Big tech competing for the Virtual Reality market

Not only Google, Facebook and Samsung are in the race to gain the market of VR devices, but many of the big entertainment companies such as Walt Disney are already producing the content that VR Devices’ users will demand.

Google’s Cardboard inexpensive device is definetively targeting the massive consumption, maybe in contraposition to what it was a big failure so far, the extremely expensive Google Glasses.

Walt Disney, has teamed up with Google and Verizon to hand out thousands of free Cardboard viewers featuring characters such as R2-D2. The initiative follows a partnership with the New York Times last month, in which viewers were sent to the newspaper’s subscribers.

Samsung and Facebook, on the other hand, just teamed up to launch a $99 VR gear headset. While Cardboard is designed for simplicity, Gear VR offers more sophisticated hardware and tighter integration with Samsung’s smartphones.

On the content side, Star Wars became the first highest-profile entertainment brand yet to join the Cardboard platform, this week.

In 2015 alone, more than $600m has been invested in 119 deals with most of that going into content companies such as Jaunt, NextVR and 8i.

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/df7f388c-9974-11e5-95c7-d47aa298f769.html#axzz3tHT0NShw

Facebook moving to the corporate networking segment

Facebook has recently launched “Work Chat”, its chat version of Facebook Messenger,  designed for interacting with colleagues. This version of Messenger allows coworkers to message each other individually, participate in group chats, share photos and videos, make voice calls, and even use stickers.

According to the company, Facebook at Work has 300 companies using its platform, ranging from smaller startups to large, established companies like banks. The platform allows employers to set up new accounts for their staff. The service has collaboration features such as document sharing, discussions, announcements, groups, project collaborations, events, and more.

Its main competitors are Microsoft’s Yammer, Salesforce Chatter and Slack, and the question is whether a whole new space for work collaboration and networking is coming.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/20/facebook-at-work-gets-its-own-version-of-messenger-with-debut-of-work-chat/

Keeping Google search relevant on mobile

One of the Google’s Moonshot projects, app-streaming, was announced to go live last week. It consists in showing up apps content in the mobile-search results, regardless of whether the content is indexed. Users will be able to click a "stream" button to get the full app experience without installing anything.

Although it is yet working for nine apps Google partnered with, the functionality could have an enormous impact as Google brings more services on board. It gives apps a way to engage with users they otherwise would not have had the chance to, so it's a win almost regardless if they get an install as a result.

http://www.businessinsider.com/google-app-streaming-2015-11

The New York Times leading the way to non-interruptive mobile Ads

The publisher rolled out a new ad format called Mobile Moments. The ads are customized to the seven moments in a given day that are most important to readers. Those moments include the beginning of the morning, lunchtime and the end of the day.

The ads take up the entire width of the screen and up to 75% of the screen vertically. However, by taking up three-quarters of the screen, the ads follow the Times' plan to reduce the number of ads it runs to make sure those that do appear have a chance to be seen.

These kind of initiatives are important in a context where consumers are being bombarded with ads and pushed to use ads blocking software.

http://adage.com/lookbook/article/branded-content/ads-timed-attention-native-content-stand/301101/

Ads that no one sees

AppNexus announced that it would allow advertisers to pay only for those digital ads that are actually seen by people. This is a very important innovation in the digital advertising industry, given that most studies estimate that only about half of digital ads are seen by real people.

However, many marketers might still pay for ads that no one sees. As programmatic advertising auctions became popular, they have put a downward pressure on ad rates as measured by CPMs  and advertisers have developed a taste for the cheapest option available. The problem is that the CPM metric measures page impressions but not always whether someone has actually scrolled down to where the ad is shown.

Ad agencies often have to promise advertisers lower ad rates as a way to land competitive deals. "One really interesting aspect of this is that procurement for marketers may effectively be forcing agencies to buy non viewable impressions." says Mr. O'Kelley, CEO of AppNexus.

http://adage.com/article/digital/a-market-online-ads-sees/301252/

What are platforms doing with user’s data?

