Category: General Content

Amazon Updates Alexa Developer Policy To Ban Ads In Most Third-Party Skills

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon has updated its developer policy to explicitly prohibit marketing messages in most third-party “skills” for its voice assistant Alexa. The updated policy now simply bans skills that contain “any advertising for third-party products or services.” Exceptions are made for music streaming, radio, and news briefing skills, which can continue to carry sponsor messages or audio ad breaks, but otherwise Amazon is banning ads on the Alexa platform.

What Brands Need To Do
With this policy update, it is clear that Amazon intends to impose a tight control over the marketing messages delivered via Alexa. The timing suggests this could be a response to the recent incident where Burger King released ads intentionally crafted to trigger Google Home. This means brands will no longer be able to sponsor a popular skill, other than the three exempted categories, to reach Alexa users. Instead, brands interesting in exploring voice-activated smart home devices as a marketing channel should reorient their strategy towards building branded skills that can provide users with functional values and engaging conversational experiences.

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 Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

Source: TechCrunch

Facebook Rolled Out Special Camera Frame For Earth Day

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook celebrated Earth Day this past Saturday with a themed camera frame, marking the latest seasonal frame to debut on the social network. The camera frames, which are static overlays for photos and videos taken in Facebook’s main app and Messenger app, are now open to third-party developers as part of the Camera Effects platform that the company launched last week at its annual developer conference F8. Facebook said the first batch of camera frames created by third-party developers will start to roll out in May, with more selfie lenses and face-tracking effects coming in June.

What Brands Need To Do
The arrival of new camera frames is but one result of Facebook’s launch of the new Camera Effects platform, which enables developers to create third-party mobile AR experiences inside its main apps. While static picture frames may not seem like the most high-tech thing as far as digital marketing experiences go, the fact that brands can use Facebook’s platform tools to easily create branded frames that could reach Facebook’s nearly 2 billion active users worldwide is a big deal. And that is just the starting point for brands to explore camera as the newest platform. In order to properly insert your brand into the media that Facebook users share to earn organic impressions., brands need to work with developers to create fun, interesting, and engaging camera effects that users will want to use and share.

For a more in-depth analysis on Facebook’s announcements at this year’s F8, check out our latest Fast Forward here.

 

Source: AdWeek

Mercedes-Benz Lets Drivers Choose Between Alexa And Google Assistant

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Alexa and Google Assistant will be duking it out on Mercedes-Benz vehicles, as the German automaker announced on Friday it will be integrating both voice assistants into all of its 2016 and 2017 models in the U.S. Starting today, Mercedes owners can instruct their Google Home or Amazon Echo to remotely start or lock their vehicles, as well as send addresses to their in-car navigation system. Users will need to have an active “Mercedes me” account and link it up to the Google Home or Amazon Alexa app for the integration to work.

What Brands Need To Do
Mercedes is not the only auto brand that are giving consumer options to choose when it comes to digital voice assistants. Hyundai, who just added support for Google Assistant last week, was the first auto brand to roll out Alexa integrations back in November. As more auto brands start actively pursuing the potential of in-car conversational interfaces, more and more consumers will become addressable via these voice assistants, and brands will need to seize the initiative to navigate the emerging opportunities and challenges of shifting from a screen-based interaction to a voice experience.

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 Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

 

Source: Engadget

More Financial Services Come To Facebook Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook Messenger is about to get a lot better at handling your money, as five major financial services launched or upgraded their services on Facebook’s popular messaging app in tandem with Facebook’s F8 event. On Tuesday, Western Union and MoneyGram both launched Facebook Messenger bots for handling cash transfers, while Wells Fargo announced it is testing a Facebook Messenger bot for basic banking tasks such as checking account balances and transferring between accounts. In addition, Mastercard also announced that its Masterpass online payment service will power select Messenger bots, allowing them to take payment from MasterCard, as well as from banks like Citi and Capital One.

