Author: Richard Yao

Modern Family Highlights Our Digital Connection With Apple-Centric Episode

Posted on by Richard Yao

Emmy-winning comedy Modern Family aired a rather unusual episode last night: an entire episode framed within a MacBook laptop screen and filmed exclusively with Apple’s mobile devices. While it might seem like a giant infomercial or product demo for Apple (though the Cupertino company did not directly sponsor the episode), the show pulled it off with hilarious jokes and a good grasp on the way modern communication works in an episode that, as a whole, highlighted our connection to our family and friends in this digital age.

The entire episode played out on the MacBook screen of the show’s mother as she frantically tried to get in touch her “missing daughter” using FaceTime, iMessages, Find My iPhone, and other iOS apps at her disposal. And it’s not just Apple—Facebook, Pinterest, Yahoo News, Google StreetView, and Microsoft’s Halo all made cameos as well. One particular funny gag involved the character hastily buying a last-minute birthday present from RalphLauren.com and selecting next-day shipment so as to cover up her forgetfulness.

While those technological asides are fun and pretty innovative for a hit network sitcom, it’s the human moments—the ones that illustrate how instant connectivity affects our relationships—that really stood out. Spoiler alert, though: the daughter was asleep in her room the whole time.

Top image taken from ABC promo video on YouTube

By The Numbers: Peak Distraction In The Mobile Age

Posted on by Richard Yao

Have you ever physically bumped into someone when you’re busy looking at your phone? According to a Pew Research survey, 53% of all mobile users have experienced such “distracted walking” encounters, which is just one of many manifestations of “peak distraction.”

FT_Distracted_Walking

The rapid proliferation of mobile devices in recent years has ushered us into the mobile age, where access to information and content is always just one click away. Along with such modern conveniences, however, it has also brought us a new level of distraction, which makes it harder and harder for brands to be heard.

Frequency of checking phones

People are especially distracted when they are watching TV, as 63% of TV ads are ignored by consumers who look away to check their smartphones. According to a recent study, 43% of smartphone users check their device more than 25 times per day, with nearly 10% checking over 100 times per day.

Deloitte Device Obssession

On average, we spend nearly 3 hours each day on our mobile devices.  Yet as more and more of our time is taken up by smaller screens, we’re losing our ability to truly focus on everything else. To cut through the clutter and capture the attention of your audience, brands need to start deploying improved technology that can help to find the right moment to deliver an impression.

For more information on how to beat peak distraction and other market trends, check out our brand new Outlook 2015.

Get Ready For A New Industry Standard for Mobile and In-Store Measurement

Posted on by Richard Yao

As reported by the Wall Street Journal, six ad agencies, including IPG Mediabrands, recently selected Placed’s attribution product as the preferred tool for digital to in-store measurement, signaling a rising industry standard for mobile measurement.  As part of the partnership, the agencies will also get access to Placed’s insights tool that provides location analytics and examines customer traffic patterns.

Such new industry standard is both necessary and inevitable, considering the increasing prominence of smartphones in consumers’ everyday lives and the industry’s lack of efficient tools for mobile-to-store measurement. “We really look at attribution as a metric that’s going to help grow the category of mobile and give clients more confidence in mobile,” remarked our managing partner Chad Stoller, when IPG took a minority stake in Placed in September last year.

A confluence of new technology trends – from new, more intimate interfaces and advanced curation filters to hyperlocal technologies – is emerging as an unprecedented kind of measurable intimacy that connects brands with the modern consumers through their personal mobile devices. And the industry needs to keep up in this new trend by embracing new mobile measurement tools so as to better serve their audience with contextualized and relevant brand messages.

 

Editor’s Note: updated on 2/20/2014 to better reflect our 2015 Outlook.

By The Numbers: Which Room Gets The Smart Home Devices

Posted on by Richard Yao

One of the major market trends we observed at CES 2015 last month was that the connected home is quickly becoming a reality. Smart home device shipment in the U.S. market is projected to grow nearly 74% from 20.7 million units to 35.9 million in the next 3 years, while the smart home controllers doubling its shipment.

US Smart home devices 2014-17

As rising product availability and mobile compatibility are readying home automation and monitoring to happen in every room of the house, which room will receive the priority of getting connected?

smart home by rooms U.S. female houseowners

According to a recent Better Homes and Gardens survey of U.S. female homeowners, it’s the shared family spaces like the kitchen and living room that takes the priority. In contrast, private spaces such as the bedroom or bathroom are less likely to be equipped with smart home devices.

