Voice for Marketing

Voice is set to become a necessity for driving site traffic and a ticket to increased conversion

Businesses that want to drive traffic to their site have had to learn how to optimize for search and then how to optimize for mobile. Now they are going to have another medium to consider: optimizing for voice search.

“Voice tech is on the rise and will continue to grow,” said Dan Drapeau, Head of Technology at Blue Fountain Media, in a phone interview. He compared its transition to mainstream connection to that of social media and mobile.

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Why Marketers Should Be Thinking About Voice

Marketing on wheels

Mobility Marketing: Toyota's e-Palette

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Advertising on cars is nothing new, but what we may be seeing in future is not limited to static car wraps but specially purposed vehicles that can change their function and their messages as needed.

At this year's CES, Toyota unveiled the e-Palette concept. The company anticipates first introducing it for use at the Olympic and Paralympic Games in Tokyo in 2020. But it is already working with partners like Amazon, DiDi, Mazda, Pizza Hut and Uber to develop the concept and its commercial applications. 

In a press release, Toyota describe e-Palette as exemplifying “Toyota's visions for Automated Mobility as a Service (Autono-MaaS) applications.” The vehicle itself is a “fully-automated, next generation battery electric vehicle (BEV) designed to be scalable and customizable for a range of Mobility as a Service (MaaS) businesses.”

Read more in Mobility Marketing: Toyota's e-Palette

AI and shopping: the perfect match

As visual AI advances, it's becoming a useful tool for marketing fashion both online and on premises. Alibaba recently demonstrated the difference it could make with record sales for this year's Single's Day in China. This marriage of fashion and AI signals possibilities for shoppers.

The volume of sales for this year's Single's Day through Alibaba's sites amounted to $9.3 billion this year, compared to $5.9 billion last year. Technology use played a major role in that surge of sales, as nearly half the orders this year came through smartphones; over double the 2016 number.

However, another form of technology was also involved: AI. Using deep learning, Alibaba researchers developed FashionAI to offer in-store shoppers a familiar kind of screen interface that can make recommendations to customers based on its huge volumes of data.

Read more in AI and Fashion Marketing: A Perfect Match 

Related post: http://writewaypro.blogspot.com/2017/12/visual-ai-what-you-see-is-what-you-shop.html

Visual AI: What you see is what you shop with

With the responsiveness to indications of taste set by Amazon, many sites now offer browsers suggestions for additional items that resemble the style of the ite initially selected. Now with the advance of AI and object recognition, it is possible to get that kind of recommendation from an image anywhere, whether it's on a retailer site, a style article, or even something captured on your phone from real life.

Partnering with technology companies like SAP, Naver, Microsoft, Line, and Oracle, Syte.ai pulls together object recognition, AI, and machine learning to render anything visual “clickable and shoppable.” If you can get a picture of it, you can shop for it.

Syte.ai is designed to grasp all elements in a still or video image and render them shoppable without having to work thought text and tags. The advantage for those shopping is that they just have to locate or snap a picture of the item they want and let Syte find the item or something very close to it for sale online.

Read more in With Syte, AI Lets You Shop Almost Anything You See

AR gets real and social

“We're making the camera the first augmented reality platform,” declared Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook's F8 developer conference. That's where he showed off some of the AR effects the social media giant is making accessible to anyone on a mobile device. Whether you want to break the boredom of breakfast by setting some virtual sharks to swim around your bowl, see people's faces replaced by emojis, or turn a tabletop into the site of a video game, you'll be able to do it with just your smart phone. You can hear him and see the effect in this Cnet clip:

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AR Takes Off on Facebook

AR: Marketing’s Next Big Thing?

“That's really cool!” or “Wow!”  is the type of thing that people tend to say when they see augmented reality. But for marketers, the question is if it's something they should be using. For most, the answer has been “not yet.” But perhaps they should be reconsidering now.

According to one report, only 25% of marketers are interested in using augmented reality, and only 7% say they do use it. That's probably because, despite its impressive effects, it is somewhat limited at present.

But that should change when Apple comes out with an AR empowered device, something it is reportedly working on right now: “Hundreds of engineers are now devoted to the cause, including some on the iPhone camera team who are working on AR-related features for the iPhone."

Though people have achieve AR effects on an iPhone since the 2009 iPhone 3Gs, that was limited to a novelty feature that Yelp snuck in. In this video,  Jennifer Grove demonstrates how she launched Yelp's Monocle, which she characterizes as “kind of the coolest things I've ever seen on my iPhone.” 

