Author: Lab Team

Viber Partners With Macy’s And Rakuten To Bring Shopping Into Chat App

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Messaging app Viber, which enjoys 260 million monthly active users worldwide, announced the launch of a new in-chat Instant Shopping feature that will integrate ecommerce features directly into the app. The new feature will enable Viber users to search for and share items without leaving the chat window, though the chat app has yet to integrate a payment solution so shoppers will be directed to the third-party retailer to complete the purchase.

The company says it has forged partnerships with two major retailers at launch – Macy’s and Rakuten.com, the ecommerce site formerly known as Buy.com was acquired by Japanese tech titan Rakuten in 2010, who also acquired Viber in 2014. The new feature will become available in the U.S. on March 6 in beta and Viber plans to roll out the feature globally throughout 2017.

What Brands Need To Do
Conversational commerce has been gaining traction in the U.S. lately thanks to Amazon Alexa’s ecommerce integrations and Facebook’s continuous efforts to make Messenger retail-friendly. As the big tech companies continue to explore the ecommerce potential in conversational contexts to cater to changing consumer behavior on mobile and a shift in brand-customer interaction, brands and retailers need to take note and start experimenting with conversational commerce in order to stay ahead of the digital curve.

How We Can Help
Based on our extensive experience in building branded chatbots to reach consumers, the Lab has developed a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational experience supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data. If you’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Facebook Launches Mid-Roll Ads In Live Videos, Start Testing In Non-Live Videos

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
In a bid to further monetize its growing video content, Facebook has opened mid-roll ads to more Live videos, extending the ability for certain Pages and Profiles to insert mid-roll video ads, which it dubs “ad breaks,” into their Facebook Live broadcasts. Facebook first started testing mid-roll ads in Live videos in August. This means more broadcasters can show 15-second ads within their livestreams while receiving part of the ad revenue.

The company also announced it has officially started testing mid-roll ads in non-Live videos, including the ones uploaded by users. Facebook says ad breaks will only be available after the first four minutes of playback, with additional ad breaks available after every five minutes.

What Brands Need To Do
With Facebook users watching 100 million hours of video every day, the site is quickly evolving beyond a mere social network into an online video destination. Earlier this month, the company announced it is building an OTT streaming app for viewing its video content, following a series of initiatives focused on improving its video products. As Facebook continues to add new video ad products to its increasingly video-heavy social platforms, brands may consider adjusting their video budgets accordingly to reach today’s mobile consumers in a more targeted, effective way

 

Source: Marketing Land

Pandora To Launch Dynamic Audio Ads and Sequential Messaging

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pandora is planning to bring dynamic creatives to audio ads. The streaming service is teaming up with UK-based dynamic ad tech vendor A Million Ads to target consumers in real time with personalized messages. Brands looking to leverage dynamic audio can record a script with multiple message variations to address listeners based on a range of geographic locations, weather conditions, or calls to action.

Moreover, Pandora also announced it will add support for sequential and cross-platform messaging soon, offering brands more time to explain their products or services over several successive ad spots. These two new ad products will launch later this year in beta.

What Brands Need To Do
Dynamic creative is nothing new in display ads, but to execute it in audio ads on a streaming service is still quite new. Results from our media trial study with Yahoo indicates clear benefits of personalized ads, showing advertisers who utilized personalization saw significant increases in overall favorability and purchase intent. Pandora boasts over 78 million monthly active users, the vast majority of which uses the service on a free, ad-supported tier. Therefore, brand marketers looking to connect with music streamers on Pandora should consider these two upcoming new ad units to reach their target customers more effectively.

 

Source: AdWeek

 

AT&T Plans Nationwide Debut Of IoT Network By Mid-2017

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
AT&T is planning to roll out LTE-M, an IoT network aimed at linking sensors and other small connected devices online without saddling them with full-scale cellular radios, nationwide by the middle of this year. This debut set to bring widespread IoT connectivity into reality, unleashing a host of opportunities for marketers seeking to tap into the marketing potential of connected IoT devices. Verizon is reportedly also working to launch its own LTE-M network.

