AI and the Impact on Humanity

Tech and AI have advanced at a rapid pace in recent years and are posed to change the world as we know it. One company, IFM/One.trackAi is making waves in the industry with the development of a device for forklift drivers that monitors the speed, direction, location relative to the people around and how other forklift operators are maneuvering their vehicles. IFM’s software automatically detects safety violations (for example, cell phone use) and notifies warehouse managers so they can take immediate action. Another company founded by famous hacker George Hotz has made a $1,000 device that can connect to the operating system of nearly any car and make it semi-autonomous. AI is present in a variety of industries and is posed to play a more significant role in transportation (autonomous vehicles), manufacturing, healthcare, media (Bloomberg uses AI algorithms to quickly process financial data and natural language abilities of AI to produce earnings reports), and Customer Service. AI poses issues for job security - many estimate that it will eventually displace 40% of the workforce. 

To prepare for this shift, workers in repetitive task manufacturing jobs should be open to retraining so as to not to fall by the wayside. Amazon and other companies offer payment to help employees gain skills not easily learned by AI. Tech is set to have a substantial advancement on sustainability, climate change and environmental issues. Many prominent figures in the field including Elon Musk fear a singularity whereby super intelligent machines take over. This idea is far from mainstream but with great minds such as Musk's warning of the possibility, it may be something to consider as AI becomes increasingly omnipresent. 

Failed Senate Shut Down, Confirmation of Amy Barrett and Possible Trump Rejection of Election Results

The confirmation of Supreme Court justice Amy Barrett was strongly opposed by Democrats resulting in a close vote of 52-48. Barrett was sworn in just days before the Presidential Election. The Dems opposed Barrett due to speculation that she would further Trump’s (or simply the Republican party’s) agenda. This fear was supported by the President’s comments that the group of justices he appointed while in office would make overturning Roe v. Wade - the law that legalized abortion in the U.S. - possible. Further, Dems cite 2016 when Republican Senate majority Leader Mitch McConnell blocked Obama’s supreme court nominee on the grounds that it was during an election cycle and the American people should have a voice. The choice to back Trump’s nominee is in clear contradiction to this reasoning. 

Further speculation leads to the possibility of Trump refusing to accept election results if he loses on the basis of mail-in voter fraud. If this occurs, the Supreme Court is likely to be called upon to decide the results and Trump’s nominees could be more inclined to support him. In a single term, Trump has appointed more than a quarter of all federal judges and a third of Supreme Court justices.

The Role of Technology and Machine Learning in the Fight Against COVID-19

The pandemic has impacted the lives of millions, caused markets to tumble, unemployment to spike and a general feeling of uncertainty concerning the future of the nation and the world. These issues have dominated headlines for the past few months overshadowing the advancements made in the private sector to fight the virus. Tremendous pressure was put on the healthcare sector as demand for ventilators, PPE and staff drastically increased while supply was slowly moving to match.

Approval of new drugs and advancements in a historically slow-moving, cautious and deliberate industry came swiftly. The use of AI, machine learning and general tech in the industry was perhaps the most notable of these advancements. This includes the use of Artificial intelligence in finding new drugs to defend against the virus and ways of identifying early-onset symptoms. Telehealth also played a significant role in fighting Covid-19 with remote doctor’s visits up 4,337% in March 2020 compared to that of 2019. The most interesting development occurred in DIY and open source to support front-line workers and hospitals including 3D printed face shield and designs for ventilators. Healthcare providers' post-coronavirus financial struggles will likely promote the model of frugal innovation and low-cost development to increase, according to Frost and Sullivan's Shah. 

Trust and Anti-trust: The Case against Google

On Tuesday, the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit against Google of historic significance. Many commentaries have noted that it marks the return of the U.S. government to a role that some have feared it had abandoned: to discipline powerful monopolies.

What complaints the antitrust lawsuit includes:

• Google stroke multibillion-dollar deals to make its search engine the default option on smartphones
• Google controls 88 percent of the U.S. search engine market, giving it unparalleled power which the company uses to effectively prevent alternative search engines from competing fairly
• Google monopolizes the search ad market

How Google’s monopolistic position may harm consumers:

• Google’s control over search means it can include hidden costs and charge marketers higher fees for ads
• Due to a lack of few alternatives, Google doesn’t have much incentive to optimize its search engine
• This centralization of power in Google has led to a weakened press, as the platform incentivizes virality and sensationalism over high-quality journalism
• Google is not free – users pay with their loss of privacy 

This lawsuit is likely to stretch on for years and it will be interesting to see how this plays out in court. Will Google be forced to sell off parts of the company? Will it be regulated more like a public utility, required to license out patents for its algorithms? Will anything happen at all? Only time will tell. In any case, the suit has already sent a powerful message. It may even send off a cascade of lawsuits against other big tech companies. 

