Virtual Reality is coming!

In spirit of today's class, I wanted to post this article on how virtual reality could change the world of music in both the way it is delivered as well as consumed. (http://techcrunch.com/2015/12/07/virtuality-reality-and-the-future-of-music/). Some examples from this blog suggest that VR can provide the type of immersive experience that can be game-changing. Imagine experiencing all live-concerts without ever going to the venue!

This is just one industry that could be changed with the onset of VR. However, there are many more where VR could disrupt a lot of things. What hits my mind first is social media. The way we interact with friends and family on social media like FB could completely change with the onset of VR. Instead of just posting photos and messages and liking them, you could actually wear your VR headet and suddenly meet up with them at your favorite restaurant! Guess Mark Zuckerberg realizes that and hence went ahead and acquired Oculus as soon as he could. Another one is education, where VR would go a long way in disrupting long-distance and correspondence education. This is just a tiny subset of what VR can change going forward. It will be interesting to see how adoption of VR ticks up as there is more mass adoption! Maybe teleportation was about about VR!

Mobile apps transforming job search

Not long ago, Linkedin was the only social online tool for networking. But, times have changed. They say that finding a new job is like finding a life-partner. Some startups have taken that quote seriously (Weave) and are building apps to make the whole networking and recruiting process much easier. These startups are disrupting specific parts of the job-search process - surfing and finding people, reaching out and networking, application, cognitive assessment, interviewing etc. A recent article on techcrunch looked at this space in more detail: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/27/how-mobile-apps-are-transforming-the-job-search/

Only time will tell how many of these will fundamentally end up changing the way we find and interview for jobs. Linkedin was obviously a great start in changing our habits!   

Contextual Search

Startups are starting to come into the domain of big platforms like google, FB and Microsoft. A startup called Ivy Softworks has launched a contextual information search platform called Atlas. Ivy Softworks has also launched its first product on the platform - an app called Recall (http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/24/contextual-search-platform-atlas-is-ivy-softworks-first-spinoff/). Recall helps you look for information/data that you had searched for at one point of time but are not able to recall/remember it accurately. This is because Recall watches all the data that you create everyday and tries to link all of it into some 'context'.

It's just interesting to see what all is happening in search today. My last blogpost was about voice based search and this is about contextual search. I always thought that google had done it all in search but the reality is that things just got started with Google!

The Next of Search

Big companies like Google, Apple, Microsoft and FB are trying to develop their technology around voice based search. While Apple has Siri, Microsoft has Cortana and from recent developments, seems like Google has been able to improve its technology and make it better than its competitors. Read more about it here: http://techcrunch.com/2015/11/16/google-voice-search-gets-smarter-now-understands-complex-questions-and-their-meaning/. As this technology becomes more widely accepted and becomes more ubiquitous, it will lead to a paradigm shift for digital marketers.

Today, the staple of digital marketing is search (SEO and SEM) and it is based primarily on content and keywords. However, in the digital world dominated by technology that use voice and language for search, what would be the new frontiers to conquer? Also, the algorithm behind voice based technologies would be very different from that of text based search. Digital marketers will have to start thinking about how they can optimize their resources to be most effective in such a scenario. Not only will they have to follow the evolution of these technologies more closely, but also think about ways in which they would be able to offer better services to their customers (companies using services of digital marketers) who want to reach out to their target consumers.

Blockchain (bitcoin) and digital marketing

As the hype around bitcoin is waning, the chatter around its underlying technology, blockchain, has only been increasing. Bitcoin was one application of blockchain but it also has multiple other applications. As blockchain is mostly a financial technology (fintech) concept, I was wondering if it could have any applications in digital marketing and came across this article: http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/articles/the-blockchain-transforming-the-relationship-between-brands-and-customers/2317#

A lot of this is still an idea/concept and still many years away from any practical usage. At its most basic level, blockchain is a technology that holds information/data in a distributed manner rather than with a central authority. For consumers, think about your personal information being held across properties/websites/apps in a distributed manner such that no specific property has all the data. So brands who want to reach you wont have to go to a FB, google or twitter to get your information but by using the blockchain technology, they would get specific data/information on you that would help them market and target certain products towards you. The article gives some cool examples on how this could work in practice (auto insurance, CPG firms etc.).