What Brands Need To Do
As we witnessed at CES this year, a number of connected home devices are already integrated with Alexa and other voice-based virtual assistant to interact with users. With a highly connected IoT network becoming an immediate reality thanks to AT&T’s plan, more sensors and devices will come online and become able to adopt voice assistant services as their conversational interfaces. This means that brand marketers need to develop a conversational marketing strategy and figure out the right brand voice and tactics to deliver relevant messages and interactive experiences through consumers’ connected devices.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building Alexa Skills and chatbots to reach consumers on conversational interfaces. So much so that we’ve built a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The “Miller Time” Alexa Skill we developed with Drizly for Miller Lite is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a conversational customer experience, supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data.

If you’d like to learn more about how to effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: GeoMarketing

Ford Wants To Take You On A VR Ride Through Paris

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Ford is set to remake a 1976 short film “C’etait un Rendez-Vous” into a VR experience. Working with Claude Lelouch, the noted French filmmaker who helmed the original cult classic, Ford will transport the eight-minute early morning drive through Paris into virtual reality featuring a Ford Mustang. The auto brand plans to release the VR experience this month on YouTube and Facebook in the 360-degree video format. Viewers will also be able to strap on a VR headset and experience the ride in virtual reality.

What Brands Need To Do
While this is a VR concept that is both exciting and on-brand for an automaker like Ford, the distribution strategy leaves much to be desired. The mainstream adoption of VR headsets is still fairly low, and for most viewers that will only get to this VR experience merely as a 360-degree video, the visceral impact of a virtual joyride through the City of Lights will be considerably lessened. More often than not, we are seeing more and more brands making the efforts to create a piece of cool VR content, only to botch it with lazy distribution strategies. In order to truly drum up consumer interest with VR content, brands need to step up their campaign game surrounding the launch of branded VR experiences and put them in front of the right audience.

How We Can Help
Our dedicated team of VR experts is here to guide marketers through the distribution landscape. We work closely with brands to develop sustainable VR content strategies to promote branded VR and 360 video content across various apps and platforms. With our proprietary technology stack powered by a combination of best-in-class VR partners and backed by the media fire-power of IPG Mediabrands, we offer customized solutions for distributing and measuring branded VR content that truly enhance brand messaging and contribute to the campaign objectives.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Lab can help you tap into the immersive power of VR content to engage with customers, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Digital Trends

Header image courtesy of Ford’s YouTube

 

Oreo To Sponsor IMDb’s Oscars Live Streaming Party

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Oreo is teaming up with IMDb to tap into the buzziest event of the movie industry with a livestreaming campaign. To promote its new Chocolate Candy Bar, the Mondelēz-owned cookie brand has signed up as the official sponsor for the Oscars viewing party hosted by IMDb, which will be live streamed on Twitter, Twitch, as well as IMDb’s own website this Sunday. Over 300 Hollywood insiders will be invited to attend this event at Neuehouse in L.A., which will feature an Oreo Chocolate Candy Bar sampling station for the guests to try one during the broadcast.

What Brands Need To Do
Brand marketers looking to enter the livestreaming arena should take a cue from this partnership and learn to maximize their reach by piggybacking on a buzzy media event. Branded live streams during big media events offer brands a great shortcut to get their content in front of a mobile audience in real time. Previously brands such as GE and Toyota have leveraged live-streamed events to amplify their sponsorships. Therefore, brands that wish to stay connected to today’s mobile-first consumers would be wise to start working with content creators and exploring the vast potential this fast-growing media platform holds today.

 

Source: Business Wire

1-800 Flowers Tests Concierge Chatbot Powered By IBM’s Watson

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
1-800 Flowers has jumped into the world of conversational commerce with a concierge service that recommends flowers based on user input. Dubbed “Gwyn,” which stands for “gifts when you need,” the service is powered by IBM’s Watson cloud computing services, which allows it to understand natural languages and respond accordingly.

The e-retailer first started testing Gwyn last May with a limited beta test, and has since updated the service to make the interface more conversational and user-friendly before rolling it out on its website to all customers to try. The company also launched a Facebook chatbot last April, which was mostly manned by human customer reps but has since graduated to handling some basic customer service tasks on its own.