Amazon Isn't Even Hiding Its Intentions Anymore

10/21/2020 – (gizmodo.com)

Today, Amazon rolled out the “Amazon Shopper Panel” which pays customers for information on where they shop when they’re not shopping on Amazon.com. Panelists submit photos of receipts through the app at least 10 times a month receive $10 in Amazon credit or donate to a charity of their choice. Additional credits will be issued for participating in occasional surveys about certain brands and products. Receipts must come from brick-and-mortar retailers like grocery stores and drug stores or entertainment outlets like movie theaters.

Information shared will be used to helping brands offer better products and making ads more relevant on Amazon. In addition, the data from receipts and surveys may be used to improve product selection in Amazon.com, Whole Foods, and Prime Video.

Amazon is under regulatory scrutiny over scandals tracking consumer purchase data. Wall Street Journal article found that Amazon spent years tracking performance of third-party sellers to use to its advantage by creating competing products under the Amazon private label.

Currently only 4% of US retail sales are transacted through Amazon. But it’s important to note, they are the leader in US retail e-commerce sales with 39% market share. The next closest competitor is Walmart at 5%. Leveraging purchase data through the new panel program will only help to improve this dominating e-commerce market share.

How VR makes advertising better?

Compared with traditional old-school marketers, the marketing professionals of the new era have a particularly strong desire to sell with new technologies, whether it is the PC era or the mobile era, or even the current VR and AR era. The gradual integration of virtual reality technology into the marketing and advertising industry is also a general trend.

The most important key success factor in advertising and marketing is to capture consumers’ "curiosity", and the trend-leading VR advertising and VR marketing developed in recent years have brought consumers unprecedented visual experience and freshness that is different from traditional advertising models. Do people like immersive freshness and immersive stimulating experience? Compared with flat 2D video advertisements, audiences wear special VR devices on their heads. The extremely real scenes, immersive atmosphere, and interactive content that can be deeply and flexibly customized will enable consumers to have a real connection with the brand. The creative means to convey various messages through VR also appeal to most advertisers. 

VR marketing and VR advertising can significantly increase the conversion rate of traditional marketing. At present, VR marketing and VR advertising are mainly concentrated in the fields of e-commerce, tourism, real estate, finance, education, automobiles, etc. It can be seen that the application prospects are still very broad. The below are a long list of key benefits of VR advertising:

1. Strong interaction: Compared with sliding a finger, the first thing that VR marketing content needs is that you turn to your phone. In this simple action, the interaction between you and the content has been established, and "participation" is undoubtedly the most core measure of the effect of online marketing. Imagine the situation where the "head-downers" raised their heads and shook their heads and turned their mobile phones. Is it very magical? It can be said that it is a VR version of eye exercises.
2. First mover advantage: Earlier, many people didn't understand AR and VR technology, or didn't believe that it can bring waves to marketing. When new trends emerge in the market, the first promoter will also be the winner of the greatest benefits.
3. Longer engagement: It is undeniable that 360°VR advertising can attract attention more easily, and this kind of continuous interactivity is unmatched by other media. People first entered the 360° world because of curiosity, and then stayed here because of the endless imagination.
4. Positive brand connection: Consumers will of course express a good impression of fresh and creative advertisements, which will also have a positive impression of the brand behind the advertisement, for consumers of any age.
5. Data analysis: In terms of data collection, 360° VR marketing has unprecedented advantages, such as eye-tracking information viewed by users. Later these analyses can also help brands better adjust marketing strategies to achieve a win-win situation.
6. Immersive customizable brand story experience: Storytelling is of course a pleasing marketing method, and instead of depicting various details to impress consumers, VR marketing, an unprecedented immersive platform, can more directly bring people into creative brand stories customized according to needs.
7. Better content awareness: The audience's awareness of 360° content VR marketing is 8 times higher than that of traditional advertising.
8. Stronger purchase intention: Compared with traditional advertising, 360-degree video content is extremely attractive, and consumers’ purchase intentions are three times higher than traditional advertising.

Here's an example of the leading luxury brand Dior

As a world-renowned fashion consumer brand, Dior has a keen sense of the marketing value of VR in the fashion field. Dior has launched its own brand of VR equipment Dior Eyes, and the workmanship also continues its brand's exquisite style. The screen has a pixel density of 515 PPI and the viewing angle is close to 100 degrees.

Through Dior Eyes, the wearer can experience the VIP-like treatment, go straight to the latest ready-to-wear clothing show, and even witness the interaction between the supermodels and makeup artists and stylists who will be on the stage in the background, which greatly satisfy users' fashion Curiosity.

Currently, Dior Eyes has been opened to the public in Dior's boutique. In fact, the biggest function of this device is to create an atmosphere for consumers, making them interested in products and increasing their desire to buy.

What’s up WhatsApp

Facebook recently laid out a new strategy for its messaging app WhatsApp, which has ~ 2 billion active users worldwide.

Facebook is one of the latest social media platforms that is making a push to integrate shopping/eCommerce directly into its app (see my blog post about YouTube from last week).

With the increasing use of WhatsApp for business activity, Facebook is planning on expanding in-app shopping options to allow for purchases right from a chat. This will give brands new tools for managing their interactions to maximize business potential. It is even planning to charge fees for some advanced functions. This could be a new way for Facebook to monetize WhatsApp, which it purchased a few years ago for $19Bn with the initial plan to push ads into WhatsApp Status, the stories-type feature of the app.