Recently, Facebook won dismissal of a $15 billion lawsuit accusing the company of secretly tracking the Internet activity of its users after they log off, because subscribers didn't specify how they were harmed.

However, should digital media platforms continue to use their subscribers’ information in an unwanted and unclear way, users may start to opt out or use technology that prevent these platforms to track them.

http://adage.com/article/digital/facebook-wins-dismissal-15-billion-users-privacy-suit/301069/

“Shopping” as social media integrated experience

Facebook announced its new shopping program, Shopping and Services, a few weeks ago. Today, Pinterest announced that it’s expanding the reach of its “Buyable Pins” from supporting Shopify and Demandware only to several more e-commerce platforms, including Bigcommerce, Magento, and IBM Commerce.

Furthermore, many big-name brands are also now coming on board, including Wayfair and Bloomingdale’s, and Thousands of new Shopify stores are being added, too.

Expanding from marketing tools to marketplaces, seems to be al least a promising area for social media platforms. According to Pinterest 93 percent of Pinners use Pinterest to plan purchases and 87 percent have bought something because of Pinterest.

http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/05/pinterest-expands-buyable-pins-to-more-e-commerce-platforms-reaching-thousands-of-merchants/#.sjsih3:psHU

Unethical or not, the Internet should take concrete actions to prevent the use of Ad blocker software

Among other benefits, the existence of digital advertising makes it possible to have free content on the digital media space. Advertising also subsidizes the cost of apps, which can take hundreds of thousands of dollars to produce, but are often free or low-priced.

However, ads have become more and more intrusive for the internet users and, as always that there is a problem to be solved, some companies found it and developed softwares to block ads, and 34% of U.S. adults are using them.

This is clearly impacting the revenue of many digital content producers and publishers and most of them claim that it is unethical to block ads and not paying for content at the same time. However, unethical or not, it is challenging to rely on individual consciousness on whether to use these softwares or not. The internet should take concrete actions to prevent the usage of these softwares. But, what is the appropriate action?  Should websites “curate” ads and only show the least intrusive to the users so to provide a better experience to them or should they block access to their web sites to people that block ads altogether, or both?

http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/ad-blocking-unnecessary-internet-apocalypse/300470/

Facebook and Google, both going for the online retail business

A few weeks ago, Google has announced a new feature called Purchases on Google. With this change mobile ads will have a “buy” button, which will redirect the user to a page where he can buy the product.

This week, the social network leader has also announced a new feature, Shopping and Services, to be released in the coming weeks. With this enhancement, retailers  and service providers will be able to show and sell their products from their Facebook page.

But, are Facebook and Google targeting the exact same segment? Facebook’s new feature, which also includes other engagement functionalities such as: “Call Now,” “Send Message” and “Contact Us.”, seems to be more like a branded front solution for small business, perhaps with the ability to fully replace the, frequently outdated, web pages that many of these small businesses own.  

Google, however, looks to be a pure shopping functionality targeting retailers at different size, based on search.The company, using GPS data to understand the shopping journey, will also provide retailers information on how to optimize their AdWord.

http://mashable.com/2015/09/08/facebook-shopping-and-services/#iqHB.amokgkV

http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/15/purchases-on-google/#.sjsih3:8hoC

Don’t overestimate Facebook’s video views

Facebook has recently released its autoplay feature for videos by which they automatically begin playing in the user’s newsfeed, which is becoming more video heavy.

The tricky thing for marketers is that Facebook counts a view when a video has been autoplaying for just 3 seconds. Youtube, however, counts a view after the video has been playing for as much as 30 seconds. This difference might be based on the different nature of both platforms. While Facebook’s users scroll down their news feed quickly looking at a variety of content, people go to YouTube to specifically watch videos.

But, what does it means for marketers? Firstly, they should be careful about what to include in the first seconds of the video ad. Secondly, while 3 seconds of a video can still have an impact on its audience, marketers should not try to simplify reporting by making comparisons between Facebook and YouTube video views. 

http://www.theguardian.com/media-network/2015/aug/18/facebook-video-means-marketers-marketing