In an attempt to reach the fickle and ever-elusive Generation Z, Weinstein Company is teaming up with messaging app Kik to launch an ad campaign for its upcoming young adult movie “The Giver”. Kik users are now encouraged to share a “Giver card”, embedded with promo content of the movie, with each other in conversations within the app. This marks the first time the messaging platform running a movie promotion, although it is certainly no stranger to brand campaigns, having worked with IPG lab last year to run an integrated campaign for U.K boyband One Direction. With a major Hollywood studio moving in, Kik and other messaging apps are indeed shaping up to be the next frontier of youth marketing.
Category: Percolate
Facebook Is Now Worth $190 Billion Thanks To Mobile Ads
Following the glowing earnings report released yesterday, major news outlets are now reporting on Facebook’s record high market capitalization, which is estimated at around $190 billion, putting it ahead of Amazon’s $165 billion. And its performance on mobile is being cited as the major force behind its recent commercial success. Given that nearly 400 million users access Facebook only via mobile devices, it is not surprising to find that mobile ads now account for 62 percent of Facebook’s overall ad revenue, which is up by two-thirds compared to the same time last year. The social media giant’s remarkable success since going public could be largely credited to their smooth transition into the mobile world, and all web-based-only digital marketers need to take notes.
Google Leads In Autonomous Cars Influencers
When asked about driverless cars, which company do you think of first? According to a new study by Appinions, Google is dominating the current buzz over the most prestigious automakers in the market. As the ultimate form of connected cars, autonomous cars have been in public consciousness for a while now, mostly thanks to Google’s experimental efforts. With such high level of technology involved, it’s hardly surprising to see the tech overlord certified as the most influential player. Clearly, auto companies have some catching-up to do if they want to have a say in this growing market.
LinkedIn Buys Marketing Firm Bizo For Better Ads
Following its acquisition of Newsle to get better at personalized news, with the potential of turning news feeds into a platform for native advertising within targeted professional circles. LinkedIn has continued to dive into the world of sponsored ads by inking an $175 million deal to buy Bizo, a business-focused marketing firm. Given that one of the fastest-growing ad products on LinkedIn, or social media in general, is sponsored updates, this acquisition can be seen as a follow-up in the company’s ongoing efforts in mobilizing its platform for branded content.
Pivoted Foursquare Debuts With New Logo
Back in May, Foursquare announced its decision to split its service in two: moving all it’s checking-in and location-sharing functions to a new app Swarm while the Foursquare app set for re-launch as a discovery-focused app. After nearly 3 months, Foursquare is now revealing its refreshed new app, accompanied with a redesigned logo, aiming to shake off the preconceptions about the company. Repositioned as a Yelp-esque local discovery and rating app, the new Foursquare promises a highly personalized discovery experience with its “hyper-contextual recommendations”. This is a turning point for the company for sure, but whether it is a turn for better or for worse still remains to be determined by the mobile users.
Stars and Brands Leaving Vine For Snapchat
In Forbes’s detailed profile on Snapchat celebrity Shaun McBride, one important phenomenon almost slips through: with Vine “sort of plateauing” after a year and a half, video creators and brands are now looking to a matured Snapchat for new opportunities. No longer just an ephemeral picture sharing app, Snapchat has caught considerable attention from marketers with its new Snapchat Stories feature that allows the messages, be it video or pictures, to stay on for 24 hours. Several big stars on Vine have reportedly been branching out to Snapchat, looking to catch on the next trend to stay relevant. Overall, it is clear to see that the intimate, personal appeal of messaging apps gives them a crucial edge over the old-fashioned social media platforms. And staying ahead of trend seems to be the moral of the story here.
The Problematic Canvas Fingerprinting, A New Tracking Technology
Another day, another new technology to track people on the internet. Forbes reports that a new tracking technology called Canvas Fingerprinting that can tracks internet surfers’ web behaviors even with anti-tracking tools or strict privacy settings in place.
Here’s how it works. By employing Canvas Fingerprinting, websites can secretively send your web browser a request to generate a hidden image consisting of some text, and then assigns a “fingerprint” for each computer based on the image produced. Because of the slight setting variations in font, browser, or graphic rendering between each end device, the generated fingerprint would be unique and therefore be employed for tracking. Different websites utilizing this same tracking system can track a user from site to site, with currently no way for users to opt-out.
As with the recent Facebook experiment debacle, we here at the IPG Media Lab highly value privacy and strictly follow the rule of “informed consent first” in our conduct. By design, Canvas Fingerprinting is inherently sneaky and secretive, and therefore problematic without proper legislation.
Apple To Release OS X Yosemite Public Beta Tomorrow
The time has come. The perfectionists at Apple (except for the Map team, obviously) are finally ready to reveal its newest operating system to the public eyes, with a limited one-million spots for non-developers on the public beta set to be released tomorrow at 1 PM, ET. So, avid Apple fanboys who can’t wait to worship the next-gen OS and curious Android developers who just want to check out the competition, now it’s your chance to get your hands on the new features of Yosemite. Other cautious folks who are perfectly content with their current OS, however, should just wait until the official release later this fall. After all, it’s called “beta test” for a reason.
Update: Apple will reportedly release OS X Yosemite in October alongside 4K desktop and 12-inch Retina MacBook
Nike Lets FuelBand Users Trade Points For Products
In a brilliant move that combines health incentive, branded value exchange, and wearable tech all together, Nike has been secretly setting up temporary vending machines, aptly named FuelBox, that trade Nike FuelBand points in exchange for branded Nike products. It comes off as a novel guerilla experiment for Nike to market its brand value while generating buzz for its wearable device. Such an integrated plan, if proven successful, would most likely be exerted more frequently.
This Glowing Sensor Can Track And Enhance Your Sleep
There have been several sleep-enhancing trackers and apps on the market, but few have been this sleek and unobtrusive. Invented by 22 year-old James Proud and currently on Kickstarter, Sense is an elegantly designed orb-shaped sensor that sits on your nightstand and monitors every environmental factor—temperature, light, sound, humidity, and even particles in the air—in your bedroom. It also comes with a clip-on motion sensor that you can attach to your pillowcase to track your sleep pattern throughout the night. All data gathered will be synced via Bluetooth to a corresponding app to give a detailed analysis about your slumber. As with many projects on Kickstarter, this idea looks great, but the execution could be off. Nevertheless, this connected device points to an inevitable future home life powered by the internet of things.
Update: Within 12 hours of its launch on Kickstarter, the Sense has crushed its original 100,000 goal with a near-doubled amount pledged.
Update #2: The campaign concluded with over $2,400,000 raised, almost 25 times of its original pledge goal.