One of the reasons why Facebook had to rethink its original strategy to monetize WhatsApp relates to privacy issues. There were concerns that Facebook would weaken WhatsApp's privacy measures, including end-to-end encryption, but more recently, Facebook has backed away on this approach and enhanced privacy features are expected to stay.

The WhatsApp’s ecommerce platform is intended to work as follows. A user messages a business, which can reply with a link to a product catalog. The shopper can then add items to their cart and checkout from the app. Here is a promotional video that demonstrates how it works.

(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOKp7FmNJVE&feature=emb_title)

So far WhatsApp commerce has been a big focus in India, where Facebook is working to expand its presence including the use of WhatsApp Pay, which it can use to build on this strategy in other countries. It will be interesting to see if WhatsApp ecommerce approach really takes off and which off the social medial platform will turn out to capture most customer and business interest.

How reliable the information is from digital market? University Rankings

Nowadays, there is no lack of information to feed our needs and thanks for the prosperity of the digital market and internet revolution.

But does more information always lead to more knowledge? Not necessary. On the contrary, in some cases, the digital market and internet information frequently provide us misleading or even wrong information, which could potentially damage our perception of the world and eventually harm the society.

Taking university ranking as an example, there are many websites that provide university rankings, but the results could be totally different. Some of the rankings are just either not serious or extremely biased. Among all the different rankings, it seems that the US NEWS rankings are more reliable and has good reputations among all the competitors given its seniority of its ranking history.

However, I was shocked and extremally confused about the US NEWS recently rankings. For example, University of Washington in Seattle was ranked #58 in US national rankings but was ranked #8 in Global University rankings.  

University of Washington is definitely a very good university but how come the same agency can rank it so low of #58 in the nation but skyrocketed to #8 worldwide? I completely understood the criteria used to rank in US is different from its rank in worldwide, but such different criteria should have not caused such a huge difference between the US ranking and Worldwide rankings and such contradicted information could mislead audience and confuse human being judgement. What is the rationale behind those inconsistent rankings? Which information should we trust? Are there any potential illegal situations exist in the ranking process?

University ranking is just one of the examples. There are many other situations where the information provided by the websites do not provide us knowledge but rather mislead and confuse people.

Should we regulate internet and digital market, similar as Fed regularity banking and FDA regular drug companies? Probably it is hard to do so but maybe we should seriously start to think about such type of regulations.

 

 

 

Is Google your new shopping buddy?

 At the backend of the year, the season for shopping deals keeps expanding, and everyone is looking to get a piece, including digital giant, Google.  It all started with Black Friday, which caught on in the 80's as a post Thanksgiving shopping bonanza day, the day where the retailers went 'from red to black', or turned a profit, although the history goes further back then that.  The shopping craze has now expanded to the full Thanksgiving weekend, along with the introduction of Cyber Monday, which according to Reader's Digest is now the biggest shopping day of the year in the US, and even Green Monday, a more recent invention by eBay.  The expansion of these retail events has proliferated even further globally with Singles Day, a massive phenomenon in China.

With all of these 'deal days', retailers need to be savvy with their strategies to get in on the action and to capture the potential consumer spend.  Amazon has initiated its Prime Day, an exclusive event for its Prime members offering a huge range of deals, letting the company 'give back' to its loyal customers but also driving huge spend uplift by consumers. With so many choices consumers also need to be strategic to plan their shopping and figure out where, when and how to shop to get the best deals.  Many companies and news outlets look to offer advice to shoppers and highlight the best deals.  There is even a dedicated website blackfriday.com, complete with countdown, that helps consumers navigate potential deals.

With its rival Amazon stealing away share of search, particularly search with purchase intent, Google is looking for ways to keep the consumer captive and maintain their dominance as an advertising platform.  Just in time for this year's upcoming Black Friday, Google has announced new features on its shopping platform, Google Shopping. 

According to Mashable, this will allow consumers to determine if sales prices are good based on an assessment of the range of market prices, compare prices and shipping costs for specific products, and set price alerts.

This all sounds super useful, so it will be interesting to see how it impacts shopper behavior and traffic this deal season.  However, especially with the looming anti-trust case against Google, it will also be interesting how this further push to become the top trusted shopping buddy of the consumer will play out.

RIP, Quibi

 RIP, Quibi

 

After just mere 6 months since its grand launch, Quibi didn’t live up to its expectation of $1.8 billion and is shutting down its streaming service. They are returning $350 million of investment back to their investors, who are Disney, Alibaba, Sony, Time Warner and Warner Bros just to name a few. Even though there are doubts about this venture since day 1, everyone is still surpised to see it failed so quick. Here are two main reasons contributed its failure:

 

Bad Timing

The founders and the company believe in the idea of Quibi still, and that Quibi failed mostly because the bad timing of launch in the midst of pandemic that sent the whole country into lockdown. They envisioned that Quibi would be mostly used during people’s commute time waiting for public transportation, or standing in line for food during lunch time. Now that majority of the people work from work because of COVID, the premise of APP no long exist, and people continue with their “Netflix and chill” on the comfort of their own couch.

