Category: General Content

Walgreens Updates Mobile App To Improve In-Store Retail Experience

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Walgreens has updated its branded mobile app to better leverage the beacons in stores to deliver a more personalized and rewarding shopping experience for customers. The drugstore chain’s updated app will now be able to send customers special deals and coupons based on their location within the bulk of its U.S. stores.

What Brands Should Do
In June Walgreens introduced two APIs, one of which enables third-party apps to access their digital coupons, signaling its intention to expand its support for digital coupons. Now with this beacon integration into its app, the drugstore chain is making coupons a lot more user-friendly and accessible. The location-based personalization will likely help Walgreens lock in shopper loyalty by providing them with a superior in-store experience. Other retailers need to take a cue and start leveraging mobile technologies to modernize their retail experiences.

For more information on how retailers can effectively reach connected consumers by taking a mobile-powered, omnichannel approach, check out the Boundless Retail section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: GeoMarketing

Pinterest Adds More Third-Party Measurement & Data To Ad Platform

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Pinterest is beefing up its Marketing Partners program, which the company launched last year, by integrating with several more third-party measurement and data companies. With the addition of measurement companies like Adjust, AppsFlyer, Apsalar, Kochava, and Tune, advertisers can now use these third-party tools to track the reach and impact their campaigns on Pinterest.

On the marketing data side, Pinterest is adding companies including Epsilon, Experian, Salesforce’s Krux, Acxiom’s LiveRamp, and Neustar to help advertisers apply their own data, such as a list of customer emails, to targeted ads on Pinterest. The social scrapbooking site introduced email-matching targeting to its ad product in June.

What Brands Should Do
Pinterest has long enjoyed its reputation among social networks as a “Sales Conversion Powerhouse.” A recent study by Oracle Data Cloud showed that Promoted Pins drive 5x more incremental in-store sales compared to campaigns on other platforms. As Pinterest continues to build out its ad products and make its platform more brand-friendly, advertisers now have more options to reach their desired audiences and keep track of their campaign progress. Brands with an overlap between their target audiences and Pinterest users should take advantage of the integrated third-party tools to improve their campaigns.

 

Source: Marketing Land

Facebook Updates Messenger Platform To Help Brands Drive Conversations

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook has updated its Messenger platform to add a few useful tools to help developers and brands reach users and drive conversations on its messaging app. To begin with, the social network is rolling out sponsored messages to all advertisers. Facebook has been testing this feature, which allows businesses to re-engage users who have an existing conversation with them on Messenger, with select brands since June. Developers can now also advertise their bots with News Feed ads that directly send people to Messenger to start a conversation.

In addition, a new list and checkbox plugin provides developers with an alternative to Messenger’s typical horizontal carousel layout, which should be useful for surfacing sign-up forms and lists of retail items. The company also confirmed that it continues to roll out mobile payment capability for chatbots in a closed beta.

What Brands Should Do
With these additions, Facebook is making it easier for brands and developers to create more functional chatbots and reach more users. With 1 billion people now checking Facebook only on mobile, it is important for brands to leverage the available Messenger tools to effectively reach the massive mobile audience on Facebook.  

The Lab has extensive knowledge about building chatbots. If you’re interested in reaching your audience on messaging apps and better serving them with a chatbot, please contact our Client Services Director Samantha Holland ([email protected]) for more information or to schedule a visit to the Lab.

 

Source: Facebook for Developer

Google Creates Custom Voice Commands & VR Game To Promote New Harry Potter Movie

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Warner Bros. Pictures is working with Google to promote its upcoming Harry Potter prequel Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them with custom voice commands that let fans control their phones with “magic spells.” Integrated into its Google Assistant service, these new commands allow Android phone users to turn their phone’s flashlight on and off by saying “OK Google” followed by “Lumos” or “Nox.” Following it with “Silencio” will put the phone on silence mode. Warner Bros. showcased a similar voice-activated magic wand experience at the New York Comic Con last month. 

Building on this cute voice activation, Google also created a Fantastic Beasts-themed interactive VR experience that invites fans to explore the movie’s world and cast some more spells. The experience will become available when Google’s mobile-powered VR headset Daydream View goes on sale in November.

What Brands Should Do
This partnership between Google and Warner Bros. serves as a good example for brands seeking to engage with fans using emerging technologies such as VR and voice-based digital assistants. Making the custom voice commands accessible to all Android users is a clever way to hype up the upcoming VR game, setting a precedent for how brands may work with Google to integrate their intellectual property and branded content into Google’s services.

On Monday, Samsung announced it will launch its own digital assistant service to compete with the likes of Apple’s Siri, Amazon’s Alexa, and Google Assistant. As voice-activated assistant services continue to alter the way consumers interact with their personal gadgets and how they access information, brands should seize the opportunities they bring to connect with consumers via voice-based interactions.

The Lab has extensive experience with building Alexa skills and helping brands navigate the new realities that conversational interfaces are set to bring. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab.

Source: Google Blog

Proximity Sensors Now In Most Airports, Spell New Advertising Potential

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
According to a new report from Unacast, a marketing firm that specializes in proximity networks,  84% of the world’s airports have or are testing deployment of proximity sensors. In the US, 35% of the top 20 airports have officially deployed beacons. The report also found that 49% of the world’s airports plan to “directly contact passengers via their mobile phone over the next three years,” which will most likely include location-based brand messages. San Diego International Airport, for instance, has already deployed approximately 300 beacons, allowing concessioners based in the airport to advertise their shops to travelers nearby via their own apps or the airport’s app.

