Category: General Content

Facebook Agrees To Independent Audit, Grants Advertisers More Control Over Video Ad Buys

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Following a series of blunders in video ad measurement and performance reporting in the past few months, Facebook announced on Friday that it has Facebook has agreed to let Media Rating Council (MRC), the media industry’s independent measurement monitor, audit the measurements it provides advertisers. In addition to being open to the audit, Facebook will also appease advertisers by offering more granular measurements for display ads, along with new ad buying and payment options for their video ads on its Audience Network ad network, such as only paying for viewers that watched the video with the sound on.

What Brands Need To Do
Facebook has received considerable flak for misreporting its video content performances, and it remains to be seen whether these new initiatives can help repair some of the damage to Facebook’s credibility as a video ad platform. That being said, Facebook still makes a compelling case for itself as a digital video channel, especially as its Live Video start to take off, which Facebook users are spending three times more time watching than non-live videos. As Facebook continues to make amends and improve its accountability, it would be wise for brand marketers to take a cautious and diligent approach to video ads on Facebook.  

 

Source: AdExchanger

Dunkin’ Donuts Plans Valentine’s Day Campaign Via Social & Messaging Channels

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Dunkin’ Donuts is going all out in the name of love with a multi-channel Valentine’s Day campaign that will run across Instagram, iMessage, Facebook Live, and Snapchat. Besides the conventional social marketing tactic of hosting a selfie contest on Instagram, the quick-service restaurant chain is also looking to launch an iMessage mini-app, an emoji keyboard on its app, two Snapchat geofilters, and a Facebook Live music performance by Us The Duo on the upcoming V-day.

In particular, the iMessage card builder will allow users to create custom Valentine’s Day cards with a Dunkin’ Donuts themed sticker before sending it via Apple’s default messaging app. Other iMessage users will also be able to respond to the card by making one of their own.

What Brands Need To Do
This campaign showcases how brands need to adopt a multi-channel approach to maximize their reach across the fragmenting social and messaging landscapes. In particular, the iMessage mini-app, which Apple introduced with iOS 10 just last year, provide a valuable way for brands to tap into what is typically considered a dark-social channel that has pretty much been part of Apple’s walled garden. By handpicking the most popular features unique to each social platform – live video on Facebook, selfie contest on Instagram, and Geofilters on Snapchat – Dunkin’ Donuts shows that it truly understand the strength of each platform and how to use them to reach their customers, a smart approach that more brands can benefit from.

 

Source: GeoMarketing

 

NBA Jumps Into eSports With A Professional Gaming League

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
The National Basketball Association (NBA) has become the first major U.S. sports league to operate an eSports league by launching “NBA 2K eLeague” in partnership with video game publisher Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. NBA franchises will be able to form and manage teams that will compete against each other, just as the real teams do, in Take-Two’s popular “NBA 2K” video game starting next year. NBA says all 30 NBA franchises “have expressed interest” in forming teams for the league.

What Brands Need To Do
While professional sports teams and athletes have independently invested in or get involved with eSports teams before, this new league marks the biggest tie-up yet between traditional and digital sports. Over the past few years, eSports has rapidly grown into a significant media segment that is drawing attentions from brands such as Gillette and Audi. Earlier this week, E3, the world’s biggest video game trade convention, announced it will be open to the public for the first time this year, a move that signifies the mainstream status of the industry. And this new NBA-sanctioned league should provide a new channel for brands looking to capture the overlap between video game enthusiasts and basketball fans at a global scale via team sponsorships or, presumably, in-stream ads.

 

Source: Wall Street Journal

A+E Networks To Develop Original Content Series For Snapchat

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
A+E Networks announced on Friday that it will be developing an original dating series for Snapchat, as the ephemeral messaging app continues its transformation into a mobile video content destination. The series, titled Second Chance, marks the app’s first network-produced show not based on an existing TV franchise. Snapchat has ordered eight episodes, which will be available for its users in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australia in April. The show is the first of a larger multi-show development deal between A+E, its in-house branded content agency 45th & Dean, and Snap Inc.