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What Apple's AR Venture Means for Marketers

Making attractions more attractive: digitizing the CN Tower

photo: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b7/CN-Tower_Skypod.jpg

To celebrate its 40th anniversary, Canada's CN Tower deployed new wireless infrastructure, a mobile app and 150 beacons with location services capabilities.

One of the top tourist attractions in Canada is the CN Tower, which is 553.33 meters (1, 815 ft., 5 in.) tall. It opened in 1976 as a communications towers, and to reflect that role in today's digital age, it planned on celebrating its 40th anniversary with a new wireless infrastructure and the CN Tower app.

Read more in Digital Tech Enhances the CN Tower Experience

Optimizing the mobile experience

Mindful of the increasing number of its customers who access its site through smartphones, Simplyhealth enhanced its mobile application delivery.

As a major health-cash-plan provider that serves nearly 3.5 million customers in the United Kingdom, Simplyhealth has to keep track of the pulse of its customer base in order to meet their needs effectively. Knowing that about 40 percent of its Web traffic comes through mobile devices, the organization has to ensure that its content works on a range of different units.

In the past, Simplyhealth underwent a lot of time-consuming testing that didn't accurately replicate the user experience. Determined to forestall any possible glitches in its mobile service, the organization started looking for a solution in 2013.

- See more at: http://www.baselinemag.com/mobility/testing-responsive-design-on-mobile-devices.html#sthash.qjHcgp3u.dpuf

The trust factor for IoT

pic from https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7296/15768208714_9f9376cc7d_o_d.jpg

We talk a lot about IoT, referring of course, to the Internet of Things. But perhaps we should be thinking of making the T stand for trust. That’s what some are working on now in establishing industry standards to be worth of trust by committing to adopt best practices.

Essentially the OTA's best practices and standards boil down to two overarching considerations. One: Device manufacturers have to consider how they will secure the data collected on their devices. Two: The consumer has to be clearly informed about the nature and extent of the data collected. Having that information allows the potential purchaser to know exactly what they would be getting into with the Internet of Things (IoT) device, and whether or not they consider the gains are worth the risk. Having a universal standard also makes it clear how one company compares to another with respect to data privacy and security.

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Setting the IoT Standards

Robots are coming to warehouses

Today, we really do let our fingers do the shopping and click through to make our purchases that we want. Next day delivery has become standard for a host of consumer and business products. Keeping up with that expectation drives those in the business of logistics to press for greater efficiency in logistics. Robots can play a role in meeting that demand.

On April 29, Fetch Robotics unveiled new a robotic system made specifically for the logistics industry.  The system that consists of "Freight" and "Fetch" is based on ROS, the open source robot operating system. Freight refers to the mobile base, and Fetch to the mobile manipulator. In addition to working with each other, the robots are designed to work with people and with the warehouse software. 

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Robots Improve Logistics in the Electronics Supply Chain

The app that's a breath of fresh air

“We live in a personal, real time, location based world,” declares BreezoMeter. That reality of today’s mobile world is the heart of the app’s design. Combining big data, algorithms and mobile technology, it delivers specific air quality information and recommendations in real time. Today’s mobile consumers demand no less.

“The highest growth in coming years is likely in segment-level and real-time personalization,” according to a recent report, entitled “Enterprise Priorities in Digital Marketing” (PDF). People who carry mobile devices expect access to “services and content for the moment and in the moment.” That’s what BreezoMeter’s air quality app aims to deliver.

Like many other innovations, BreezoMeter was born out of frustration. Its CEO, Ran Korber, was frustrated by the lack of centralized air quality information available when he was seeking a place clear of air pollution for his new home in Israel. As an environmental engineer with a pregnant wife, he was particularly concerned about the air quality. Finding nothing on the market provided all the answer he sought, he created his own solution.

The app proved successful in Israel where 300 sensors sufficed to cover the most populated areas of an area roughly the size of New Jersey. Scaling up to cover an area hundreds of time bigger was a challenge for the startup. 

Read more in http://insideanalysis.com/2015/04/the-app-thats-a-breath-of-fresh-air/

SaaS cuts down on sick visits

onically, seeking out healthcare can actually spread germs contained in a room packed with patients. If you've recently been in such a situation, and been forced to wait an hour or even longer to be seen, you might have thought, as I did, "there has to be a better way." There is, thanks to SaaS.