What Brands Should Do
This report points to a significant growth of proximity sensors at airports and, to a lesser degree, other transit hubs, which spells massive potential for advertisers to better understand their audience and deliver their brand messages in a granular, contextually relevant manner. For brands looking to connect with travelers at key moments in their journeys, it is time to consider working with airport beacon operators to explore the location-based advertising opportunities they offer.

 

Source: AdAge

Amazon Launches Web Portal For Alexa Skills Discovery

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Amazon is making it easier for Alexa users to discover new skills and managing existing ones via a new web portal named Alexa skills marketplace. Previously, Alexa users have to log into their Alexa app to find, enable, or disable specific Alexa skills. Each skill now has a dedicated URL, which allow brands and developers to drive users to their Alexa skills directly. Developers and brands can now also optimize their skill pages to improve organic discovery.

What Brands Should Do
In September, Amazon announced that the number of available Alexa skills has grown to over 3,000, which shows great interest from developers and brands as they race to conquer the era of voice-based brand-customer interactions. Early-adopting brands such as Hyundai, Patrón, and Capital One have created branded Alexa skills to reach customers via the digital assistant service.This new web portal can help more users discover and manage Alexa skills more easily while also giving brands a new channel to push their branded skills.

The Lab has extensive experience with building Alexa skills and helping brands navigate the new realities that conversational interfaces are set to bring. If you’re interested in learning more, please reach out and schedule a visit to the Lab. For additional information on how brands can effectively reach consumers on conversational interfaces, please check out the first section of our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: VentureBeat

Snapchat Gears Up For More App-Install Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
After adding support for programmatic ads to its ad API, Snapchat has confirmed that it is testing support for app-install ads, which the company launched in June. The popular messaging app ran its first app-install ad in February, and adding this ad unit to its API will certainly encourage more brands to try it. Also, Snapchat is reportedly building a self-serve ad platform so brand marketers can set up their campaigns without going through a third-party ad partner or Snapchat’s sales team.

What Brands Should Do
Micro-investing app Acorns reports that it is seeing 40% higher install rates with Snapchat than it does with Facebook, attributing the increase to Snapchat’s swipe-to-download functionality. With the expanding ad API and some new measurement tools, Snapchat’s ad business seems to be catching up to its rapid growth and ready to compete for more ad dollars with leading sellers of app-install ads such as Facebook and Google. For brands, now is the time to consider getting on Snapchat to reach its young-skewing users.

 

Source: AdAge

Apple Inks Deal With NBCUniversal To Sell Ads In Apple News

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Apple has struck an exclusive deal with NBCUniversal to let the Comcast subsidiary handle the ad buying in the Apple News app. Publishers using Apple News can continue sell ads against their content by themselves and keep all ad revenue, and starting in January they will also be able to sell ads through NBCUniversal for 70% of the ad revenue. After a slow start, Apple News has now amassed 70 million users largely thanks to a deeper integration with the notifications in iOS 10.  

Why Brands Should Care
This deal provides publishers with a new partner to work with to monetize their content on Apple News after the Cupertino-based company retired its iAd network over the summer. A dedicated ad sales team at NBCUniversal should help ramp up the monetization efforts on this News app, offer brands advertisers more ad inventory to reach millions of iOS users.

One significant advantage that in-app ads have over standard web ads is that they are not affected by ad-blockers. At a time when ad blockers and ad-free streaming services are helping millions of viewers avoid ads, brands and publishers need to take proactive measure and experiment with unconventional ad formats, such as branded content and in-app ads, to win back consumer attention.

 

Source: 9to5Mac

Brands Are Jumping On Apple’s App Store Search Ads

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Several big-name brands have started using Apple’s recently launched Search Ads to drive download for their iOS apps. The app-install ads, officially rolled out in early October, which enables developers to promote their apps at the top of relevant search results in the App Store. So far, brands including Domino’s and Amazon have been using Search Ads to target users, especially those who search for their competitors’ apps. According to mobile marketing platform Singular, Search Ads has a mobile conversion rate of 4.9%, a much higher rate than regular app-install ads.

What Brands Should Do
By buying against competitor apps and relevant keywords, the aforementioned brands find a clever way to surface their apps to a targeted audience that is actively searching for products or services in their respective categories. In order to stand out in the over 2 million apps currently available in the App Store, brands seeking to engage mobile users via branded apps should consider buying Search Ads to give their apps a boost.

 

Source: AdWeek

Facebook To Sell TV Ads Via OTT Streaming Devices

Posted on by Lab Team

What Happened
Facebook is set to bring video ads to your TV via OTT streaming devices such as Roku and Apple TV starting next week. Partnering with A+E and Tubi TV, Facebook will start delivering video ads to people who watch videos on the two media partners’ TV apps via its Audience Network ad network, similar to the way it delivers ads to publisher websites and mobile apps.

What Brands Should Do
Facebook’s venture into OTT streaming ads should come as a welcome expansion for brands, as the social network can use the same audience data that powers the rest of its ad network to the set-top boxes, offering brand advertisers more targeting capabilities to reach OTT viewers and cord-cutters. As more and more consumers choose time-shifted viewing over linear TV, brands should follow the viewers and work with content creators to explore new TV ad formats on connected TV devices and engage with the audience in their living rooms.

To read more on how brands can reach viewers on OTT platforms with ads and branded content, please check out the Appified TV section in our Outlook 2016.

 

Source: Re/Code