Category: General Content

GEICO Introduces Conversational Virtual Assistant “Kate” In Mobile App

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Auto insurance company GEICO has become the latest brand to join the conversational service craze with its own virtual assistant Kate. Now available via the iOS GEICO app and coming soon to its Android app, Kate can help users navigate the app and answer basic questions about their auto insurance, such as the current balance or the next payment date. Aiming to facilitate a friendly and natural interaction, GEICO opted to add some personality to Kate by designing it to answer some personal questions as well. Users can initiate a conversation with Kate either by text or voice.

What Brands Should Do
This is the latest example of how conversational virtual assistant services may transform customer experiences in financial services. In October, Bank of America announced it started working on a virtual financial adviser named Erica for its mobile apps to help customers better manage their personal finances. With Alexa dominating the IoT devices at this year’s CES and more and more brands embracing virtual assistants and chatbots to improve customer service, brands need to start developing a conversational strategy to figure out how conversational interfaces may improve your customer experience.

How We Can Help
The Lab has extensive experience in building chatbots and Alexa Skills to reach consumers on conversational interfaces, which we’ve leveraged to develop 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 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: Business Wire

 

Facebook Adds Mid-Roll Ads To Non-Live Videos & Instagram Stories

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook’s first order of ad business in the new year is to ramp up its in-stream video ads. The social media giant has started testing 15-second-long mid-roll ads inserted in between videos select publishers posted on Facebook. The ads would only appear after those videos have played for at least 20 seconds. Advertisers will have similar targeting options for those new in-stream ads, as they will be able to pick content categories in which they want their ads to run, such as sports or humor, and specify categories they want to avoid.

Similarly, Facebook has also started testing inserting short-form video ads in Instagram Stories, the Snapchat Story clone feature it added five months ago, The ads will work similarly to Snap ads, as full-screen, skippable videos that pop up in between Stories. Nike, Airbnb, and Buick are among brands that are testing this new ad product. According to Facebook, Instagram Stories are now used by 150 million users on a daily basis.

What Brands Should Do
When Facebook first started testing mid-roll ads in Live video in August, it was anticipated that such efforts would soon come to non-live videos as well. Facebook claims that its users watch 100 million hours of video every day, and has recently made some tweaks in its apps to simplify video discovery. As Facebook continues to add new video ad products to its increasingly video-heavy social platforms, brands may consider adjusting their video budgets accordingly to reach today’s mobile consumers in a more targeted, effective way.

 

Source: AdWeek & Marketing Land

 

You Can Now Ask Alexa And Google Assistant To Order Pizza

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Alexa and Google Assistant both added “pizza-ordering” to their growing repertoire of capabilities this week as two national pizza chains launched support for the two AI-powered, voice-based digital assistant services. Amazon Echo users can now activate the Pizza Hut skill to access their favorite menu items and previous orders for a convenient reorder, whereas people using Google Home can order their pizzas from Domino’s by logging into their Domino’s profiles. Besides, Google Home also added several new functions to let users control Netflix playback or access information on CNN and WebMD.

What Brands Should Do
Domino’s is no stranger to getting its service on emerging conversational platforms, as the company launched a branded Alexa skill in February and created a pizza-ordering chatbot on Facebook Messenger this August. As more and more consumers become addressable via these voice-based smart home devices, it is up to brands to take the initiative to explore the shifting paradigm of brand-customer interactions they bring and find an authentic brand voice in order to connect with consumers. For more actionable suggestions on this topic, check out the Conversational Interfaces section in our Outlook 2016.

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 NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia 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: Engadget & TechCrunch

 

Oculus Adds Two New Social Features To Gear VR

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Oculus is adding two new features to the Samsung Gear VR headset to make a more social experience. The first is a voice-chat system called Parties that allows users jump into a voice call and talk with others while wearing the headset. The second feature is called Rooms, which creates virtual living spaces for multiplayer Gear VR experiences. This creates a space where Gear VR users can hang out with their friends, chat with each other, and even interact with the virtual objects in the room.

