Facebook’s new haptic glove lets you feel things in the metaverse

Facebook has been developing a haptic glove which allows users to feel bursts of air to simulate the sense of touch. This effort has been in progress for about seven years. With it's debut, Facebook is looking to create a virtual space to simulate real like experience without physically being anywhere expect the comfort of your own home. The glove is expected to integrate into Meta's virtual reality technology offerings.

This technology may not be appealing to people outside of gamers initially as putting on large goggles and wearing big gloves may not serve as the best customer experience. Not to mention, as the article discusses the feeling of being more invasive. The technology also can track and collect data about a person's movements. As privacy and data protection begin to be more of a focal point, this technology opens up the door for more of a concern.

Source: Facebook’s new haptic glove lets you feel things in the metaverse - Vox

Drones and its use in Digital Marketing Campaigns

While watching YouTube last week I came across a video of drones used for a marketing campaign. The Shanghai-based company used the drones to form a QR Code in the sky which can be scanned to lead to their site. This was so astonishing to see that I started researching and found out that many companies in Hong Kong are using these drones to light up the sky to promote their brands.

Drones can be used for various marketing strategies in promoting your digital marketing agenda. Commercial drone usage is spiking in a variety of industries, including agriculture, real estate, construction, news media, entertainment, film production, energy, and many more. Before drones became a commercial asset, it was hard to effectively display the depth or expansiveness of the products, properties or projects that many industries need to demonstrate to audiences. As part of the emerging technologies, this can be an excellent source of generating more traffic to your websites and showing off creativity.

Link to the QR Drone video: https://youtu.be/mj8uIr4oQRU

Digital Marketing Goes Physical

Digital Marketing Goes Physical 

One of the big selling points of digital marketing is attribution.  Digital marketers can granularly track the connectivity between marketing spend and revenue. Being able to construct these ROI analyses enables them to justify increasing spending and informs shifting spend between multiple channels.

This success has driven the search to add quantification and enable ROI calculations for offline advertising mediums as well.  One way this has been accomplished is through unique QR codes that brings the potential customer online and into the trackability-**LIMELIGHT**...enabled by the built-in QR reader in smart phones and the ubiquity of those smart phones.

And of course, MarTech / AdTech companies (e.g., Tapple) have sprung up to enable this trend seamlessly. Whether billboards, subway benches, on-product, or physical media this same QR-code driven tracking enables the ROI calc's at scale and in a standardized platform.  In essence taking the complexity of tracking across many physical channels and digitizing & centralizing them.  Cool, huh?

But, the trick is getting people to actually scan the QR codes...these are the 'clicks' but how many impressions are there and how many purchases/conversions did that drive outside of the narrow lens of QR world?  Marketers are still using 'multipliers' based on one-off studies or rules of thumb, the opportunity still exists to go further with offline quantification.  

This blogger is eager to see how that evolves.

Source: https://adage.com/article/tapple/how-use-qr-codes-achieve-experiential-roi/2384196

CMA:1 - Facebook: 0

 https://on.ft.com/3obnFzL

Someone once mentioned in conversation that Mark Zuckerberg's only reason for acquiring Instagram was so that it would not become something significant. A killer acquisition, as they call it. Luckily for Zuckerberg and Facebook (or, Meta, as we are forced to called it now), that deal went through without any regulatory pushback. Much as the company's acquisition of Whatsapp...

But those days are over. The UK's competition regulator, the CMA (Competition Marketing Authority) has effectively blocked a deal for Meta's acquisition of GIPHY, an online search engine for GIFs. 

Blocking the deal is a blow to Facebook (Meta) because it signals the end of an era when the company was able to make moves in a relatively unchecked market. All bets are on the table. Companies that seem to pose little to no competitive advantage are now being thought of as what they could represent (read: Instagram) if Facebook (Meta) were to own them. At 315M dollars, the deal would have represented another important consolidation for Facebook (Meta) to control the digital marketing space. Even though GIPHY does not run advertisements, and of course Facebook (Meta) is obfuscating its reasons for purchase interest in stating that GIPHY could never have competed with them on advertising, who is to say it couldn't have gotten there in the future... That is exactly the kind of scrutinizing questions that the CMA is asking, and will continue to do so from now into the future.

What's FB worth to you?

 I was in a different class recently and the topic of paying for free services came up. Basic outline of the conversation,  you don't like Google or FB or whoever tracking your data, then pay for it!

First, do people actually want this? And two...assuming you trust the polls...what would people actually be willing to pay?

On the first question, despite how little folks trust FB, a whopping 77% said they wouldn't pay to use the service free of ads. Now, part of me is not surprised by this but maybe not for the most obvious reason, i.e., people just prefer free over paying. I think it is more a statement that we all utilize the "free" model from many companies and simply cannot imagine having to make the choice of whether to pay or give them up. It has become cultural in a way to expect services to be free. It has become expected that companies will harvest the data. So why fight it?

Second, of the 23% who said they would pay (not that I really trust this number or group's sincerity lol), 41.6% said the would pay $1 to 5 / month, 24.9% said they would pay $ to 10 / month and the remaining roughly 1/3rd said they would pay above $10. 