What Brands Need To Do
This is the latest in an ongoing trend of brands tapping machine learning and AI services such as IBM’s Watson to enhance customer experience. Previously, Sony Pictures launched an AI-powered chatbot to promote its new Residential Evil flick while P&G tested a smart shelf that uses machine learning to monitor and analyze shopper behaviors. As consumers continue to embrace messaging apps and chatbot services, brands need to consider developing useful bots powered by AI services to engage customers.

How We Can Help
Based on our extensive experience in building branded chatbots to reach consumers, the Lab has developed a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a chatbot experience supercharged by our stack of technology partners with best-in-class solutions and an insights engine that extracts business intelligence from conversational data. If you’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Digiday

Snapchat Spectacles Now Widely Available Via Online Shop

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After several months of using pop-up vending machines to sell its first hardware product, Snap Inc. has made its camera-integrated sunglasses Spectacles widely available for purchase via Spectacle.com. All three colors are available for $130 a pair – keeping with the retail pricing of the pop-up vending machines – with an estimated delivery time of 2 to 4 weeks. Snap also says the elusive vending machines will return in a series new locations after a brief break.

What Brands Need To Do
In its filing for IPO, Snap indicated its intention to broaden the roll-out of Spectacles. Making it available via a dedicated ecommerce site is certainly a big step in that direction. Spectacles presents an interesting new tool for brands to create Snapchat-native video content, which brands such as Toyota and L’Oreal have started doing as part of their social influencer strategies. More brands need to align their branded content production with the ongoing trend towards mobile-native, camera-first media creation and consumption habits. When the consumers are just as likely to point their camera at things they find interesting and take a video of it to share on social channels, brands need to find an authentic way to take advantage of this trend to generate share-worthy content and engage with selfie-happy customers.

If you have yet to experience the magic that is Snapchat Spectacles, the Lab has a couple of pairs that you can try on yourself to gain a hands-on understanding of the great “un-bundling” happening in the mobile space.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook Brings Snapchat Stories Clone To WhatsApp

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook continues its quest to curb Snapchat’s growth as it updated WhatsApp on Tuesday to launch a new Status feature that let users post gifs, photos, and videos that disappears after 24 hours. With an interface similar to Snapchat and Instagram Stories, multiple Status updates within a day will be stringed together as a loop of content. WhatsApp plans to roll out this feature to all global users throughout this week.  

What Brands Need To Do
If recent reports claiming that Instagram Stories has been successful in slowing Snapchat’s growth were to believe, this will no doubt be another blow to Snapchat courtesy of Facebook. Given WhatsApp’s over 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide, this new feature is set to particularly curb Snapchat’s international growth.

While this could be an interesting gateway for Facebook to introduce media content and ads into WhatsApp, so far the messaging app has remained ad-free as it carefully mulls over plans for monetization. However, there have been brands, such as lingerie brand Agent Provocateur, that leveraged WhatsApp’s one-on-one chat to intimately connect with customers and offer product recommendations. The launch of Status introduces a new tool for brands looking to share content with fans in an exclusive, private manner.

 

Source: TechCrunch

 

U.K. Hospital Creates VR Experience To Prepare Kids For MRI Scans

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
To help patients, especially children, to prepare for their first MRI scans, the Kings College Hospital in London has created a “My MRI” VR experience that is designed to familiarize first-time patients of the procedure. The hospital made an app for Google Cardboard that contains a 360-degree video to guide viewers through the process from arrival to sliding inside the MRI scanner.

What Brands Need To Do
This is an interesting use case of VR content in healthcare, as it leverages the immersive power of virtual reality to put patients at ease and prepare them for the real procedure. VR has long been a promising training tool in the medical field for simulated scenarios or virtual surgeries, but this new app shows that healthcare and medical brands can employ VR for patient-facing, informative initiatives as well.

How We Can Help
Our dedicated team of VR experts is here to guide marketers through the distribution landscape. We work closely with brands to develop sustainable VR content strategies to promote branded VR and 360 video content across various apps and platforms. With our proprietary technology stack powered by a combination of best-in-class VR partners and backed by the media fire-power of IPG Mediabrands, we offer customized solutions for distributing and measuring branded VR content that truly enhance brand messaging and contribute to the campaign objectives.

If you’d like to learn more about how the Lab can help you tap into the immersive power of VR content to engage with customers, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: TechCrunch