SaaS makes it possible for patients to use any web-enabled device to access convenient and affordable healthcare. It does not just give information like you'd find on WebMD, but a  personalized diagnosis and even a prescription--if warranted--at a cost that is just slightly higher than standard insurance copayments

Minneapolis-based Zipnosis is the company that developed the SaaS platform. It promises "online diagnosis and treatment in minutes" for $25. 

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SaaS Replaces Sick Visits

Analytics that improve your game

Got game? Analytics can help you get it, whether your sport is tennis, golf, or baseball. The trick is tracking your swing. Read more here. 

Location, location, location moves to the cloud

Location, location, location. That's the answer always offered for the three key components of real estate.

When it comes to managing information on the business end, the same formula for success calls for a SaaS solution that allows information from all other sources -- lead generation, CRM, website activity, and mobile apps -- to come together to yield optimum insight and predictive analytics.

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Case Study: SaaS for Home Sales

Cellphone tracking: a matter of protection or loss of privacy?

With the right equipment, anyone can trace where we are through our phones. Whether and how this technology is used has been a source of controversy for years.

One of the latest flare-ups is police use of Stingrays. In this context, it's not a type of fish but the brand name of an International Mobile Subscriber Identity tracking device.

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Cellphone Tracking: Protection vs. Privacy

the MoMA goes mobile

Handheld devices put a wealth of information at your fingertips, and now museums are using them to enhance visitors’ experiences and enable people to relive their experiences afterwards. One thing to remember: that flow of data is a two-way street. 

This past summer, when I visited the Museum of Modern Art in New York, instead of audio guides outfitted with buttons that I had come to expect upon entry, I was given a sleek iPod to use. Like the audio guides, it provided access to recorded information about particular works of art on display, but it also provided a lot more options

Read more about the MoMA's mobile innovation here

A kind of nutrition label for apps

Your mobile apps know a lot about you: what you buy, how you pay for it, what you browse, and where you are when you do it. To get some idea of just how much data is collected about you and who else gets to see it, click on Target’s privacy policy http://m.target.com/spot/terms/privacy-policy#InformationUsed. While that information on data collection is available, most customers probably never bother to check it.  The question is if a voluntary code of conduct for apps that summarize the information upfront will provide better consumer privacy protection.  The NTIA believes it can, but as it is something companies are not required to opt into, its critics regard it as a diversion from more effective legislation.

Rather like the nutrition facts label on food packages, the short notice on apps is intended to which reveal at a glance how much of what you don’t want in your diet is in it. Also like the packaged food industry, the voluntary code frees companies from a mandatory label that might rate its data collection policies according to a government standard.

Read more in Voluntary Privacy Policy Proposed for Mobile Apps

There's a parallel to the nutrition labels printed on packaged food. If there were a legal mandate, then all apps could have a point rating to reflect how privacy-friendly (or not) they are. But without that, it's up to companies to be self-regulating, as it were, and voluntarily decide to briefly show some of its data collection facts.

This week's Advertising Age includes http://adage.com/article/news/big-food-preps-50m-push-facts-front-labeling/243475/. The food manufacturer want to avoid having a legal mandate, so they are spending $50 million to promote what they call ad "Facts Up Front." The idea is that putting that nutrional summation on the front of the package will satisfy those who are critical of the way they have represented sugary cereals and such as sound nutritional choices without having to accept an offical label that is not within their own control like the grade system recommended by the Institute of Medicine. With such a label, the foods that contain more fat, sodium, or sugar than the benchmarks set for them would get no stars at all. 

The evolution of money

We've come a long way from coins to bills to checks to plastic to online payments and digital wallets. The question now is:

Is society ready for bitcoin? My answer in 2000 words (as specified by the assignment) is at  http://www.coindesk.com/is-society-ready-for-bitcoin/

Opportunities in Africa

Which region promises the greatest expansion? IBM thinks the answer is Africa. It’s not alone among tech companies that are seeking new markets and trainable talent on that continent. While growth tapers off in many more developed regions, Africa offers great potential, particularly as its workforce gains access to education and technology for communication. Read more in 

Africa: The New China

Thoughts on the Human Face of Big Data

See my blog post on the brand new board, Big Data Republic, Predicting People's Participation in a Big-Data Project