 

Fierce Competition

Instead of the popular freemium model, where the platform would offer free content to attract users and charge fee for top content, Quibi go straight to $4.99/month. No doubt the high-quality content with numerous celebrities and great production are burning the investment fast and $4.99 could be just recouping their cost. Users still can’t justify 5 dollars a month for short videos, while they are already paying $10 for Netflix, $15 for Disney+, $10 for Apple TV+, and $15 for HBO Max, and they can watch Youtube for free. They could perhaps learn a lesson from the raise of TikTok and how some short form video could actually succeed in this time.

Where should we spend dollars to reach The Consumer? Not Quibi!

 Google Ads services, Facebook, Amazon, and other mainstream social platforms are likely to remain stalwarts for digital marketing spend, but where else should dollars go? These decisions are risky:

As new platforms arise, jumping in early can create goodwill with the firm, as well as get some cheap ad space with early adopters. However, that comes with risks. Quibi was desperate to become stylish, spending millions in ad dollars to promote their platform. Unfortunately, the firm has just been declared dead. Is this a big deal? Yes! Lots of companies were advertising on Quibi... you could even argue too many. Maybe they set themselves up for failure with too many ads from the get-go, or maybe they just never resonated with an audience enough to capture real market share and develop a sustainable business model.

Unfortunately, this hurts A LOT of advertisers! P&G, Pepsi, AB-InBev to name a few, did they get an appropriate ROI on their investments? My gut says... probably not.

These large, established brands probably are not seeking awareness, they want purchase, or at the bare minimum, clicks. What was the downfall of Quibi? Low viewership. If people are not watching the content, they sure are not watching the ads! 

Granted, let us assume that advertisers were not creating expensive unique content for Quibi, but levering their existing ads that are used in other digital platforms, as well. Unfortunately, Quibi was apparently seeking high fees from advertisers. So without sufficient viewership, those ad dollars were likely to flee to more efficient frontiers. All in all, Quibi makes for an interesting case study on attempting to break into crowded fields with business models reliant on people to pay a subscription fee to watch ads. Hulu, please take note.

Think Snapchat is dead? Think again.

You might easily think that Snapchat is not a viable marketing channel anymore. With Instagram's stories replicating Snap's story feature and TikTok completely redefining marketing for Gen Z, it's easy to assume that "no one uses Snapchat anymore."

However, ironically, Snapchat remains one of the most widely used social platforms for America's Generation Z, consisting of those born in 1996 or later. According to Forbes, Snapchat reaches 90% of those between the ages of 13 and 24 in the United States. The platform also continued to add 9 million daily active users in the second quarter of 2020 and boosting quarterly revenue by 17%. Over 238 million people use Snapchat daily at the moment.

What sets Snapchat apart is its unique positioning for video advertising. It offers a full-screen format and interactive features to the brands, which gives them an opportunity to offer a more intimate, sneak-peek-like view into their character and value proposition. In times when customers value authenticity and relevance more than anything, advertising on Snapchat gives a chance to showcase the genuine side of any brand and create more in-depth relationships with current and potential customers, while keeping the interactions fun and engaging.

Essentially, Snapchat is widely used and loved -- and it's impossible to ignore its impact. However, there are some caveats when it comes to marketing on Snapchat:

• It's not always straightforward when it comes to tracking and success measurement.
• It's largely visual, leaving little to no room for copy or text content.
• The content won't stay on the platform for longer than 24 hours -- while this may be the differentiating factor of the platform in the first place, it certainly makes the content highly ephemeral and impossible to keep on a platform for a long enough time period.

While the platform may not be the top marketing channel of choice for all businesses, it's wrong to disregard the value it adds.

How to Turn Depressing Social Media Into a Positive Influence

 https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/15/smarter-living/how-to-fix-social-facebook-instagram-twitter.html

After watching The Social Dilemma I have not only reconsidered my use of social media but also my kids.  One has to wonder given the addictive nature what the long term impacts are, and as it becomes clearer how do 'users' adjust their use in the future.  All else equal I think everyone as a user would likely on actively engage on the platforms if they believe it is a net benefit (if not neutral) to their life.  On the flip side, the companies are paid for generating impressions, clicks, views etc.  It is in their best interest to make users as active as possible.  The article in the NYT from earlier this year make suggestions on how to adjust your behavior on social media for the better.  I wonder if we ever reach a point where society truly decides to tone down their digital lives, and the impact that would have on social media companies.  

Retailers Looking to Monetize their Customer's Data

 

CVS has realized that their customer data is a valuable asset that advertisers are willing to pay for, and they look to be making that data monetizable.  "CVS purchase history data combined with digital engagements on and off of CVS properties and other interest-based data helps build out the gaps in [advertisers] knowledge(.)" [1] And retailers have the advantage as they can "accurately validate the effectiveness of a campaign by measuring both online and offline sales.”[4]

If this endeavor proves to be a success, it could be reasonable that other large retailers will soon follow.  Walmart, Target, and other large retailers likely have years of consumer data of actual purchasing behavior.  This data could provide a connection between search intent and purchase behavior that has previously been harder to come by. 