Privacy concerns of connected devices

And it’s not hard to see the key reason behind such disparity—privacy concerns of connected devices are the number one reason that’s keeping smart devices from entering every room. Over 80% of U.S consumers worry about data security, according to a recent poll conducted by TRUSTe, as a majority believe they should own the data collected by smart devices. Overall, this means that brands in the connected home market need to do a better job at explaining the way personal data is collected and securely used to provide more benefits for the homeowners.

**All charts are taken from eMarketer.

Global Watch: What Baidu’s $600M Investment Would Mean For Uber

Posted on by Richard Yao

Despite the storm of controversies surrounding its privacy policy and a string of recent PR crisis, Uber still managed to raise an impressive $1.2 billion in funding earlier this month. Last week it was reportedly set to receive up to $600 million investment from China’s Google, Baidu Inc., presumably for its long-rumored expansion into the Asian market. Today Baidu has confirmed its investment.

Why Baidu Wants Uber

The Chinese ride-on-demand market is currently dominated by Kuaidi Dache and Didi Dache, respectively backed by Alibaba and Tencent. Up until this point, Baidu is the only one out of the BAT— Baidu-Alibaba-Tencent, a popular acronym in China denoting their dominance as top Internet companies—that has been holding off on entering the burgeoning market. By bringing in Uber, Baidu would not have to build a ride-hailing app from scratch, but would  instead use Uber’s well-built app and mature infrastructure to compete with its rivals.

Additionally, Baidu is most likely hoping that Uber would improve the lukewarm performance of its mobile payment app, Baidu Wallet, so as to compete with Alipay, the formidable digital payment system backed by Alibaba, or even WeChat Wallet, embedded by Tencent in its massively popular messaging app.

Why Uber Needs Baidu More

For Uber, investment from Baidu would mean it might finally be getting the localization it desperately needs to conquer the much-coveted Chinese market. Beijing, for example, only has around 66,000 licensed cabs at service for its vast population of over 20 million. The Alibaba-backed Kuaidi app alone posted online payment revenue of $2 billion over the past year. And Uber could definitely use Baidu’s massive local clout to navigate this huge, yet highly regulated market. One more benefit for Uber is the integration of Baidu Map. Google Map, which Uber currently uses for across all markets, isn’t the best on the market, similar to Apple Map here in the US.

The Bottom Line

Baidu needs Uber as a convenient proxy to make its long-awaited first move in the on-demand car market, just as much as Uber needs Baidu’s local dominance and expertise. The market might already be congested considering the two local apps from formidable rivals have taken off, but with Baidu’s help, Uber’s ride into the Chinese market might just get significantly less bumpy.

Photo courtesy of Uber

Global Watch: Secrets To Alibaba Record-Smashing Single’s Day Sale

Posted on by Richard Yao

 A new global e-retail record was set on November 11 when Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba finished its annual sale on Single’s Day—a new holiday in China popularized and trademarked by Alibaba to encourage splurging on oneself—with a smashing $9.3 billion (RMB 57.1 billion) in total transaction volume. This astronomical number surpassed the combined $3.7 billion online sales of Black Friday and Cyber Monday made from desktops in the U.S. last year, according to comScore.

To achieve such an impressive number, Alibaba tried a couple of new tricks this year. First, it streamlined the purchase experience on smartphones, where 43% of this year’s sales reportedly came from. It also signed special logistics deals with delivery companies to facilitate faster movement of the 200 million orders generated on that day.

Alibaba also successfully connected Chinese consumers with international brands and online retailers: more than 200 merchants from over 20 countries participated with special discounts, including Muji, Desigual, and The North Face. Chinese shoppers bought overseas deals not just though Alibaba’s own retail sites, such as Taobao and Tmall, but also from overseas retailers’ official websites with Alipay, thanks to its newly-launched EPass program.

Considering the 60% increase from last year’s sales, Alibaba’s strategy of turning a silly, unofficial holiday into a national shopping frenzy provides a shining example for retailers worldwide.

On Trend: Digitally Enhanced Experiences Are Taking Over Live Events

Posted on by Richard Yao

Attending a live event, such as a game or concert, is a unique experience, but increasing costs and crowd-induced inconvenience have driven more consumers to watch from the comfort of their living rooms.  In order to lure fans—especially younger generations—back to venues, event organizers and venue owners alike are pushing for live experiences enhanced by mobile and location-based technology.

