
PD: One exhibitor that brought this to life for me was Oath, who were demoing their AR content via Ryot Studio and HoloLens. Beyond the novelty of playing with virtual Smurfs (!), crucially they were talking confidently about the need to unite the content and publishing with an ‘insights engine’ of data in the background; what I’d call an end-to-end approach.
CH: Yep. The tech is impressive, but we need to move beyond the ‘cool technology’ angle and take it back to consumer insights – what are our goals with using these new formats and how do they help real consumers? And, AI can generate insights from big datasets, which is one of the most actionable ‘today’ applications.
PD: Thinking real-world applications, I was excited by the computer vision and ‘visual search’ tools we saw from Google, Microsoft and a number of startups. The Google Lens demo was particularly good because they were emphasising the practical uses, for example where you can identify plants or shoes or paintings with a tap, but then the UI drives you directly to other Google tools such as Shopping, Maps or Translate for the next steps. It’s going to be a great timesaver AND drive business results.
CH: Google Lens is great! On the B2B side, we saw Microsoft analysing the faces of people walking past their stand and estimating their genders, ages and moods – all in real time. This kind of real time analysis of video is a potential gamechanger for lots of industries, retail in particular.
PD: Yes, let’s talk retail! eCommerce vendors were dotted around the show and my main takeaway was that online retail is no longer an awkward cousin of digital! Everybody is talking about commerce outcomes, trying to explicitly link investment to sales (at last!)
CH: Ha! eCommerce seems much more mainstream this year and I heard a lot about AI-led personalisation. Salesforce were talking about ‘Shoptimism’ and the benefits of AI-driven recommendations on online stores, with their data showing a 5x transaction value from that.
PD: Whether it’s via human curation, AI or a hybrid – recommendations and personalised experiences are a key area where rivals can offer something different to Amazon. They had a sizeable presence at the show but were characteristically reluctant to discuss their plans. The explosive growth of their Amazon Advertising platform was a frequent topic of conversation with third party tool providers like Kenshoo, who told me that Amazon Search is growing at 10x the rate of Google Search.
CH: From my side, I was surprised that Alexa was invisible among the other AI assistant demos on show. Meanwhile, you said eBay had some interesting ideas when you spoke to them?
PD: I think eBay is one to watch as they are launching new tools and trying to shift perceptions of it as a ‘second hand’ eCommerce platform – their data is that over 80% of product sold is brand new. They already have an upper-funnel proposition and potentially it could evolve into a brand-friendly ‘end-to-end’ platform that offers more control over the shopping experience than Amazon.
CH: Let’s talk social for a moment. Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat were all there. Snapchat was the most low-key of these, mainly letting the product do the talking. Facebook were primarily featuring Instagram and Blueprint, showing some neat upgrades to IG Stories with more animation and motion.
PD: Social was a little low-key all round. I was surprised by the lack of messaging platforms around DMEXCO given the predictions of how ‘conversational UI’ was going to be big by now. And social commerce was invisible. We’re out of time unfortunately, so what was your highlight overall?
CH: Overall, it was a demo that sparked my imagination. That is the best part of attending conferences like Dmexco. This demo used image recognition to create a connected car experience, where it could understand what people see as they drive past buildings giving additional information or actions as needed. The idea is still very new, but it allows us to think about what the future could look like. And, yours?
PD: It’s slightly off-the-wall, but one of the most crowded and best-looking stands was a replica of a general store with tins, bottles and bags of pasta on display, with ‘shopkeepers.’ The popularity of it really captured for me why the eCommerce story is becoming about joining online up with physical retail – because despite all the info available online, people love browsing real shops….and going to trade shows like DMEXCO!
We sent Piers Drake, our Head of eCommerce, and Chelsea Horncastle, our Senior Product Innovation Manager and AI/AR specialist, to Cologne to check-out DMEXCO 2018. Here they discuss what they found:
Piers Drake: So, Chelsea, that was a busy couple of days; my Fitbit tells me we covered 15miles lapping the halls of the Koelnmesse! Other than aching feet, the overall theme that jumped out for me was one of retrenching in these post-GDPR times. ‘Take CARE’ was the DMEXCO tag line, and every other booth had the words ‘Safety’ and ‘Transparency’ written large on their displays, with a somewhat apologetic tone!
Chelsea Horncastle: On top of which the keynotes were frequently referencing the disruption of data, gender inequality and the bleak outlook for retail! Quite negative thematically, but the atmosphere was actually very optimistic and buzzy, particularly when it came to the application of newer tech to consumer problems. And the halls were absolutely packed!
PD: Definitely. This was a transitional year for the industry I think. For me personally, the most interesting and positive stuff was when we dug below the surface and asked the exhibitors what they had coming down the pipeline for 2019. I think we found the seeds of some very cool tech and new approaches, but these weren’t always obvious from browsing the displays.