It will be interesting to see if consumers will balk at retailers sharing their data with advertisers feeling their every move is being tracked, or if more precisely targeted advertising will be welcomed to help weed out some of the irrelevant messaging. 

But given that 75,000 brick-and-mortar stores may be forced to close by 2026 [2] this may be a stream of revenue that retailers can no longer afford not to monetize, regardless of customer's feelings.  

It will be interesting given the recent developments with the US governments strike at the tech giants "monopolies" and if any legislation will be enacted to provide more protection for consumer data.  "Bills were considered in at least 30 states and Puerto Rico in 2020." [3] This is a clear sign that there is likely to be an impact on companies looking to turn this into a revenue stream.

Source:

[1] https://www.adexchanger.com/omnichannel-2/the-top-6-things-you-should-know-about-cvs-retail-media-network/

[2] https://www.forbes.com/sites/dennismitzner/2020/10/20/retail-and-the-underbanked-opportunity/#6f074502f31f

[3]https://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/2020-consumer-data-privacy-legislation637290470.aspx

[4] https://chainstoreage.com/cvs-takes-amazon-walmart-retail-digital-ad-market

Targeting Gen Z: Awesome is for Everyone...but Maybe Not?

Awesome screen. Awesome camera. Long-lasting battery life. These are three things are the only things repeated over and over in Samsung’s influencer-filled TikTok-style ad and that’s what they would like you (or more likely, a social-savvy Gen Z teen) to know about its Galaxy A series of phones — specifically, the newly announced Galaxy A51 and Galaxy A71. It is filled with excessive “teen” energy and I must admit, it is a great piece of marketing because it will guarantee you will watch it, as jarring as the ad may be, and will be able to name those three features of the Galaxy A line phones.

In this 50-second film, Gen-Z was definitely the target audience they had in mind. This young, digitally savvy customer base who grew up with mobile phones and iPads, don’t ever remember a time before the internet – unlike millennials. This target demographic also makes up 32% of the global population and five strategies that have been successful for marketing to this audience are the following:

1.       Selling experiences, not products

2.       Video, video, video – (with awesome screen, awesome camera, long-lasting battery life)

3.       Rethink the major influencer campaign

4.       Engage with customers

5.       Highlight your dedication to privacy

Additionally, the attention space of a typical Gen-Zer is no more than 8 seconds, which is surprisingly 4 seconds less than your typically millennial. It’s all about grabbing their attention in this short amount of time, otherwise you’ll be forgotten forever.

Targeting the youngest customer market segment by tweaking your digital marketing strategy can surely boost brand trust and loyalty with your Gen Z audience, but it can maybe eave the rest of your market audience dazed, confused and surprised – maybe it did work for Samsung. You tell me.

 

5G and advertising: what's new?

 On October 13th, Apple finally launched the much-anticipated iPhone 12 series, all equipped with 5G compatibility. Though for Android devices, 5G has been standardized into a must-have spec, Apple delayed its 5G-enabled flagship phones by a year. With Apple onboard, many people say we officially entered the 5G era.

What is 5G? According to Qualcomm, the chipmaker, 5G wireless technology is meant to deliver higher multi-Gbps peak data speeds, ultra-low latency, more reliability, massive network capacity, increased availability, and more uniform user experience to more users. Higher performance and improved efficiency empower new user experiences and connect new industries. While the impact of 5G still depends on the penetration of 5G-enabled devices, the advertising industry has started to embrace the change and think about what will be impacted. So here are a couple of ideas.

Better ad experience

This is the obvious part. As 5G loads data faster with lower latency. Faster speeds mean more content to view – web pages, apps, games, and more. It will then translate to more advertising opportunities on mobile devices. Interactive ads will become ubiquitous. With higher data processing rates, advertisers will have numerous opportunities to create compelling, creative, and high-resolution ads to engage consumers. With 5G interactive content like live-streaming, 4K videos will become more powerful.

5G can locate targets more accurately, realize true close-range advertising, and open the door to high-performance local and close-range marketing. In the 5G era, the symmetry between user information and user needs will be greatly improved, thereby solving the problem of low advertising efficiency and reducing the advertising costs of brand owners.

Augmented Reality

With 5G, data can be rendered in real-time to offer a convincing and immersive experience for users. There is no longer a limit for data bandwidth. 4G, by comparison, struggles to deal with the weighty data capacity that AR demands. Now that mobile devices become powerful enough and equipped with 5G speeds, it can be expected that AR will penetrate more and more users. 

Since its conception, AR is said to be a game-changer for advertising. With AR, advertisements become much more interactive than before, which allows advertisers and marketers to connect with consumers in completely different ways. Being immersive means AR ads are much better at creating an emotional connection with customers in real-time, than a traditional picture or video ads. AR ads are designed to be lifelike and responsive to the user's reactions. Beyond just seeing the ads, AR also offers virtual try-ons as a new and exciting way to increase sales volumes. For furniture, clothing or jewelry items, customers have the freedom and flexibility to see them in their apartment or on their hand, without having to go to the physical store or ask a shop assistant. This becomes even more interesting in the context of the pandemic. Post-pandemic, will more people choose AR stores instead of going to the actual store? I believe the answer is likely yes.