Again, important to note that this is nascent stages for this technology and we are still years away from practical usage. Most of the blockchain applications used today are in the fintech space and are challenging institutions that are central repositories of power and information. Bitcoin, which was probably the first application of blockchain is today challenging the power of central banks by helping people transact without using money (but by using bitcoin which has no central authority or regulator). Similarly, think about a world where digital marketers dont need to go to google, FB or twitter to get information on a consumer!

Brand related analytics by Twitter!

Twitter recently launched its brand analytics product called Brand Hub. The product helps brands gauge the conversations around itself on Twitter. The product also helps gauge the 'brand presence' of a company/brand/product with respect to its competitors. It's an important tool for advertisers as its a way to figure out which segments of the target audience to target with specific campaigns (depending on the type on conversations they are having online). That's the power of digital social networks. They allow brands to create customized campaigns and target individual consumers.

What this also implies is that social networking platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest are trying to figure out (acquire or create) the best technologies in the AdTech space. This has been the reason why these massive online networks have acquired a bunch of smaller AdTech firms in the last few years. Twitter's Brand Hub product is an additional step in that direction where these mega firms are trying harder and harder to develop the best technologies that can help match advertisers to customers with the best possible financial return to the advertiser (brand).

For further info on the Brand Hub product, you can check out the link: http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/26/twitter-brand-hub/#.5pknuq:dVcx 

Will Email marketing die?

I read the following news article on Techcruch recently: http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/01/turing-email-wants-to-make-sending-emails-as-fun-as-using-slack/. This article talks about how Turing Email has set out to change the way we check our email. There are other companies like Slack that have already started changing the way we communicate with co-workers at work (including mailing). I used Slack when I was interning with a VC firm in the bay area this summer and found it way better than any other software that I have ever used for office communication (I have worked at 4 companies now). Even at home, the use of e-mail has been declining as we communicate more on social media and use various other sources for information and content. With these trends, I sometimes wonder how relevant E-mail marketing would be after a few years.

Having said that, seems like email is still very relevant. I still don't know many people who don't have an email id whereas I know quite a few people who are not on FB, or don't use Twitter or Snapchat. I found an interesting blog (with some interesting statistics) that talks about the relevance of email marketing even in today's environment: https://www.campaignmonitor.com/blog/email-marketing/2014/09/email-marketing-statistics/. I guess the thing is that e-mail marketing is not going away anytime soon. Rather the blogpost suggests that e-mail marketing is a very effective means of digital marketing. Guess the point then really is that e-mail may still be very relevant today but if it doesn't evolve with the times, then it could become redundant. As ways to interact with e-mail evolve, so should ways to market using e-mail!

VC firm Accel Partners 'adds value' to startups in digital marketing

Today, Venture Capital (VC) money is flowing freely and any good startup has atleast 5-6 top quality VC firms who would be more than happy to invest in that company. In such a scenario, a founder often looks for ways in which those VC firms can add value apart from just providing capital. Hence, VC firms try and 'add value' in multiple ways. One of the ways VC firms do this is by hiring partners who have had 'operating experience' and thus can help their portfolio companies with overall strategy or day-to-day operations. Another way VC firms can 'add value' is by making important introductions for the founders (to customers, partners, other relevant portfolio companies etc.)

Accel Partners has come out with its own way of adding value to startups. Accel has created a tool (Growthverse) that maps the entire marketing technology ecosystem. Its an interactive visualization tool that helps startups find companies that can help them with different areas of digital marketing. Given that the marketing technology space has become really crowded, it can often become very overwhelming for startups to find the 'right' company for its digital marketing needs (paid acquisition, content marketing etc.) and a tool like this saves them a lot of time and resources.

This has multiple advantages for a VC firm like Accel - (1) it's a sort of value that Accel is providing to startups to navigate a relatively complex arena and hence positioning itself as a 'value-added' partner and (2) its a discovery tool for Accel as marketing technology companies that are undiscovered and might want to be a part of this tool will reach out to Accel!

