How Brands Can Better Utilize Snapchat’s Snapcodes And Influencers

What Happened
Snapchat is offering brands a new way to engage with consumers in the real world as it debuts an ad format called Snap to Unlock. Brands can work with Snapchat to create branded “Snapcodes,” QR codes shaped like the Snapchat logo, to put on billboards, on products, or in stores for interested customers to scan to gain access to extra content. Universal Pictures is among the first to test this new ad unit to promote its new movie The Girl On the Train.

In related news, brands can now use Snaplytics, a social analytics startup dedicated to Snapchat, to identify and track how their influencer campaigns are doing by using their new Influencer Tracking Platform. The tool is designed to provide marketers with data on how many Snapchat users saw an influencer ad and for how long, helping brands to adjust their campaigns accordingly.

What Brands Need To Do
Both products should be of great use to brands trying to reach customers on Snapchat in ways besides conventional video ads. Snap To Unlock offers brands a chance to bring mobile-based interactivity to their out-of-home campaigns or product packaging, and Snaplytics’ Influencer Tracking Platform provides brands with a measurement tool to better understand their sponsored influencer content performance.

 


Sources: AdAge & Realwire

 

Apple’s iPhone 7 Event Preview: What Marketers Should Look Out For

Apple is holding its annual iPhone event on Wednesday in San Francisco, and based on the early reports and leaked intelligence, the new iPhone 7 will undoubtedly be the star of the show. Here is a roundup of things that marketers should look out for tomorrow from Apple’s press event.

iPhone 7 To Make Push For Siri & Conversational Interfaces
By all accounts, Apple will be unveiling the next-gen iPhones, which will come with faster processors and bigger storages, but won’t look that much different than the iPhone 6 and 6s – save for two important changes.

To start with, the new iPhone 7 Plus will reportedly be equipped with a dual-lens camera, which will unlock some more advanced photography features for consumers. The iPhone 7 will also most likely come without a 3.5mm headphone jack, which could boost the usage of wireless headphones. This, coupled with the extended functionality of Siri thanks to the new SiriKit, could encourage iPhone users to interact with Siri more and help familiarize them with the type of conversational interfaces that are changing the way consumers interact with brands. (For more on this topic, check out the in-depth analysis in our 2016 Outlook.)

Faster Apple Watch With Built-in GPS
Besides a new iPhone, Apple is also set to release an Apple Watch update that will reportedly launch apps seven times faster and come with a built-in GPS for more accurate fitness tracking. As Apple continues to improve its wearable products, brands in the healthcare and fitness, athletic wear, or other fitness-adjacent fields should consider developing an Apple Watch app to reach their target audiences.

New Softwares Extend Apple Pay Support
Along with the annual September event, the new Apple operating systems announced at this year’s WWDC will come out of beta testing and become available for the masses. One significant feature these upgrades will bring is the ability to use Apple Pay across iPhone, Apple Watch, and the Safari browser on Mac computers, enabling Apple Pay users to complete their online orders seamlessly regardless of the device they are using. For more marketing implications the software upgrades are set to bring, check out our Fast Forward analysis on the 2016 WWDC event.

One more thing, maybe?
Apple has been reportedly working on a variety of projects that range from self-driving cars to AR products, but none of them appear to be anywhere near ready to be publicly announced at the moment. Still, don’t be too shocked if Apple decides to surprise the world with a “one-more-thing” type of announcement.

Don’t forget to check back tomorrow to read our take on Apple’s announcements.

 


Sources: Bloomberg & 9to5Mac & The Verge

Pokémon Go To Launch In Japan With McDonald’s As Sponsored Gym Locations

What Happened
Two weeks after its initial release, Pokémon Go is finally set to be released in Japan on Wednesday (Update 7/20: the launch has been delayed due to the leak of the partnership), TechCrunch reports. Sources also claim that this major roll-out will also feature the first Sponsored Locations in the game, with over 3,000 McDonald’s locations in Japan designated as Gyms. Reports about game-maker Niantic opening up the game to allow Sponsored Locations first surfaced last week, and for now it remains to be seen whether the company will roll out this brand opportunity to other markets.

In the past two weeks, Pokémon Go has quickly grown into a global craze, driving considerable real-world traffic to various landmarks, parks, and local businesses. On Sunday, around 5,000 people gathered at Millennium Park in Chicago to play the game. The Dallas Arboretum, home to multiple PokéStops and Gyms, is hosting Pokémon Go events and staying open late to accommodate players, drawing record crowds as a result.

