In a play to convince customers that its product is genuinely waterproof, Sony – in partnership with Draft FCB – put its latest MP3 player inside of a water bottle and sold it in vending machines in gym’s with pools. The MP3 player itself isn’t new; the issue is that most people now use their phones for MP3 playback and haven’t been buying the device itself. But by leveraging a niche crowd that would have a particular use for the product, namely swimmers, they’ve managed to make the product readily accessible in a way that appeals specifically to the target market. It’s a nifty way to take a product and thrust it forcefully into a target market.
Category: Percolate
Square & Whole Foods Partner
Square and Whole Foods announced a deal that will see Square handle payment and checkout at “food venues” within select Whole Foods locations. That would include sandwich counters, juice or coffee bars, pizzerias, or any other type of food establishment within the store. Each of the in-store venues will have an iPad and Square stand where you can swipe your card for immediate checkout. Thus Square users can skip the long checkout lines; indeed those with Square Wallets will be able to pay even more conveniently via mobile. The partnership is Square’s first with a national grocer and represents a big step forward in Square’s trajectory: if it can get into the consciousness of the average shopper, it’s got a very good chance of making itself the mobile payments solution of choice for the foreseeable future.
Me Want Cookies: Advertisers Pay 3X More For Interest-Based Ads
A study from the Digital Advertising Alliance found that advertisers will pay 3x more for cookie-based ads and 7x more if the cookie is 90 days old. Amidst White House efforts to review privacy implications of Big Data this week, groups like the IAB and DAA are hoping these numbers will position advertising as the lifeblood of the internet. For instance, 60% of small websites ad revenue comes from interest-based ads. Yet, the industry will need to do a better job of being transparent and educating the public on data and targeting if they want to maintain consumer trust. Companies like Enliken are already doing that, providing a service to ad networks and brands which makes it easy for the public to see which consumer segments they have been categorized in.
Pandora Opens To Independent Musicians
Pandora is the first online streaming service to open its doors to independent artists of all stripes. There will now be an online submission process for self-releasing artists across the Internet, allowing musicians with digital copies of their music to be broadcast on the network. In the past, artists on Pandora needed to have a hard copy of a CD with a UPC on Amazon, but now all that’s required is work digitally submitted through iTunes, Amazon/MP3, CD Baby, or Bandcamp. Pandora will screen the singles by hand. The catch is: in light of recent payment disputes, is the publicity of being available on Pandora worth the paltry paycheck?
Bonnaroo Will Stream On Xbox
Microsoft and Superfly Presents, the production company behind Bonnaroo, have agreed to stream the music festival on Xbox consoles this summer. Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners will have access to the “exclusive” experience. The companies say that it will be streaming in high definition where possible, and fans will be able to switch between multiple streams – that is, different stages – and will be able to watch performances from year’s past. The lineup, of course, has yet to be announced, and Xbox will also stream this event, which features Bonnaroo’s trademark Super Jams. Whether or not you can have the full “festival” experience over Xbox is certainly debatable, but nevertheless the deal is just further evidence of the continued trend of decentralized, streamed on-demand media across screens and devices.
Amazon Adds Photographic Product Search To iOS App
Amazon is raising the stakes of showrooming for retailers once again, folding its “Flow” technology, previously found in a standalone app released by its subsidiary, A9, into its main shopping app for iOS. “Flow” is visual product search, allowing users to photograph an object and see details about it on Amazon, which is even simpler than the previous norm of barcode recognition. Amazon’s competitive pricing is its main advantage in comparison to retailers, and by more effectively using other retailers as showrooms for the products it sells, it has the potential to further extend its dominance in more consumer categories.
Twitch Shoots Up To Fourth In Peak US Internet Traffic
According to new data from The Wall Street Journal, Twitch is now the fourth highest network commanding peak U.S. Internet traffic. Twitch holds approximately 1.8% of peak traffic, which is more than Hulu, Facebook, Valve, Amazon, Pandora, and Tumblr. Twitch has been growing exponentially, and not without hiccups; the amount of bandwidth it takes to run Twitch is significant, and the company has, at times, had trouble keeping up. Their integration with PlayStation 4 has been a boon, as PS4 owners now make up 20% of the service’s broadcasts. In addition to this data, the company also revealed that 68% of Twitch users have cut back on TV watching, as their screens are occupied by watching gaming. The average Twitch user spends 20 hours per week on the service, meaning that they’re significantly more engaged than the average user. As the medium continues its meteoric rise with a broadening user-base, it’s worth keeping an eye on for advertising and marketing opportunities.
Google Features Music Videos In Search
If you’ve searched Google in the past day or two, you might have noticed a new card-like format at the top of your search results. That’s because Google has started to showcase links to YouTube videos with large, Google-Now styled cards at the top of its pages. You can’t play the music video within the search engine, but when you click on the post it takes you to the YouTube page. Not all music videos will show up this way, however; only uploads from VEVO and official artist’s accounts will be shown like this, as well as special videos that have, ostensibly, gone viral. It means that we’re officially entering the age of promoted video search on what, for many, is the front page of the Internet. As well, it’s an attempt to keep music streamers off of Spotify and Rdio, and on YouTube.
Sony Drops VAIO
In a move that confirms reports from earlier in the week, Sony confirmed that it is dropping its VAIO computer division, and will sell it to a Japanese investment fund. Sony cites “drastic changes in the global PC industry,” and the fact that they would prefer to focus on the mobile product lineup of smartphones and tablets. The investment fund will likely hire between 250 and 300 Sony employees to take over VAIO operations, and Sony will invest 5% of the new company’s capital. It’s a signal that, as far as the computer industry is concerned, Apple, and other Windows PCs, are rapidly cornering what’s left of the market, and that there’s still much growth to be had in the mobile and tablet industries as users continue to adopt differing screens.
Kik Develops In-App Browser
Kik’s messenger platform is making a big transformation today with an embedded browser that will let users directly share web content within messages. The growing community of users will no longer have to paste links in the messenger field; instead, they can visit the site themselves within the app, meaning that sponsored content will take a more prominent role, and can be much more easily spread. Kik’s custom browser will work with HTML5 so developers can render sites effectively on the app. It means that instead of focusing exclusively on messaging Kik is trying to become a social content platform that can tap into sharable content in both its Cards feature as well as a readily-accessible browser.