IoT

As a major use case and a promise from all 5G operators, IoT is expected to be even more powerful, thanks to ultra-low latency and wide reach of the 5G network. As 5G becomes widely deployed, everything will be connected, ranging from consumer devices such as your smartphone and wearables, to infrastructure including the trees along the street. All devices and sensors will join the IoT era, and any smart devices can work like a central hub to remotely control all things. 

With an explosive amount of data from connected devices, advertisers will be able to know customers even better, with behavioral and real-time analytics. Marketers are also preparing to serve content and engage customers with more variations of formats across devices. Connected cars, connected pets, connected everything will open up new channels for marketers to reach their audience, with more precise targeting.

YouTube from advertising to e-commerce

With the recent rise in “social commerce” driven by Facebook and Pinterest, Google has been ramping up its e-commerce strategy to ensure it is not missing out. Generation Z and Millennials prefer platforms like YouTube, TikTok, Snapchat, and Instagram, which has been one of the main drivers of the success of social commerce.

The pandemic has made the need for a better e-commerce platform even clearer for Google. Many of Google’s advertiser had their marketing budgets slashed related to travel and retail, while e-commerce has boomed as more people shop online.

Google is now trying to position YouTube as part of its e-commerce strategy. In an earnings call earlier this year, Google CEO Sundar Pichai specifically commented on the potential of shopping on YouTube.

Until now users went to another website to purchase products after reviewing and watching a product video. Google's new plan would cut out the middleman and allow users to directly purchase the product they see without leaving YouTube and Google. For example, viewers can watch product unboxing, makeup or cooking videos and immediately buy featured products through YouTube. In return, YouTube/Google would presumably get a cut of sales. 

Google’s end goal is to turn YouTube’s video library into a product catalog where users can click on items they see and buy them directly. As a step into that direction Google has recently also announced a new integration with Shopify for selling items through YouTube. The YouTube software will allow creators of videos to tag and track products featured in their clips. The data will then be linked to analytics and shopping tools from Google.

For now it seems that Google is just testing this new e-commerce platform on YouTube but if successfully implemented it would allow Google to further build out its market dominance by gathering even more consumer data that is valuable for advertising purposes.

Are big techs monopolies?

This week, the House Judiciary Committee presented a 449-page report that concludes the findings of a 16-month congressional investigation on four companies with a total market cap of $5 trillion: Google, Amazon, Facebook, and Apple. In this report, the word “monopolies” are mentioned 120 times. It is obvious that these four companies shouldn’t go on as they are today. Some law makers think new laws should be propose to govern these cooperation and big tech should be broken up.

 

Below are some of arguments and some questions to the arguments:

 

Google

Google’s search engine is at the monopoly level in this market and so as their search advertising. It forces websites to pay bidding fees to keep their website on top even with direct search.

House thinks that Google collects people’s location data from millions’ Android phones to help make their map better, and that prevents other companies to do the same and no other mapping companies can compete. Would users are better off to trust a bunch of smaller mapping companies with their location data? At least Google has the resource to keep their data secure from data breach. 

 

Amazon

The report suggests that Amazon treats small businesses that sell products on Amazon unfairly. Amazon promotes its own products over third-party sellers, and it is notorious for using the sales data to copy third-party sellers’ products. 37% of these third-party sellers rely on Amazon as their sole income source. Amazon argues that forcing Amazon to not sell its own products on the same platform will force millions of small business out of e-commerce.

 

Apple

The lawmakers think that Apple has a monopoly on app marketplace with App Store. App store forces developers to use it to reach their end users and Apple takes 30% of the revenue generated by the apps.

Apple argues that “The App Store has enabled new markets, new services and new products that were unimaginable a dozen years ago, and developers have been primary beneficiaries of this ecosystem.”

 

Facebook

Facebook has been accused of anticompetitive by acquiring its competitors like Instagram and WhatsApp. It has monopoly power in the social networking market, and one could argue that the mergers were collusion. 

 

How to get rid of spam emails?

The spam emails not only disturb you but also occupy your email space. You will need to frequently clean up the spam email otherwise it would slow down your search productivity if you need to check and search some of your key emails.

But how to prevent from receiving the spam email at the first place?

One lesson I learned from my recent experience is: do not simply and easily give out your email address!

Recently I visited a lot of open houses for my house hunting exercises and during my visits, I was required to fill up my information such as name, phone number, email address, my realtor information etc. Every time when I fill up those forms, I just simply fill up my email address without further thinking. Then, after my visits, I started to receive emails from the open house agents regarding not only the open house information but also the general house market information. The information covers all the new listed houses along with the market trend for the specific areas.

Of course, such information is very helpful for my house hunting. But imagining, if 10 agents send out to you the similar house information every week or every other day, those information can be very disturbing.