Further details in the Techcrunch article:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/15/accel-partners-looks-to-map-the-marketing-technology-ecosystem/

Rise in ad-blocking = rise of creative digital marketing

The usage of ad blocking is on the rise. A recent techcrunch article mentioned that today ~198M people globally use ad-blocking software (original numbers from Adobe and PageFair). This could cost publishers $22B in revenues annually. Such a rise in use of ad-blocking software is leading to a lot of debates on the effect that this will have on publishers, various ad agencies and other websites whose primary business model is advertising.

An interesting viewpoint is that the effects might not be as negative as initially thought to be. Ad-blocking software would not allow ads of publishers to appear on websites but that wasn't a big part of advertising for a lot of publishers to start with. Such ads are often only a component of the total 'digital marketing package' for publishers. Also, blocking of blatant product/service ads just means that publishers need to get more creative about the way in which they are reaching out to their target customers. Its important to note that ad-blockers don't block all types of ads and some ads can be whitelisted (publishers need to apply for whitelisting) - there are various criteria for a publisher's ad to be whitelisted and publishers can create campaigns or ads (based on content or customer data used) that fit this criteria. Ad-blocking is not a black or white concept and ad-blockers are eventually getting smarter about what type of ads are really useful to the customers and those that are intrusive and irritating.

Supporters of ad-blockers make the argument that rise of ad-blocking software will only weed out those publishers/ad agencies that bombard target customers with 'non-creative' ads and by using personal data from various third-party websites. Increased usage of ad-blocking software also highlights the fact that publishers need to get more creative about the way they interact with various social media platforms (facebook, twitter, snapchat etc.) on which their target customers spend a majority of their time. This could mean generating great digital content (text, videos, photos etc.) and running campaigns that attract their target customers rather than bombarding them with ads that they don't like.

Some really good articles on this can be found on the following links:

http://techcrunch.com/2015/09/12/raymond-carver-loved-ads/
http://fusion.net/story/177977/this-is-not-a-sponsored-post/

Content based digital marketing by Robo Advisors

The new class of automated investment managers are also called Robo Advisors and since their arrival on the online financial services scene, they have been able to grow to almost $20B of assets under management (AUM) globally. The biggest Robo Advisors are in the U.S. with Wealthfront and Betterment leading the charge. I feel that these Robo Advisors are very valuable as they provide investment management services to a lot of people who could not avail the service earlier (primarily because it wasn't profitable for offline advisors to service them given their low AUM) or at a very low cost to people who already had access to such services. The space has become very competitive as the big two are fighting for supremacy and traditional asset managers like Charles Schwab and Blackrock are fighting back by releasing their own versions of automated investing platforms (Schwab) or by acquiring other smaller Robo Advisors (Blackrock acquiring FutureAdvisor).

While Robo Advisors are using a wide range of innovative digital and offline marketing techniques to market their services, the one that stands out is content led Search Engine Optimization (SEO). These firms are hiring people to create content on topics/areas that their target segment would be looking for on the internet. A quick look at the blog of Wealthfront (https://blog.wealthfront.com/) shows various blogs on topics like career, stock options & RSUs, taxes, retirement investing etc. This probably explains why Wealthfront has witnessed a lot of growth amongst employees of tech companies in and around silicon valley who have started making the $$$ but don't have much knowledge about how to invest those $$$. I myself went through a number of blogs on the website and found some of them very valuable. I can online imagine how valuable such content can be to an entire breed of young employees of tech startups/bigger companies who probably have no financial knowledge or atleast lesser than I do (given I have completed my CFA and have a background in financial services).

Apart from just getting a lot of traffic to the website, Robo Advisors are also using its content to develop a consumer brand around information, transparency and trust. Traditional asset managers have been quite opaque (wrt investment strategies, fees etc.) to their customers and that is one of the key reasons why Robo Advisors are gaining traction by making investing services not only more accessible but also more transparent. Hence, content is not only one of the ways of digital marketing, but also something that is more core/intrinsic to the DNA of these Robo Advisors and something that makes them a lot more valuable to millenials who have a few $$$ in their bank account but not much knowledge to be able to invest them.