What Brands Need To Do
As Snapchat’s ad business start to catch up to its popularity, the company now has more resources to spend on content so as to not only compete for more ad dollars with not just from leading sellers of digital ads like Facebook and Google, but from TV advertisers as well. And with this original series and more to come, it is surely betting big on video content. Therefore, it is time for brands to reconsider their media mix and consider adjust the ad budget to include emerging global channels like Snapchat so as to reach a global audience at scale.

 

 

Source: Hollywood Reporter

Amazon Launches Alexa In U.K. & Germany, Starts Sharing Limited Alexa User Data

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon’s virtual assistant Alexa is going to Europe as the ecommerce giant announced the launch of Alexa Voice Service (AVS), which was launched in the U.S. in June 2015 and allows device manufacturers to install Alexa inside their products, in the U.K. and Germany. With this international expansion, Alexa now also understands German and British English, making it possible for Amazon to reach more users in foreign markets.

In related news, Amazon has also started sharing some high-level Alexa data with third-party developers, digital consultancies, and analytics startups as it continues to woo developers to develop more Alexa skills. Developers and brands now can track usage patterns such as the number of unique customers accessing the skills or the total number of “utterances” related to their skills, to help them gauge user intent and track skill performance.

What Brands Need To Do
Expanding Alexa into global markets offers internationally-minded brands a new channel to leverage conversational experience to reach foreign markets at scale. Although Amazon is still very tight-lipped about the user data that Alexa collects, the high-level information it now opts to share is a welcome start. Alexa dominated CES this year, and according to a report from analytics firm VoiceLabs, about 33 million voice-first devices will be in circulation by the end of 2017. Therefore, It is up to brands to start working with developers to figure out their brand voice and incorporate conversational tools into their marketing efforts.

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

 

Source: TechCrunch & AdAge

Pinterest Launches Mobile Visual Search Tool In Public Beta

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest has launched its Lens virtual search tool on its mobile app as a public beta test. Starting today, Lens allows iOS users to point their smartphone cameras at anything, and Pinterest’s A.I.-powered algorithm will automatically pick apart the objects in an image and categorize them down into foods, animals, clothing, or even patterns like hexagons. Then users will be presented with a slew of pins featuring identical or visually similar items. Building on the visual search function it previewed last year, Pinterest says Lens will also come with a “Shop The Look” feature that isolates each fashion items, from hats to jeans to shoes, in an image that surface shoppable pins featuring each of those pieces.

What Brands Need To Do
According to a recent study by Millward Brown, 83% of active Pinterest users have purchased a product because of something they saw on the site.As Pinterest continues to build out its ecommerce features, brands interested in social commerce, especially those whose target audiences overlap with Pinterest users, should leverage them to boost direct sales by adding support for the “shopping cart” and experimenting with Buyable Pins.

Moreover, with the quick advancement of machine learning and AI-powered solutions, we are starting to see examples of brands primarily using the camera as an input source of the mobile user interface and leverage images to learn about user intent. Snapchat is a prime example of leveraging the camera to engage with mobile users. This trend should provide some inspiration to brands looking to update their digital user experience to be more intuitive and convenient for mobile users.

 

Source: TechCrunch

Marriott Revamps Mobile App Based On User Activities

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Looking to enhance its customer experience on mobile, Marriott Hotel has updated its app based on guest feedback to offer a more intuitive user experience. The revamped app sports a “one-button” ergonomic design that is easy to navigate, along with a swipeable home screen that let users easily switch from different scenarios such as checking-in or planning future stays. Each swipe will bring up a new page that brings up the most relevant information for their needs within those contexts, such as access to Marriott Rewards account information or personalized content delivered via the app’s built-in messaging service called mPlaces. The international hotel chain has achieved some early successes with its mobile app, which drives $1.7 billion in annual bookings.