The foot traffic the game drives is also giving various restaurants, cafes, and other stores significant boosts in customers. Picasso’s Pizzeria in Buffalo, NY advertised that they are located in between two PokéStops and claimed that sales doubled in just a few hours. Various restaurants across the country are reported to be attracting Pokémon Go players with extra Pokémons generated by Lures, an in-game purchase, as well as offering discounts and gift cards to people who tweet out photos of themselves with Pokémon in the restaurants.

What Brands Need To Do
With the game scoring a higher engagement rate than Facebook and more daily active users than Twitter, Pokémon Go’s smashing success presents great opportunities for brands to reach a young-skewing audience on mobile and even drive offline traffic to stores. While it remains to be seen when the company behind Pokémon Go will bring sponsorship opportunities to markets outside Japan, there are still plenty of things that brands can do to capitalize on the game’s viral popularity. For starters, brands can take a cue from T-Mobile, which announced a series of Pokémon Go-related promotions to appeal to the vast number of players. For brands with physical locations that are near PokéStops, it would also be important to indicate so on Yelp for the new search option it added.

For more suggestions on how brands can benefit from “Pokémania,” check out our in-depth Fast Forward analysis on the matter here.

 


Sources: Various outlets as linked in the post

By The Numbers: More Than 25% Of U.S. Internet Users Are Blocking Ads

What Happened
By the end of next year, about a third of internet users in the States will be blocking ads, up from 20% in 2015, according to a recent eMarketer study (paywalled link). The study, which defines an ad-blocker user as “an internet user who accesses the internet at least once a month via any device that has an ad-blocker enabled,” also estimates that 26.3% of U.S. netizens are using an ad blocker this year. The silver lining here, however, seems to be that the growth rate of ad-blocker users is gonna slow down a bit, declining from 35% to 24% next year.

U.S. Ad Blocking Chart
source: eMarketer, June 2016

 

What Brands Need To Do
Here at the Lab, we have been keeping a close eye on the rise of ad-blocking since last May. In fact, it is a fundamental part of the trend of Ad Avoidance that we highlighted in our Outlook 2016 report. This eMarketer study is evident of ad-blocking’s continued prevalence and the growing consumer demand for a better online experience.

For brand advertisers, this means two things. First, brands need to work closely with agencies and media owners to take full advantage of the digital tools available to create leaner ads, deliver a less clustered ad experience, and ensure the viewability of their ads. Second, brands should also try exploring some non-conventional ad formats such as event sponsorships, branded content, or native advertising to reach consumers who have opted to block ads.

 


Source: AdWeek

What You Need To Know About Today’s Apple Event

As you may have heard, Apple hosted a keynote event at its Infinite Loop campus in Cupertino earlier today. As anticipated, the company unveiled a new 4-inch iPhone model and a smaller iPad Pro. A new addition to its healthcare toolkits was one of the few surprises. Here is everything a marketer should know about Apple’s announcements today.  

iPhone SE Aims To Reach More Consumers
Apple has been pushing for bigger screens since the iPhone 6, but the company says that most first-time iPhone users are still buying 4-inch iPhones, especially those in certain global markets such as China. In fact, Apple sold over 30 million 4-inch iPhones in 2015 alone. Aiming to capture those smaller-phone lovers, Apple introduced the iPhone SE which comes with a 4-inch screen and significant hardware improvements from Apple’s last 4-inch offering. Equipped with the A9 processor and the M9 motion coprocessor, iPhone SE is as powerful as the iPhone 6s, and will no doubt bring the latest features, such as Apple Pay, always-on Siri, and Touch ID, to more smartphone users.

iPad Pro Positioned As A PC Replacement
Apple also followed up last year’s 12.9-inch iPad Pro with a smaller version. The new iPad Pro comes with a 9.7-inch retina display, improved hardware specs, and its own custom keyboard. The Cupertino company shared that of the 308 million total iPads sold, over 200 million have had 9.7-inch screens, and that the majority of iPad Pro buyers were moving from a Windows PC. With over 1 million apps designed for iPad available in the App Store, Apple seems bullish on the iPad Pro’s market positioning as a PC replacement.

New CareKit To Boost Healthcare Apps
Apple’s HealthKit, which helps collect data for medical studies, has proven to be a hit among medical professionals. In fact, Apple says it facilitated the largest Parkinson’s study to date in less than 24 hours of its launch last year. To follow up on the ResearchKit’s early success, Apple debuted a new developer framework called CareKit, which focuses on patient-facing data that can assist chronic patient care or monitoring post-surgical recovery. The first app to use this framework will also focus on Parkinson’s. This new developer tool should provide healthcare brands with another great channel to learn more about patients’ needs.