What Brands Should Do
These two new features offer an exciting glimpse into the vast potential virtual reality technologies have in advancing our concept of online engagements and digital interactions. Although virtual reality may still be a few years away from mass adoption (as we predicted in the 2020 section in our Outlook 2016), brands looking to stay ahead of the innovation curve would be smart to start developing their own branded VR content and figure out a robust VR distribution strategy today.

The Lab currently has five VR headsets — a PlayStation VR, an Oculus Rift, an HTC Vive, and two Samsung Gear VRs — ready for demos. Virtual reality is something that has to be experienced to be understood, so come by the Lab and ask for a VR demo to get a hands-on experience and figure out how your brand can use it to excite and engage with consumers.

 

Source: The Verge

 

MLB & Disney Acquired Streaming Rights For Leagues Of Legends Tournaments

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
BAMTech, a streaming tech company co-owned by Disney and the Major League Baseball, has picked up streaming rights to League of Legends tournaments, one of the biggest eSports franchises in the world. The company reportedly signed a deal north of $300 million with Riot Games for the exclusive rights to “stream and monetize” the massively popular video game tournament. In addition to taking over the tournaments’ distribution on existing streaming channels such as Twitch and YouTube Gaming, BAMTech plans to launch a dedicated streaming service for the LoL tournaments across various platforms.

What Brands Should Do
The massive acquisition underscores what a massive force of nature eSports live streaming has grown into in the media landscape. It easily commands millions of global viewers, a number that dwarfs most network TV programming today. In October, more than 43 million viewers worldwide watched online a League of Legends esports championship held at the Staples Center in LA. Some early-adopting brands, such as Coca-Cola and Geico, have been sponsoring eSports events to reach its young, male-skewing audience. More brands should consider leveraging the massive reach of eSports events to reach consumers via sponsorships or ads.

 

Source: The Wall Street Journal

Wynn Las Vegas Hotel To Upgrade Every Room With An Amazon Echo

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon announced on Wednesday that it is partnering with the Wynn Las Vegas Hotel to put Amazon Echo smart speakers in its over 4,700 rooms by the summer of 2017. At launch, hotel guests will be able to talk to Echo’s Alexa voice technology to control the room’s lighting, temperature, TV, and curtains. More features are planned to be added in the future, including a Wynn Las Vegas personal assistant and music streaming.

What Brands Should Do
This is a great marketing move for both parties as it not only provides Wynn customers with a frictionless, modernized hotel room experience that makes it stands out from the peers, it also helps Amazon introduce Echo and Alexa to a wider range of consumers. Conversational smart home device is a natural fit for hospitality brands looking to update their customer experience. Brands need to start exploring these conversation-driven platforms for integrations today as more mainstream consumers will soon become reachable via these voice-based devices.

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 NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia 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 messaging apps and other conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client and learning opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Facebook Starts Testing AI-Powered “M Suggestions” In Messenger

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook is getting ready to inject a dose of artificial intelligence into its Messenger app with “M suggestions,” which the company started limited beta testing today. Designed to help move your conversations along, Facebook’s machine learning-powered virtual assistant M will suggest appropriate responses and stickers according to the context. For example, M would surface several emojis for you to common phrases such as “thanks,” or suggest sharing your current location in response to a question such as “where are you?” Facebook says other suggestions Messenger already makes, such as event reminders and ride-hailing, will be rolled under the “M suggestions” as well.

What Brands Should Do
This move marks a promising start to Facebook’s roll-out of its virtual assistant service M, offering  a glimpse into how Facebook may position M in its messaging app and how brands may leverage it to build conversational customer service. We are optimistic that Facebook would open up M for sponsored content and branded recommendations in the near future, given Facebook’s trajectory in making Messenger’s platform more brand-friendly so far. And brands need to be ready for what could essentially be an updated version of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) that plays around AI algorithms to make sure their content shows up in advantageous positions in M’s recommendations.

