Category: marketing

The coming ubiquity of home assistants – choose wisely!

As I’ve written before, I am very bullish on the inevitable adoption of home assistants in most homes. After seeing my parents’ new Comcast remote with voice recognition, and then watching the Amazon Echo in action at a friend’s house, I knew this was a game-changer.

There’s been a flurry of announcements in the past few weeks introducing new devices and added features, with the lion’s share coming from Amazon. Here is a sampling:

Google is reportedly working on a screen-equipped Amazon Echo Show competitor – Business Insider

Google is working on an Echo Show competitor – Business Insider

Amazon announces new Echo devices for the whole home – Business Insider

Amazon’s new Fire TV gives Alexa one more place to live – Wired

NFL’s Amazon deal could be test for more streaming games – The Los Angeles Times

No matter who you are, Amazon wants you to be using Alexa – The Washington Post

Amazon’s New $99 Echo Is Part of Its Quest to Continue Dominating the Voice-Assistant Race – Slate.com

It seems inevitable that these will soon become ubiquitous, in much the same way that TVs entered the home in the 1950s and 1960s, or the phone message recorders did in 1980s. But will your choice of device condemn you to a Google-centric or Amazon-centric household?

My take has always been that technology companies see these devices as a means to get a foothold in your everyday life, connect you to their ecosystem of interconnectivity, and have direct access to your living and buying habits, in an effort to grow their databases and deliver advertising. They understand that the big bucks will not come from you buying any devices themselves, but from them selling advertising data to those trying to get your attention.

It’s an old joke in the TV industry that programs are just to fill the space between commercials, and that same idea applies to the new technology invading your homes, cars, phones and apps. When you think about it, who has the most access to your lifestyle habits? I would certainly put Google, Amazon and Apple in that category, but would also urge you to not ignore Facebook, the 800-lb. gorilla in this space. I will be watching carefully as to how they position themselves in this increasingly crowded arena. Will they attempt to sell hardware, software or platforms?

This is a look at the obvious players, but I guarantee that others will be stepping up, and they will either succeed as upstarts, or get acquired. I could list those already in that category, but most know about them. Which brings me to the looming question that remains to be answered… Will these devices be interoperable, or will they remain siloed? Microsoft and its Windows operating system, and Google with the Android OS, both work (mostly) well with others, and reaped those rewards, while Apple’s iOS pretty much sticks to iPhones and Macs . But will Alexa speak to Cortana at some point? Or will technology behave like 7-year old boys in the back seat of a car, continually fighting for supremacy and causing frustration for all?

Programmatic Advertising – what exactly is it, and how does it work?

If you spend any time in the marketing world, you have undoubtedly encountered the phrase “programmatic advertising” and – if you’re like me – scratched your head and pretended to know what it is. In an effort to educate my comrades-in-arms, I present to you a fairly thorough – if a bit dense – article on what it is and how it works.

You may have read about the ongoing battle between publishers and ad blockers. Since subscriptions are still a qualified success, and only in specific circumstances, digital advertising will continue to be an important part of any marketers toolkit.

“Although subscription video on demand (SVOD) and transactional video on demand (TVOD) have been successful, ad-supported content isn’t going away anytime soon, no matter the viewing device.”

In essence, it is an automated way for advertisers to identify potential customers based on their publicly available demographics and past buying behavior to target appropriate ads. The potential market is too big and the amount of work to reach them is too complex.

“In the ideal programmatic transaction, a user clicks on a website, and her internet address and browsing history are packaged and whisked off to an auction site. On behalf of advertisers, software scrutinizes her profile (or an anonymized version of it) and determines whether to bid for the right to place an ad next to the media she is about to view. If you’re looking for affluent women between 30 and 35 who own houses and dogs in a specific ZIP code in Dallas, you may hit a premium price. If you take a broader view—say, all viewers between 30 and 35—your pricing may go down, and the supply of viewers could go up substantially.”

This just scratches the surface, and you will need to be a bit patient in reading the article, but you may find that it gives you just enough understanding that you won’t feel left out when it comes to discussions of programmatic ad buying.

Good luck!

What kind of customer are you?

When I first entered the entertainment industry – specifically, the television business – I was introduced to the concept that programming was just the fluff between the commercials. The financial model was relatively simple: Make programs that people want to see, then pay for them with commercials that will hopefully entice those same people to purchase the items being advertised. You had a product, then exposed people to it via commercials, then people bought (or didn’t) buy the product.

But in reading this article from AdAge about the traditional “sales funnel” – and all you marketing folks will know that term – you might be inclined to agree with this:

“The sales funnel isn’t changing — it’s completely and utterly dead.”

But I’m not so sure. It is certainly in a state of flux, but the concept is still grounded in the scientific method. You create a model, test it, repeat it, and decide if the results are reliable. What I think we’re learning is that consumers have individual, but identifiable, traits and behaviors that help categorize their buying process. The author has one that is likely a result of his past experience with purchasing, and the ensuing sense of satisfaction he had with it. But I find that people have a “communication disposition” which reflects many aspects of their personality. If a person is uncomfortable with contemporaneous speaking, he/she may prefer a chat or email exchange. Some may prefer to use a big screen or small screen. Others may need to touch the product, or see it in action.

We are getting increasingly identified by our habits that reflect our comfort zone. This will be an important consideration in how marketers find and influence their target market. Exactly how is a work-in-progress.