What Brands Need To Do
Last fall, Facebook rolled out the Messenger Payments API, which works with services like PayPal to add payment support to chatbots. Now with more and more banks and financial services getting on Messengers, customers will have increasingly convenient access to their money without leaving the chat app, which, in turn, would accustom them to the idea of buying stuff on Messenger and open the door for conversational commerce. As the online banking experience continues to evolve from a website-based experience to modular service integrations on popular platforms, banks and financial service brands will need to adapt to the changing consumer habits by developing conversational experiences to allow easy access and management.  

For more news on what Facebook announced at this year’s F8 developer conference, please check out our latest Fast Forward analysis.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Google Home Adds Support For Multiple Users

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
With a major software upgrade, Google’s smart speaker Home can now recognize up to six different users by voice. This addition of multi-user support means that Google Home can now tailor its answers for each user and know which account to pull data to match who is asking. Google Home users can easily train it to recognize different voices by repeating “Ok, Google” twice, the recording of which is then analyzed by a neural network and stored locally for future references. Multi-user support is rolling out in the U.S. today and will expand to the U.K. over the next few weeks. Users must update their Google Home app to enable multi-user support.

What Brands Need To Do
In contrast to voice assistants on smartphones that are meant for one individual user, smart home devices are meant to serve multiple users in the same household. Adding multi-user support is a great way to expand the uses cases for Google Home and gives it a competitive edge to Amazon Echo or other voice assistants. It also gives Google a way to collect more personal data and help it improve the voice experiences that Home provides. As voice-activated smart home devices continue to mature and proliferate the market, more and more consumers at home will become reachable and individually addressable. Brands need to prepare for that future by starting to develop a conversational strategy today.

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 Barrett ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: The Verge

Mastercard Starts Testing Credit Cards With Fingerprint Sensors In South Africa

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Mastercard is testing a new kind of payment cards integrated with fingerprint sensors for authentication. Instead of putting in your PIN or hastily signing the receipts to complete purchases, you simply press your thumb on the card to prove the transaction. Mastercard is currently testing this new biometric card in South Africa, and plans to roll it out worldwide later this year. Users will need to go to an enrollment center (usually a bank) to have their fingerprints taken in order to use this type of cards.

One thing to note is that this type of biometric authentication only works with the new chip-and-pin cards, which has been gaining momentum in the U.S. thanks to regulatory changes in the past two years that pushed merchants and banks to upgrade from the magnetic stripe cards and swipe-only POS terminals.

What Brands Need To Do
Mastercard has been exploring the integration of biometric technology in payment authentication for a while now. Previously, the credit card company also tested a mobile payment method that is authenticated by taking a selfie. Other brands, especially those in retail and financial services, should take notes and start thinking about how to upgrade their security and authentication process by using new biometric technologies to provide a smoother user experience.  

 

Source: Engadget

 

Google Takes On “Bad Ads” With A Built-In Ad-Blocker For Chrome Browser

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Google plans to take on online ads that cause subpar user experiences by adding a built-in ad-blocker to its Chrome browser, the most popular web browser in the world. The ad-blocker will target “unacceptable ads” as defined by the Coalition for Better Ads, a online ad regulation group that Google is a member of. The Coalition’s Better Ads Standard, released last month, calls out pop-ups, autoplay video ads with sound, interstitial ads with countdowns, and large “sticky” ads as “below the threshold of consumer acceptability.” In addition, Google is reportedly also considering blocking all ads on sites which have ads that don’t meet those standards.

What Brands Need To Do
We first called out the trend of Ad Avoidance – subpar online ad experiences and increasingly ad-free options are driving online users to actively avoid ads – back in 2015 when ad-blockers start to take off among Internet users, which was partly trigger by Apple allowing ad-blocking extensions in its Safari browser on iOS devices. This upcoming Chrome ad-blocker will only serve to accelerate the mainstream adoption of ad-blockers, further pushing ad-servers and publishers to optimize their ad experiences on site. For brands, this should be an opportunity to start exploring newer digital ad formats that are better integrated into the user experiences, such as in-feed social ads or branded content.