Machine learning and its brand implications is a topic we will be diving into in details in our upcoming Outlook 2017 report. Please check back in January to read more of our take on this hot industry trend.

 

Source: Engadget

Toyota, Taco Bell & Starbucks Make Play For Branded Content

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
More and more brands are embracing branded and sponsored content in order to reach the increasingly distracted customers. This week alone saw three big brands making a play for content marketing. Toyota is sponsoring an upcoming original YouTube series created by Buzzfeed video creator and star Ashley Perez, aligning its brand message of “helping millennials go places” with the show’s theme of empowerment. Earlier this week, Taco Bell debuted an original weekly video series “Taco Tales” on its YouTube page, aiming to entertain and connect with customers with “stories that could only happen to Taco Bell fans.” Starbucks, on the other hand, is teaming up with three writers from “The Simpsons” for an original video series, which will come in the form of animated shorts that highlight Starbucks’ culture and feature its stores, the baristas, and the customers.

What Brands Should Do
As consumer attention becomes increasingly fragmented and the subpar mobile ad experience drives many users to use ad-blockers {a trend we explained in depth in the Ad Avoidance section of our Outlook 2016), it is becoming more and more difficult for brands to reach their desired audience via traditional media channels. Therefore, brands should take a cue from Mercedes’s influencer efforts and be willing to explore new forms of advertising such as sponsored or branded content, as well as new media formats such as VR and 360-degree video, to circumvent consumers’ growing ad aversion and pique their interest.

 

Sources: As linked in the article

Microsoft Working With Third-Party Manufacturers To Make Echo Competitors

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Microsoft is looking to take on the likes of Amazon Echo and Google Home as the company announced on Tuesday it is releasing a Cortana Devices SDK to allow third-party OEMs to integrate its digital assistant service into hardware devices such as speakers, smart home appliances, and even connected cars. Smart devices integrated with Cortana will have “real-time, two-way audio communications with Skype, e-mail, calendar, and list integration,” according to Microsoft. The first of such conversational devices will be a Cortana-enabled speaker made by Harman Kardon set to launch in early 2017.

What Brands Should Do
This announcement indicates Microsoft’s third party-sourcing strategy in competing with Amazon and Google in the conversational service space, which should help push Cortana into more products. As the tech giants continue to push their respective conversational services into the consumer market, more and more mainstream consumers will soon become reachable via these voice-based devices. Brands that wish to stay ahead of the digital curve should start exploring opportunities in building advanced applications for these emerging platforms with highly engaging conversational user experiences.

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 NiroBot we built in collaboration with Ansible for Kia 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 messaging apps and other conversational interfaces, or to leverage the Lab’s expertise to take on related client and learning opportunities within the IPG Mediabrands, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Ars Technica

Amazon Brings Shopping To TV For Prime Members With Apple TV App

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon has released an Apple TV app to let Prime members browse and shop from the comfort of their living room couches. By logging into their tvOS app via the four-digit code generated by their mobile app, Apple TV users can browse and search for products, see product details, and read reviews for millions of products available on Amazon. Prime membership is required to make a purchase on the Apple TV app. The home page of the app features a carousel of Amazon-curated collections, including holiday gift guides and other various packs.

What Brands Should Do
Amazon enjoys some unique advantages in transforming TV into a direct sales channel, given its massive scale and the ability to seamlessly integrate ecommerce functionality into the TV streaming devices by syncing up users’ Prime accounts and enabling one-click purchases. And the latest Apple TV model enables ecommerce brands to reach viewers via dedicated apps. For brands that are currently selling on Amazon, it may be worthwhile to tap into these new TV shopping initiatives to get a better understanding of the emerging shoppable TV experience. To read more on how brands can reach shoppers on OTT platforms with shopping apps and branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: TechCrunch