Header image courtesy of Apple.com

CES 2016: The Next Big Thing Conference On The Future Of Interfaces

As part of CNET’s “The Next Big Thing” conference series at CES 2016, the “Is Typing Dead?” session on Wednesday afternoon captured our attention because of its focus on debating what’s next in human-machine interaction.

The actual voice behind Siri, Susan Bennett, took stage at the beginning of the session, and hearing her talking in her highly recognizable “Siri voice” made for an oddly interesting experience. She told the audience a brief but funny recap about her involvement in the creation of Siri, kicking off this simulating session on what will come after typing and touchscreens in the continued evolution of digital interfaces.

The four-person panelists consisted of industry thought leaders on interface designs, including Wendy Ju from Stanford University’s Interaction Design Research unit, Pattie Maes from MIT Media Lab, Marcus Behendt from BMW’s user experience department, and Vlad Sejnoha, CTO of Nuance Communications. Together, they discussed the state of voice command and gesture control, and casted their predictions for the future of user interfaces.

Voice command has been taking off in recent years with the likes of Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, and as we have seen at this year’s CES, more and more devices has added support for voice command and will start talking with users. But because of the inherent ambiguity in natural languages, as MIT’s Maes pointed out, speech is not always the most efficient way of communications, and therefore will be relegated to controlling only certain applications.

Moreover, the panelists agreed that sometimes voice command may misunderstand user intent because it is not picking up on all the non-verbal cues we use in conversations. And it would become a much more powerful tool for human- computer interaction if it is combined with personal data to learn about user’s preference and interests.

Gesture control is also a UI trend that is growing in popularity, whether it’s X-box’s kinetic gaming features, or the in-car gesture control that Volkswagen just added to its Golf electric model. BMW’s Behrendt sees gesture control mostly as communication enhancement, while also reminding everyone that some gestures may vary from culture to culture, which hinders universal adoption. And the panelists agrees that the bottom line here is that gesture control should be intuitive and shouldn’t be like a sign language that users have to learn to use.

In addition, the panelists also quickly ran through some emerging technologies that may one day power mainstream digital interfaces, such as gaze control (commend with sight), proximity-based control (such as beacons triggering actions), as well as biometric-based control that responds to the changes in your physiological stats. While all these may still be decades away from ready for mass adoption, they nevertheless points to a future where our devices will no longer just passively waiting for our commands, but rather actively uses contextual data to anticipate our needs and serve us before we even lift a finger.

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

CES 2016: Netflix Goes Truly Global, Adds 130 New Countries

The lab attended the opening keynote of CES 2016 featuring Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings, who announced near the end of his presentation that this morning Netflix launched in 130 new global markets, including some major ones such as India and Russia. With this radical expansion, Netflix’s service is now available in almost every country in the world, with only China as a conspicuous hold-out.

Reports have also noted that Netflix has stricken a partnership with South Korea-based TV manufacturer LG to include its subscription as a prepaid service in LG’s new smart TVs, as part of Netflix’s global expansion plan. But there was curiously no mention of this partnership during the keynote presentation. Mr. Hastings also shared a few first-look trailers for some of its upcoming new series, including Baz Luhrmann’s hip hop musical The Get Down and new British royal drama The Crown, which focuses on the early life of Queen Elizabeth.

During the keynote, Reed Hastings proudly recapped Netflix’s rapid development into today’s leading OTT content provider, citing stats such as 70 million household users clocking up a total of 42.5 billion viewing hours for 2015. As a streaming services, Netflix’s “all-episodes-at-once” approach gives viewers more control in their content consumption and ushered in a new on-demand “binge-watching” era. TV is now no longer linear and restricted to a programming grid, but instead full of choices and quality content free to be consumed on any devices. In this new era of Internet TV, brands needs to start figuring out new ways to reach today’s audiences, especially with product placement or sponsorships in ad-free environments like Netflix.

For more of the Lab’s CES coverage, click here.

On Trend: How Ecommerce Is Eroding Black Friday

Amazon might have just severely undermined the cultural relevance of Black Friday.

On Wednesday, the ecommerce giant announced its plan to start offering its Black Friday deals on Nov. 20 – a full week ahead of Black Friday. Amazon Prime members will be granted a half-hour earlier access to many deals than the general public. Facing pressure from Amazon’s aggressively proactive approach, traditional retailers like Best Buy, Toys “R” Us, Kmart, and Sears are all starting their Black Friday sales early this year so as not to be left out.

More importantly, as more and more people start shopping online and taking advantage of easier comparison shopping, most retailers are now offering the same Black Friday deals online, giving customers less incentive to visit the store. No more lining up for the doorbusters at Walmart this year, as the retail giant has opted to provide nearly all of its deals both online and in stores, with the online deals becoming available at midnight on Thanksgiving day, 18 hours before the stores open.  