The problem is that even you told them do not send me further emails or even you unsubscribed from their email list, somehow you continue receiving their emails which is kind of ignoring.

Now I am continue visiting the open house, but I stop leaving my email address in the required form to prevent further blow out of my mailbox.

House hunting is just one simply example and we need to be very careful and cautious also in other occasions by not simply sharing your email address.

Bot or Not?

If you mentioned bots back in the 80s, the first thing to come to mind might have been the Terminator or Blade Runner.  Nowadays, for most consumers, chat and customer service features driven by bots are a familiar sight on many websites, apps, and social media pages.  These bots are widely used by companies in all sectors from tech to sports, and even to beauty to build further connection with their customers and to provide convenience and simple services.  More recently the use of bots has been pushed even further by companies like Disney to provide entertainment and to engage their audiences or by the medical community for applications such as expediting medical diagnoses or serving as a conversational tool for dementia patients.

In fact, bots have supposedly taken over the internet.  According to socialmedia hq, as of a few years ago, the majority of traffic on the web is now non-human.  This bot traffic can have significant implications for businesses as they track their metrics and engagement online, and also for their bottom line as paid search continues to become an ever more important facet of advertising spend. 

While there is plenty of guidance to help marketing professionals overcome some of the potential negative impact of bots on their analytics, the complexity of the algorithms and the applications is quickly evolving, and the reach of bots is expanding to influence discourse on social media.  There is much debate about the scope and intent of bots on social media, as well as on the validity of data surrounding bots on these social forums as highlighted by The New York Times. In their article, they referenced the recent report from NPR that the majority of tweets on coronavirus are likely by bots, bringing to the forefront the debate around 'fake news' and the rising concern around being unable to discern sources of information and their validity. 

The 'bot battle' has extended even beyond the topic of misinformation and into the the world of sports doping.  As the covid crisis pushes our activities more and more remotely, the incident highlighted last year at the UK's first national cycling esports championship really begs the question on how far bots can be pushed to game the system.  In some sense though, the intent and use of the bot reflects the intent and use of the humans behind it, or at least for now :)

Pandemic forces Halloween candy makers to get creative to protect $5B in sales

MarketingDive.com (Oct. 12, 2020)

Mars Wrigley, Hershey, and Ferraro have changed up their strategy of packaging, selling, and marketing their candy and chocolates this Halloween due to the pandemic.

Consumers spend on average about 13% out of $36 billion US candy and chocolate sales during Halloween according to the National Confectioners Assoc. Halloween is the single biggest revenue generating day of the year, followed by Christmas, Valentine's Day and Easter.

In March, Mars Wrigley started to receive orders for Halloween and noticed order quantities that were inconsistent with past orders from retailers due to the uncertainty caused by COVID-19. Since then, retailers have revised their orders to better reflect the infection rates or other trends in their areas.

As a way to connect with consumers on their computers and phones, Mars Wrigley created a virtual trick-or-treat website and app called Treat Town to create spooky avatars, custom Halloween decorations, and virtual "knock" on doors for candy. They also decided to change the bag size from 200-plus count bags to smaller mixed bag offerings to accommodate for possibly less children trick-or-treating and more of at-home celebrations. 

Hershey has partnered with Google to review consumer search data to identify regions with severe pandemic outbreaks to supply candy for indoor celebrations or backyard scavenger hunts and regions that are recovering to supply candy for trick-or-treating. They has also decided to package its candy and chocolate more in its year-round packaging to minimize unsold bags which would have to be offloaded at a discount.

A poll by Piplsay of more than 30,000 Americans found 46% of parents will allow their kids to go trick-or-treating while 23% are unsure. 41% are not looking forward to Halloween due to safety reasons and not wanting to celebrate at all.

There is data which supports that Halloween will bring decent demand for candy and chocolates from consumers. Reviewing Easter's performance in April at the height of the pandemic, sales only decreased 7% from prior year. Although 1/3 of consumers said they would not participate in the holiday, only 15% actually did not. Therefore companies like Mars Wrigley, Hershey, and Ferraro are cautiously optimistic about Halloween that is quickly approaching. 

Google's Hum to Search: Voice is the New Text

Long are gone the days when text was the only method of searching-and-finding what you need. Today, there is a need to adjust to new methods people resort to in order to communicate; and voice is one of the fastest-growing ones on this list.

From dictating messages to Siri to asking Alexa about the weather, people increasingly treat voice assistants as integral parts of their lives -- and the industry has to keep up with the changing needs of the customers.

With that in mind, Google has introduced a new “hum to search” feature to its search -- and it quite literally lets the user hum the song they have in mind while Google's machine learning algorithm identifies the pattern they reproduce.

To make the process conversational, all users have to do is ask Google "What's the song?" and proceed with humming the tune. Google then will rank the search results based on how close of a match they are to the music, giving the user a few options to look into to find the best and closest match.

According to Verge, the feature uses Google's machine learning models to transform the audio into a binary sequence of numbers that encode the song’s tune, which makes it easy to compare against existing songs on the web. The algorithms have been trained on such sources as real-life whistling or humming of people trying to sing a song, as well as studio recordings by eliminating the sound of instruments and vocal enhancement in order to isolate the singer's audio. 