CH: The narrative that kept coming up with vendors, Google and AWS for example, was getting the appropriate infrastructure in place now to take advantage of the vast amounts of data – video, images, and more – already being collected. Also making voice and visual search technology more accessible, and using it to free up people’s time rather than for it’s own sake. I think the story of the next 12 months will be baby steps around implementation of these technologies at scale.
PD: One exhibitor that brought this to life for me was Oath, who were demoing their AR content via Ryot Studio and HoloLens. Beyond the novelty of playing with virtual Smurfs (!), crucially they were talking confidently about the need to unite the content and publishing with an ‘insights engine’ of data in the background; what I’d call an end-to-end approach.
CH: Yep. The tech is impressive, but we need to move beyond the ‘cool technology’ angle and take it back to consumer insights – what are our goals with using these new formats and how do they help real consumers? And, AI can generate insights from big datasets, which is one of the most actionable ‘today’ applications.
PD: Thinking real-world applications, I was excited by the computer vision and ‘visual search’ tools we saw from Google, Microsoft and a number of startups. The Google Lens demo was particularly good because they were emphasising the practical uses, for example where you can identify plants or shoes or paintings with a tap, but then the UI drives you directly to other Google tools such as Shopping, Maps or Translate for the next steps. It’s going to be a great timesaver AND drive business results.
CH: Google Lens is great! On the B2B side, we saw Microsoft analysing the faces of people walking past their stand and estimating their genders, ages and moods – all in real time. This kind of real time analysis of video is a potential gamechanger for lots of industries, retail in particular.
PD: Yes, let’s talk retail! eCommerce vendors were dotted around the show and my main takeaway was that online retail is no longer an awkward cousin of digital! Everybody is talking about commerce outcomes, trying to explicitly link investment to sales (at last!)
CH: Ha! eCommerce seems much more mainstream this year and I heard a lot about AI-led personalisation. Salesforce were talking about ‘Shoptimism’ and the benefits of AI-driven recommendations on online stores, with their data showing a 5x transaction value from that.
PD: Whether it’s via human curation, AI or a hybrid – recommendations and personalised experiences are a key area where rivals can offer something different to Amazon. They had a sizeable presence at the show but were characteristically reluctant to discuss their plans. The explosive growth of their Amazon Advertising platform was a frequent topic of conversation with third party tool providers like Kenshoo, who told me that Amazon Search is growing at 10x the rate of Google Search.
CH: From my side, I was surprised that Alexa was invisible among the other AI assistant demos on show. Meanwhile, you said eBay had some interesting ideas when you spoke to them?
PD: I think eBay is one to watch as they are launching new tools and trying to shift perceptions of it as a ‘second hand’ eCommerce platform – their data is that over 80% of product sold is brand new. They already have an upper-funnel proposition and potentially it could evolve into a brand-friendly ‘end-to-end’ platform that offers more control over the shopping experience than Amazon.
CH: Let’s talk social for a moment. Facebook, LinkedIn and Snapchat were all there. Snapchat was the most low-key of these, mainly letting the product do the talking. Facebook were primarily featuring Instagram and Blueprint, showing some neat upgrades to IG Stories with more animation and motion.
PD: Social was a little low-key all round. I was surprised by the lack of messaging platforms around DMEXCO given the predictions of how ‘conversational UI’ was going to be big by now. And social commerce was invisible. We’re out of time unfortunately, so what was your highlight overall?
CH: Overall, it was a demo that sparked my imagination. That is the best part of attending conferences like Dmexco. This demo used image recognition to create a connected car experience, where it could understand what people see as they drive past buildings giving additional information or actions as needed. The idea is still very new, but it allows us to think about what the future could look like. And, yours?
PD: It’s slightly off-the-wall, but one of the most crowded and best-looking stands was a replica of a general store with tins, bottles and bags of pasta on display, with ‘shopkeepers.’ The popularity of it really captured for me why the eCommerce story is becoming about joining online up with physical retail – because despite all the info available online, people love browsing real shops….and going to trade shows like DMEXCO!
Hello and welcome to your weekly FWD.
The rise of influencer marketing is causing waves as more and more fantasy-like posts surface which have generated comments calling Instagram ‘a ridiculous lie factory made to make us all feel inadequate’. The public are becoming attuned to paid posts, unrealistic images and the ‘highlight reel’ that is often the only visible representation of one’s life. In line with this, UK broadcasters are urging the government to create a social media watchdog to strengthen oversight of social media companies. The response? Yes, we know.
In the tech space, excitement is building over Apple’s impending product announcement on the 12th of September in Cupertino. The rumour mill is churning out speculation on whether the home button is being superseded with OLED screens, and if the iWatch will at last, be round.
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