 

Source: Wall Street Journal

Snapchat Launches World Lenses As It Pushes Deeper Into Augmented Reality

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Snapchat has started rolling out new “world lenses,” a twist on its popular face-altering selfie lenses that you can now use to add some pizzazz to your surroundings. Starting today, tapping the camera screen while using the rear-facing camera will bring up the new lenses, which let you add 3-dimensional, animated objects to your snaps. At launch, the lineup includes a crying cloud, a smiling rainbow, blossoming flowers, and a colorful “OMG” sign. Snap says the lineup will change daily, presumably to encourage usage. Snap first started testing these new lenses in November.

What Brands Need To Do
This update comes at a time when Snap is facing mounting challenges from its major rival Facebook, whose aggressive tactics of cloning Snapchat’s camera-oriented features have seemingly started to take effects. The timing is even more deliberate considering today is the first day of Facebook’s annual developer event F8, where the social network is expected to double down on camera-powered mobile AR features similar to the “world lenses.”

As Facebook and Snap continue to duke it out over adding AR features to their apps, more and more mainstream consumers are starting to get accustomed to using these camera-powered AR features as a result. This is what is laying the groundwork for mobile-powered augmented reality to take off, which will allow brands to infiltrate their target audience’s photos and videos via sponsored Lens or branded AR objects.

Besides, this is a good time to think about ways for augmented reality to drive new opportunities for your brand. AR can, for example, be a great way for customers to envision your products in their lives and to launch digital experiences from signage or product packaging. What we can do now through a smartphone is just the beginning. As Microsoft’s HoloLens, Magic Leap, and the rumored Apple glasses roll out over the next few years, lots more will be possible.

 

Source: The Verge
Header image courtesy of Snap’s YouTube video

PayPal Joins Forces With Android Pay To Expand Retail Reach

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
On Tuesday, PayPal announced that it is teaming up with Google’s mobile payments platform Android Pay to expand its footprint both within mobile applications as well as at brick-and-mortar retailers. The partnership will allow PayPal users in the U.S. to activate their PayPal accounts in Android Pay and use it online, in apps, and in physical stores. This means Android users will soon be able to pay via PayPal for things like Uber as well as at retail partners such as Walgreens, Dunkin Donuts, and Subway.

What Brands Need To Do
As one of the most popular digital wallet services in the world, PayPal boasts nearly 200 million active customer accounts and about 15 million active merchant accounts. This partnership should further help expand the mobile usage of PayPal via Android Pay, as it offers a workaround to users who are hesitant to link up their credit or debit cards to mobile payments due to privacy or security concerns. For brands, the continued expansion of mobile payment will continue to simply the ecommerce and in-store check-out experience while also providing brands, particularly retailers, with a chance to integrate their loyalty programs into the process.

 

Source: Engadget

Tumblr’s New Video Chat App Is For Watching YouTube With Friends

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Tumblr is built around the idea of bringing strangers together on the basis of shared interests. So it is a bit surprising to see the Yahoo-owned social network to come out with video chat app designed for bringing real-life friends together. This new app named Cabana enables a group video chat of up to six people at the same time to watch YouTube videos. After joining a Cabana chat, anyone in the room will be able to browse through YouTube and select a video, which will start playing for everyone in the group chat. There is no direct link to Tumblr at the moment in the Cabana app, which launches on iOS today in the United States and will come to Android in a few weeks.

What Brands Need To Do
This new Cabana app, along with the Houseparty app created by the team behind Meerkat, is ushering a new casual mode for online video chats. Both apps are designed for facilitating group chats and allow users to jump in and out of chats with ease, replacing the comparatively formal, one-on-one Facetime sessions with an interaction that is more spontaneous and closer to a two-way live streaming experience.

There is currently no ad products available on either of those two apps, and few brands have explored them to reach their young-skewing users. But if this type of casual video chat apps starts to take off, brands may consider adapting to this new mode of live interactions by taking a more of-the-moments approach and hosting their own YouTube viewing parties for either branded content or sponsored influencer content.

 

Source: The Verge

Header image courtesy of Cabana App in iTunes Store