It is known that Google gives publishers the ability to run display and text ads on their sites. Now, Google is providing the means for advertisers to utilize a more well-known format: it wants to put magazine-like display and text ads on sites. The goal, it seems, is to give text advertisers the ability to compete, in an aesthetically pleasing fashion, with display-only ad units, and to give publishers the ability to run text ads in addition to their own display ads. It seems like a straightforward play for Google: the company can and will simply make more money when these ads display, as before their existence there wouldn’t have been ads in competition for these spots at all. Though it might feel gimmicky, it’s an effective way for Google to maximize on profits for previously unused space.
Category: Percolate
Music Industry Buys Into Shazam
Shazam Entertainment officially announced that it’s landed a series of investments from many of the world’s biggest record companies, indicating that the music industry is looking at new and different methods of keeping relevant and present. Shazam, whose latest valuation was $500 million, said that Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony Music Entertainment are each taking $3 million stakes in Shazam, which were purchased through a third party investor. These groups all also own a stake in Spotify, and have used the platform to push artists’ streams, and thus its likely we’ll see these music groups do the same on Shazam.
Facebook Sees Users Decline
Although 82% of Internet users between the ages of 16 and 64 have a Facebook profile, new research indicates that in Q2 2014 there was a 6% decrease, across the board, in active usage of Facebook by those users as messaging and picture apps boom. GlobalWebIndex, in conducting a Social study for the first part of this year, notes that Snapchat has seen a 67% increase in its user base, while WhatsApp has seen a 30% increase in the same amount of time and has overtaken Facebook’s Messenger app as the third most popular social app globally. Picture sharing, like Instagram, has shot up as well; Tumbler has seen a 22% increase, while Instagram itself has seen a 25% increase in active users in the last six months. Pinterest is also up 7%. While people continue to visit Facebook, they’re using fewer and fewer things. Overall, mobile audiences are growing globally, signaling a fundamental shift away from interacting via social networks, and towards interacting via messaging.
Xbox Unbundles Kinect
Xbox has announced that it will continue to sell Xbox One’s – it’s next generation gaming and living room console – but it’s going to do it at a reduced price, without the Kinect. The $499 bundle with the Kinect still does exist, but for the future users will be able to save $100 by leaving the Kinect behind. It’s potentially part of a system thought out by Microsoft to catch up with sales of the PS4, which has been outselling the Xbox console in part because of the price. The Kinect also hasn’t quite justified its additional $100, as there are few games that support it, and fewer users still who use it to genuinely navigate through Xbox’s UI; it’s faster and ultimately easier to pick up the controller. Though the Kinect might indeed represent the future of gesture control in gaming situations, the reality of the situation is that the technology isn’t quite perfect enough yet to be consumer facing. Microsoft is spurning that future for the present, it seems, and in the process will hope to simply get the device into as many living rooms as possible – without that, Microsoft will have no platform on which to launch further developments.
Yahoo Acquires Blink
Blink, a direct mobile messaging rival to SnapChat, has been acquired by Yahoo, and the Blink team members will be absorbed into the Yahoo structure. Blink launched over a year ago on iOS, and allowed users to text, share photos, videos, voice, and more with individuals and groups. As well, these messages’ visibility could be controlled with timers much like SnapChat. At the same time, Blink’s primary user base is located in the United States, with over 100,000 downloads on Android in its first year of existence; the second largest market was the Middle East. All of that aside, the acquisition points to the fact that Yahoo recognizes the value of messaging apps – that is, that it doesn’t have one of its own just yet that’s a viable competitor to the big names in the messaging world just yet, and that it’s a market that’s worth buying into.
Xbox To Remove Gold Requirement For Netflix & Hulu
As has been rumored for some time, Xbox is going to remove the paywall for streaming media services on the gaming device. Xbox 360 and Xbox One users will no longer need a paid subscription to Xbox Live Gold to get to Netflix, Hulu, and others. Apparently Xbox will put some other services behind the paywall to make up for it, perhaps content like the new TV series that have been promised for months now. That said, this move is a clear concession to the fact that Xbox wants users to stay on their device while streaming in the living room, and having a paywall between a service that is free to use on other devices only served to drive consumers away. Free access to Netflix and Hulu means that Xbox is officially competing with both Nintendo and Sony for consumer access to games and streaming content, as well as against the host of media boxes that have begun to infiltrate more and more living rooms.
Yelp Launches New SeatMe
Yelp has debuted a new tool for restaurants, bars, and other nightlife businesses which would allow them to accept online reservations for free. It’s a free version of Yelp’s SeatMe product, which has been on the market for some time already and sits in direct competition with the likes of OpenTable. Right now, the free version of SeatMe is only available in the US, the UK, and Ireland, but Yelp is looking to expand into more regions soon. To register, businesses will need to make a Yelp Business Account; users who make reservations will receive a notification six hours before the reservation time, and an SMS about an hour before. Yelp is also making a widget to encourage more reservations on websites. Whether it can compete with already entrenched reservation services remains to be seen, but it would be a boon to Yelp to have user data on who is reserving where, and when, across the board.
Twitter Introduces Mute Feature
Twitter is looking to answer its detractors who think its feeds are overcomplicated and too busy by introducing a Mute feature across Android, iPhone, and Web platforms. The option, as its name implies, allows you to silence other users in your feed by taping on the gear icon and choosing “mute @username.” The goal is to give users more control over the content they see, and to allow you to curate your own feeds by selectively cutting people out. Muting users doesn’t stop people from favoriting, replying to, and retweeting tweets – they can still use Twitter as usual. And, the muted user won’t know that others have muted them; it’s entirely silent. It’s a way to hopefully reduce the noise on the social network, and keep users engaged in a customized feed that works for them.
Square Pulls Wallet In Favor Of Order App
The highly-touted Square Wallet isn’t working out so well, it turns out. After its launch in 2011, and support from Starbucks, the Wallet ultimately didn’t match the momentum of the company’s credit card reader, which has been a veritable success with small businesses. To match the success of the card reader, Square wants to overhaul its consumer strategy, replacing Square Wallet with Square Order, a simplified version of the Wallet that’s been in testing for a few months.
Order lets users order ahead at small businesses, and skip lines when you pick up your purchase. It also notifies users when their orders are ready. The added utility aims to attract new users as Square is baking in loyalty program and advertising opportunities which will warrant a substantially larger merchant fee of 8%. In general, Square’s issues have been more around their business model than user experience, so well see if Order will right the ship.
LEAP Motion Talks About Future Of Cars
LEAP Motion, the finger-tracking hardware and software combination that allows users to interact with computers and electronics with gestures, has released details about the second iteration of its hardware. CEO Michael Buckwald has intimated that LEAP would work excellently with 3D Gesture controllers and the VR world, but his biggest aspiration is to help LEAP break into the automotive sphere. Version 2 of the LEAP software would do just that: it would track fingers that the LEAP hardware can’t necessarily see by tracking hand positions, and thus placing the “invisible” fingers in three dimensional space. So for a car, users could interact with heads up displays with the flick of a finger, or children could play with back-seat entertainment systems without necessarily moving from the seat. Even if it won’t find its way into cars immediately, this simple improvement within the software is enough to allow developers to come up with many more practical applications for what was, until this point, more of a proof-of-concept.