I guess my conclusion really is already spelled out: we hate FB or tech companies or FAANGs, etc., but their business model is culturally accepted. Not loved but accepted. 

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17225328/facebook-ads-free-paid-service-mark-zuckerberg

On the Hunt for Digital Marketing and Related Jobs?

https://danburycountry.com/looking-for-a-new-career-heres-what-top-social-media-jobs-pay/

With widespread news about labor shortages and themes including the Great Resignation mainstays in the daily news, I was curious what about digital marketing jobs? Largely a role in my mind that can be done remotely, how has the industry fared in terms of employment statistics through the pandemic? Not surprising given widespread use of the internet only began in the mid-90s, digital marketing and related is a job new field, but one of the most explosive industries in terms of employment (spurred by a largely WFH component). The article above shares some insights into those looking to potentially pivot into a social media/digital marketing or ancillary role.

The Rise of Email this Holiday Season

Kate Kaye at Protocol discusses how the impact of losing access to third-party company data has made retailers even more incentivized to acquire the email addresses of customers this holiday season. This is hardly surprising, and a logical response of retailers to deal with an impaired ability to target their ideal customer profile through paid advertising channels such as display, search and social.

One wonders whether limiting the effectiveness of marketers in one channel just drives them to others, and whether that ultimately results in a better experience for consumers.

Which is worse - being advertised to with relevant messages, or being advertised to with irrelevant messages?

A push to more email marketing from loosely related retailers may drive customers to explore options to keep their inbox clean.  Email clients have begun to emerge (see Superhuman and Hey) that create a whitelisting process which forces all new email senders to be vetted before they make it to a user's inbox.  A shift to email marketing risks spoilage of that channel in the same way we've seen the rise of ad-blocking software to target display ads.

If marketers see opt-in email as the path forward in an era where targeting through paid channels has become less effective, they need to very careful to make sure that the content they produce is at least as relevant and as targeted as their paid ads, if not more so, otherwise this channel too may cease to bear fruit.

3 Digital Marketing Ideas Every Startup, No Matter the Budget, Can Implement Now

 https://www.techfunnel.com/martech/digital-marketing-idea/

This article came at an interesting time. First of all, OMAO is at a stage where Bai was (a small, home-office startup beverage brand). Secondly, our class last Saturday just talked about Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs). 

I really like the third point of this article 'Finally, analyze your data'. I have been running Google Ads for almost a year now, but I rarely check the analytic data. I really need to check this data consistently to know if the marketing campaign is working and assess my progress.  

Sales technique in mobile gaming 2

Last time I have mentioned one brief example of the innovative monetization technique in mobile gaming. I would like to take the chance to explore a few more.

Lucky Spinning Wheel

Lucky Spinning Wheel is a very typical monetization technic for casual and social casino game. Disney Emoji Blitz took the idea further, instead of just having a wheel that simply charges players for cash per spin, it gives you a free spin for the first time and immediately transition to a "deluxe" (cash) version of the wheel to entice you to spin with real money. The most interesting part is that if you still don't convert, it will give you chances to spin the free wheel per ad-watch while providing a discount to the deluxe wheel every time you watch an ad making the deluxe wheel cheaper every time you spin the free wheel. 

Customizable Bundles

This idea simply gives the flexibly to customize and buy your own virtual item bundles to maximize the value per player. The idea mostly comes from individualized segmentation, satisfying the right customer at the right time.

Limited Quantity (Scarcity) 

This idea is fairly simple as well. It capitalizes on limiting the purchasable content to artificially create scarcity so that developers can inflate the cost of these virtual collections. 

Instagram Digital Marketing

In 2015, number of monthly users of instagram is 400 millions. Between 2015 - 2018, number of monthly users of instagram increases 200 millions each year. Since I am a user for 5 years without shopping on instagram, I am interested about instagram digital marketing. As we can see, advertisements show up when we view stories and posts on instagram. And algorithm behind the screen always sends users what they are interested. Here are some fun facts of instagram that help me to know more about instagram digital marketing.

Fun Facts

• The Instagram explore page is viewed by 200 million accounts daily.
• The most liked photo on Instagram is a photo of an egg with 55+ million likes. 
• More than 50 billion photos have been uploaded to Instagram so far.
• 1,074 photos are uploaded on Instagram every second. 
• 50% of Instagram users use explore page every month.
• Posts With a Location Get 79% more engagement.
• 60% of people say they discover new products on Instagram.
• Photos with faces get 38% more likes.
• Posts with at least one hashtag average 12.6% more engagement.
• Most-used Giphy sticker in Stories is by Red and Howling
• Women use Instagram 56.5% more than men in the U.S. 
• Instagram users engage more on weekdays with Wednesday and Thursday showing most engagement.
• More than half of Instagram Captions & Comments Contain Emojis.
• Instagram videos get over 2 times more engagement than Instagram photos.
• The most popular hashtags on Instagram are #Love, #Instagood, #Photooftheday, #Fashion, and #Beautiful.
• The most popular hashtag on Instagram is #Love, used 1.835+ billion times. 
• Pizza is the most Instagrammed food globally, followed by Sushi.
• Nano-influencers(500-5k followers) make an average of $114 per video post on Instagram, compared with $100 for an image post and $43 for a story.
• Power users(30k-500k followers) make an average of $775 for an Instagram video, $507 for an image post and $210 for a story.
• 68% of people come to Instagram to interact with creators.
• IGTV app has 7 million installs worldwide.
• There were 5 million uploaded videos within the first 24 hours after Instagram announced the video feature in 2013.