Facebook responds to the “The Social Dilemma”

Since its debut on Netflix, the documentary “The Social Dilemma” which focuses on the dangerous societal influence of large social media companies has gained widespread popularity - so much so that CNBC has reported viewers saying that they were deleting their Facebook and Instagram accounts after watching it. Featuring interviews of whistleblowers who used to work at the likes of Google and Facebook, the documentary argues that social media companies are deliberately using algorithms that encourage addiction to their platforms which has caused an increase on depression and suicide rates. Whilst this does not present a new revelation for most, the popularity of the documentary – it has been trending on Netflix for weeks now – has prompted Facebook to respond. 

Facebook addressed the concerns raised in the Social Dilemma by saying that the documentary „buries the substance in sensationalism” and that “rather than offer[ing] a nuanced look at technology, it gives a distorted view of how social media platforms work to create a convenient scapegoat for what are difficult and complex societal problems.” 

The central question, it seems, comes down to whether the algorithm is designed to drive polarization within society where it only shows content to users that they will likely agree to, or whether its purpose is to keep things relevant and useful for users. 

Like with most things in life, the truth is likely to lie somewhere in the middle. Digital marketers need to be wary, since this has a direct impact on ads as well. How personalized should ads be before they get too creepy? Is there going to be further regulations in the future? The popularity of the documentary indicates that change is coming and its positions are not seen as “conspiracies” or “doomsday sayings” anymore. They are actually becoming mainstream and regulators are putting these issues top of their agendas. 

 

WHAT HAPPENED WITH FIGS SCRUBS? CONTROVERSIAL AD SPARKS APOLOGY AND DEBATE ON TWITTER!

 https://www.hitc.com/en-gb/2020/10/14/what-happened-with-figs-scrubs-controversial-ad-sparks-apology-and-debate-on-twitter/

I think this event has a number of interesting points.  First, from a search perspective it will take a lot of 'good' or 'positive' articles about FIG to come up so that this doesn't bubble up to the top of a search.  Second, from a marketing perspective it seems crazy that internally at FIGS didn't realize how this could come off.  Clearly the marketing partner didn't either.  The cost of a mistake like this will be huge.  I don't know what type of marketing campaign they could engage to reverse the backlash if any.  Likely outcome is they need to just create enough content to 'bury' the story. 

Censorship or Caution

 

    Twitter, Facebook, (source: NPR) and YouTube (source: NY Times) have recently removed content that is creating a political debate.   Facebook and Twitter have limited access to a potentially damaging report that involves presidential nominee Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden, and YouTube has removed QAnon content from its platform. The legitimacy a truthfulness of this content is in question.  But is it for these platforms to decide, or the consumers/users to decide for themselves?

    These moves have been made with limited transparency into how these decisions are being made, and how they are being applied to all content.  These moves have resulted in politicians and even supreme court justice Thomas to issue statements asserting section 230 goes too far.

    "Section 230 grants internet platforms immunity from prosecution if a third party uploads defamatory or otherwise illegal content. For example, a blog website currently cannot be held legally liable if a third-party blogger writes a libelous post. (Such immunity does not generally apply in more extreme cases of illegal activity, such as when a website displays child pornography.)" (National Review  Oct 13th 2020)

    But the power and influence of such platforms have been noted.  The United States intelligence community issued findings that foreign actors are using these platforms to interfere with their country's affairs.   With a willingness for actors to use the platforms for nefarious purposes, and the ability of the platforms to affect a person's behavior without them being aware.

   "Relying on Facebook and Twitter to save America from misinformation or propaganda entrenches the philosophy that a handful of corporations should be given nearly absolute power over the ideas people can express in both public and private." (Verge Oct 15th 2020)

    This calls into focus the traditional news media, and how the proliferation of "news sources" and a move to online have shifted the business models to be less incentivized to fulfill the traditional role which has been described as the 4th branch of government.  This role would be to inform the public and keep Democracy healthy.  This issue is a signal of a larger systemic breakdown of a pillar of democracy that is falling on social media companies to step into, which is not what should be happening, and unfortunately, as they grow their ability to make such decisions for society only increases.

Changes in the future of advertising

 WSJ recently reported that Disney sold its Ad-Tech firm 'TrueX'. An interesting move, TrueX develops video advertisement technology which allows users to interact with the ad before viewing content behind the ad-wall. Considered a 'non-core' asset, Disney decided to part with the technology. 

The technology itself is very interesting for Digital Marketing, interacting with advertisements boosts engagement, which likely increases sales. There is a double-edged sword to the product concept, which promises to reduce the number or length of ads before accessing the true content. Research must exist to suggest that engagement with advertisements provides significantly higher conversion. Hulu and Lego once created an ad where the viewer got to choose how it ended. Talk about engaging!

I have certainly noticed an increase in mobile ads which allow you to interact with the platform/app they want you to download. Do you have any examples of good digital interactive ads you have noticed?