Overall, the disruption ecommerce has caused what analysts call the “graying” of Black Friday, where holiday sales start earlier and are spread out evenly throughout the holiday, thus making Black Friday less relevant. For retailers, this means a longer holiday sales period that starts earlier. Some retailers, such as Amazon and Toy “R” Us, are offering their loyalty program members early access, which creates smart sales windowing to incentivize the shoppers.

Besides starting early and rewarding loyal fans with early access, retailers should also consider making a push for mobile shopping this year. Amazon, for example, plans to offer a slew of mobile-only deals in hopes of driving more consumers to its app. Using mobile-exclusive deals to incentivize more shoppers to download branded retail apps can help retailers establish a digital touchpoint on shoppers’ smartphones, allowing them to connect with shoppers on the go. Apps can also provide consumer data for retailers to learn valuable insights into consumer insights.

Ecommerce may be eroding Black Friday’s importance as the biggest annual sales event, but it is also what will help retailers to reach today’s connected consumers and stay relevant in the long run.

 

Facebook Lures Live TV Viewers With New Features

What Happened
To better compete with Twitter as the go-to second-screen platform for live TV viewers, Facebook has announced several new features that media owners can use to better engage with fans. Included in the announcement are new voting features – either through hashtags or native polls embedded in posts – and a new UGC curation tool that allows producers to review audience-contributed content and share them via Pages. Plus, Facebook is introducing custom icons that denote partner shows, clearly taking a page out of Twitter’s emoji playbook.

What Brands Need To Do
Continuing to court brands with new tools and high-performing ad units, Facebook is quickly becoming a brand-friendly platform for media owners to connect with their audience. With second-screen viewing, audiences tend to tune out during commercial breaks and turn to their mobile devices, therefore rendering TV ads ineffective. Therefore, brands should consider cross-screen targeting on popular second-screen platforms like Twitter and Facebook with sponsored posts or branded content.

 


Source: The Verge

Event Recap: IAB MIXX Conference 2015, Day One

To kick off this year’s Advertising Week, the Lab attended the IAB MIXX conference held at Crowne Plaza Hotel in New York City. Here are some highlights from the first day of the event, which was focused on the importance of consumer experiences in digital advertising.

Context And Relevancy Influence Consumer Experience
Across panels and keynotes, speakers agreed that digital ads deliver the best consumer experience when they are served at the right moment. “People don’t hate advertising. They hate advertising that isn’t relevant to them in that moment,” Chairman and CEO of Interpublic Group Michael Roth remarked in the keynote. Spotify, a major sponsor of today’s event, also took the stage to demonstrate their capability in ad targeting based on listening behaviors, usually clued in by the name of the playlist. For example, users listening to a “Workout” playlist would be more susceptible to an ad for sports equipment. Touting over 2.5 hours of active engagement every day per user, Spotify CEO Daniel Ek also said that audio ads are vastly underutilized in the industry.

Unifying Ad Experience Across Screens And Platforms
As today’s audience becomes increasingly fragmented, It seems evident that the best way to capture consumer’s attention and leave a lasting impression is to deliver a unified ad experience across multiple devices and platforms. Clear Channel Outdoor also presented results of their #CokeMyName digital outdoor campaign from July in Times Square, which married traditional out-of-home ads with smartphones via Twitter as the mechanic for social lift. An identical experience was replicated on a corresponding mobile site for further interactions and social sharing. Combining OOH display and mobile engagement, the campaign proved to be a hit, logging over 350 million social impressions over 3 weeks. Similarly, Andy Markowitz, General Manager of the GE Performance Marketing Lab, also showcased how they are leveraging digital tools across touchpoints to create a holistic consumer experience, including mapped ROIs using Marketo‘s data inside LinkedIn’s lead generator.

Fighting Adblockers With Better Ad Experience
Now with 62% of digital time spent on mobile devices, user experience on mobile is paramount to the success of digital ads. With mainstream consumers quickly adopting ad blockers, it is important to develop high-quality, content-rich ads that consumers are willing to engage with. As Yahoo’s CEO Marissa Mayer put it, ”if we want to combat ad blockers, we need to offer people transparency, choice, and control.” In a workshop session, digital ad firm Undertone presented results from joint research it conducted with Ipsos Connect on the effectiveness of high impact formats, i.e. full screen interactive ads such as interstitials. Monitoring results from 3,600 participants, their study found high impact ad formats outperform standard digital ad formats, doubling brand recall rates across desktop, tablets, and mobile devices. Native ads and in-app ads were also recommended by multiple speakers as ad formats that delivers superior consumer experience, something that we also suggested all brands look into in a recent Fast Forward analysis.