What Brands Need To Do
Marriott is certainly not the first brand to adopt the swipeable designed popularized by dating app Tinder – cosmetic retailer Sephora also opted for a swipe-based interface for its mobile app, – but the way the hotel chain used this mechanism to let guests easily navigate the app through different stages of their travel and quickly get to what they need. As more brands rush into the mobile space, they should take note and learn to design it in a mobile-intuitive way that presents a user experience that matches with consumer behavior.

 

Source: Travel&Tour World

PayPal Debuts Slack Bot For Convenient P2P Payments

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
PayPal ventures deeper into the world of conversational services by launching its first branded bot on team communication platform Slack. Designed to facilitate easy peer-to-peer payments among coworkers and friends, the PayPal bot let Slack users send and receive up to $10,000 with one simple message of the shortcode “/paypal” and a Slack user handle. The bot is now available to Slack users in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the U.K.

Although this is its first entry into branded chatbot, PayPal is no stranger to conversational platforms. Last October, PayPal joined Facebook Messenger’s beta program to allow bots to accept payments via its service. A month later, it integrated with Siri to let iOS users send and receive p2p payments via voice command.

What Brands Need To Do
Slack currently enjoys five million daily active users and 1.5 million paying subscribers. While that pales in comparison to Messenger’s one billion monthly active users, Slack’s unique positioning as a popular workplace chat app gives it an edge to help brands reach a certain upscale, professional demographic at work. Thanks to semi-open productivity tools like Slack, the workplace is becoming newly accessible to brands. While it’s an obvious place for B2B brands to explore, it may also make sense for some consumer-facing brands to reach their target audience in a work context.

How We Can Help
Based on our extensive experience in building branded chatbots to reach consumers, the Lab has developed a dedicated conversational practice called Dialogue. The NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia is a good example of how Dialogue can help brands build a chatbot 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’re interested in learning more about this or have a client opportunity, please reach out to our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

 

Source: VentureBeat

Mastercard Creates Experiential Record Store For Grammy Tie-In Campaign

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
To promote its digital wallet service Masterpass, Mastercard has created a record store in Los Angeles that offer interactive music experience for music fans. As part of its #ThankTheFans campaign for the upcoming Grammy Awards, the credit card company transformed Gibson Brands Sunset into an experiential record store where Masterpass users will have exclusive access to shop for rare and unique vinyl for just $10. They will also get to unlock special offers for $1 during the live broadcast whenever a Grammy winner expresses gratitude to the fans in their speech.

What Brands Need To Do
This campaign is a cool example of how brands may combine experiential marketing with real-time event marketing to create a truly unique customer experience. This year, we have seen some retailers embracing experiential marketing by partnering with fashion brands to open pop-up shops in their stores, providing shoppers with a more varied in-store experience. As mobile technologies continue to blur the line between physical and digital marketing, brands will have to figure out how to leverage their digital assets to reach customers in the real world with exciting experience activated via mobile.

 

Source: BusinessWire

YouTube Opens Mobile Live Streaming To More Influencers

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
YouTube is now allowing content creators with over 10,000 subscribers to live broadcast directly from their mobile devices. This marks the latest roll out of YouTube’s mobile live streaming products, which the company first started limited testing in June. YouTube also noted it is working to roll out this feature to all users soon. In addition, YouTube also created a new “Super Chat” feature to let fans amplify their comments by featuring them atop the chat window and highlighted in various colors.

What Brands Need To Do
According to a recent AYTM Market Research survey, over 56% of U.S. internet users have viewed live video content from others on social media or livestreaming apps, with 11% reporting that they do it regularly. With this update, YouTube is finally catching up with its mobile-friendly rivals like Facebook Live and Twitter, making it easier to YouTube influencers to go live and monetize their content. Despite being late to support mobile livestreaming, YouTube still commands significant traffic as the world’s leading video destination site, making it the default choice for many digital marketers. For now, brands with a substantial following on YouTube should consider taking advantage of this update to connect with fans in a more spontaneous way, whereas other brands may consider teaming up with influencers to get their messages across with a sponsored live event.

 

Source: Marketing Land