When designing a digital experience to complement a live event, the first step is to identify whether the event is more location- or time-dependent. Although both types rely on widespread smartphone usage, a strong WiFi connection, and proximity technology like beacons, the user experiences they offer can differ significantly:

  • Location-dependent apps work great for events that happen frequently in a specific venue , even if the audience changes each time. This is best shown in the VenueNext app for Levi’s Stadium, home to the SF Giants. The app boasts features that cover everything from digital tickets and parking passes to instant replays on smartphones and beacon-enabled seat locating. The app also offers convenient services such as mobile food ordering, in-stadium navigation, and real-time updated queue length, all of which encourage spending on concessions and merchandise, thereby boosting revenues for the venues.
  • Event-based apps are better during events in which the audience stays the same throughout its limited yet intensive time frame, as in the case of conferences or music festivals. Therefore, organizers typically design digital experiences that are heavy on notifications, event streaming, and social interaction. The SXSW GO app, for example, provides the users with personalized schedule building, event audio streaming enabled by SoundCloud, and a geo-fenced SXSocial network connecting thousands of its attendees.

Despite the differentiation, digitally enhanced tools are slowly but surely changing the way people experience live events, which opens up new opportunities for event organizers and brand sponsors to connect with the audience.

TechWreck: What To Do With All That Wearable-Generated Data

Posted on by Richard Yao

As The Verge writer David Pierce pointed out in his Microsoft Band review, the newly launched fitness tracker—like dozens of other wearables currently available—generates a boatload of biometric data, providing users with a heightened sense of the quantified self. But beyond that, it doesn’t do really much, leaving users bewildered and lacking insights they can act on. In his own words:

That’s the thing about all fitness trackers: even the most powerful ones are only measuring internal data, data about me. …  If the Band knows my heart rate and my sleep stage, why can’t it wake me up at the perfect moment in my sleep cycle?

Indeed, “what am I supposed to do with all that data” has become a question frequently asked by the early adopters of wearable tech. Wearable makers need to go beyond basic functions such as tracking, syncing and data-gathering. Only by fully exploring the actionable insights the data can provide, or by building a rich narrative for the users to engage with, will wearables find a mass audience.

Header image taken from the linked review on The Verge

TechWreck: #TechnologyAndStuff In Connected Cars

Posted on by Richard Yao

Picture from @ChevyTrucks on Twitter

Every year Chevrolet gifts a new car to the MVP at the World Series. This year, however, an Internet meme was born out of an unexpected gaffe during the televised handover ceremony, as a nervous Chevy spokesman stumbled through his speech and described the new features of the 2015 Chevy Colorado as “class-winning and leading, um, you know, technology and stuff “.

While he did at least manage to point out the new truck comes with “WiFi powered by OnStar, sitting there on the screen”, the speech was unintentionally funny for all its awkwardness. Naturally, “#ChevyGuy,” “#TechnologyAndStuff” were among the top 10 national trending topics on Twitter within an hour. Besides the relatable nerves brought by public speaking, one crucial reason behind such instant virality is that the vaguely defined “technology and stuff” description struck a cord with US consumers, who are just as confused about the technological capabilities of connected cars as the Chevy Guy.

Unlike previous TechWrecks, however, Chevy quickly turned the situation around by embracing the “technology and stuff” line with a hashtag on Twitter and made it a campaign tagline, creating a very effective impromptu viral campaign. To avoid future mishap like this, though, automakers must do a better job at familiarizing the consumers with all the “stuff” connected cars have to offer. After all, no one wants to buy something they don’t understand.

For more in-depth analysis on the present and future of connected cars, stay tuned for our upcoming white paper.

On Trend: Music Streaming Growing Strong Despite Swift Boycott

Posted on by Richard Yao

One of the biggest stories in media this week has been Taylor Swift abruptly removing all her back catalogue from Spotify, sparking debate on the monetization strategy and shifting audience behavior of today’s music industry. Some artists have voiced their support for Swift’s decision and criticized the unfair compensation granted by streaming services.

Although Swift’s current popularity may let her defy media consumption trends, the move from ownership to subscribed access seems all but inevitable, as Spotify royalties have reportedly overtaken iTunes earnings by 13% in Europe.

Impressive as that sounds, Spotify still got beaten by Pandora in App Annie’s new Music App Index report released today, which ranked the latter as No. 1 among music apps for most downloads and monthly revenue with a reported $100 million in mobile ad revenue for the recent quarter.

Both services, however, might need to watch out for SoundCloud, an up-and-coming challenger who just signed a licensing deal with Warner Music Group. In an effort to alleviate the tension between musicians and digital music services, the deal mandates that Warner artists will get paid when all versions of their music, including the D.J. remixes and fanmade mash-ups, are played on SoundCloud.

All in all, one could say that music streaming services are taking the “breakup” with Taylor Swift pretty well.