Reference:

https://www.omnicoreagency.com/instagram-statistics/

How AI Has The Potential To Transform Digital Marketing

A Forbes article that I recently came across outlined some interesting points on how artificial intelligence is significantly contributing towards the transformation of digital marketing. On a macro level, AI can be a useful tool to gain information on a company's target audience by big data and machine learning processes. Once this information is collected, it becomes easier to create a much more personalized and targeted outreach. A few key observations include:

• AI can help in eliminating the risk of human error and optimize digital marketing campaigns. That said AI-technology today cannot exactly replicate the human touch but may very well be able to come close in the future.

• AI has the potential to help create and curate content. Once created, it might be able to target the ideal audience on relevant platforms. To take it a step further, AI may also be able to build on what's available today and help generate ideas with respect to content strategy.

• Programmatic advertising can greatly benefit from advances in AI and businesses can increase their ROI by leveraging programs that can streamline the purchase and personalization of ads.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesagencycouncil/2019/08/21/how-artificial-intelligence-is-transforming-digital-marketing/?sh=27bb43d121e1

Subprime Attention Crisis Review

 I recently read Tim Hwang's Subprime Attention Crisis: Advertising and the Time Bomb at the Heart of the Internet.  Hwang draws a strong comparison between technological advances of the digital marketing industry, to the financial industry.  The way digital advertising auctions have been automated is very similar to the way financial exchanges have been automated.  This may not have been coincidental, and in fact a number of the tech/marketing executives responsible for the development of the modern digital advertising business model, are former Wall St executives. 

The advancement of digital advertising have been very fast and transformative to the industry. This speed of development often leads to opacities. Hwang argues that these opacities are not unlike the cloudiness that led to the 2008 financial crisis.

Reading this book did not make me feel urgent concern for the state of the industry. Hwang also acknowledges that most agree that digital marketing is expected to keep growing strongly in the immediate future.  However; it did introduce a different perspective I hadn't considered before. I do now think there is more fragility in the industry than I previously thought. If tech companies were no longer able to capture and commodify our attentions at the same level, the trickle down effects could be large scale and immediate. Tech companies are heavily reliant on advertising revenues; even though that was not in their original business plans (ex. Google).  The reader of Hwang's book is prompted to imagine an internet where many free services we rely on suddenly came at a cost. Imagine paying a membership fee to use social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. What if you had to pay every time you wanted to look up directions in Google Maps? The downstream impact of turmoil in digital advertising space could be tremendous. Regardless of how probable that outcome is, it is important to be continually cognizant of how much the internet we know today is dependent on the success of the digital marketing industry.

Boohooman turns to AR for 'Hack Friday' campaign

 

A men fashion store Boohooman recently launched its 1^st augmented reality ads for Black Friday campaign. The campaign ads is featured on many billboards and fly posters. Once the bar code on the flyer is scanned, the ‘hacker‘ Robin will come alive and offer deeper discounts.

This interests me as it demonstrates that how AR can provide enhanced values to a two dimensional static ads. Compared to a passive image or video, AR ads unarguably catches customer’s attention and engages customer to interact with the ads in real-time. Through the interaction, customers would have immersed experience with positive emotions associated with the brand. It has been shown that the AR ads are more effective in increasing brand awareness. In addition, among the homogenous competition, the interactive AR ads could create differentiated experience to help the brand to stand out. Apparently, Facebook has already partnered with Spark AR Partner Network to create augmented reality ads. As more customers consider AR ads to be fun and engaging, it is expected that more brands will incorporate AR ads into their overall digital marketing strategy.  

https://mobilemarketingmagazine.com/boohooman-turns-to-ar-for-hack-friday-campaign

Nike's Mind Sets

Continuing the trend of discussing Nike's digital initiatives on this blog, the article I came across was about Nike's focus on mental health. In light of several professional athletes recently speaking out on their mental health struggles, Nike is launching New Mind which will focus on "how your feeling" rather then "what you are achieving". Nike will roll out the program across their digital apps and social media platforms in addition to spreading the message through their influencers. It is awesome to see Nike using their strong brand name to progress the discussion further in an effort to help many people in need. https://www.insidehook.com/daily_brief/sports/nikes-mind-sets-program-focus-mental-health

Metaverse - the final frontier

 

Metaverse - the Final Frontier

Nike partnered with Robolox to create 'Nikeland' in the metaverse. Separately, Niantic is focused on the real-world metaverse - also known as augmented reality (AR).  These two perspectives both create a lot of new digital advertising space - literally a world of it. Much as video opened up a whole new advertising medium over the web, to too will the metaverse (VR) and AR...except with a lot more space for ads.

The question will be who will own this new space?  The final frontier will have the fiercest competition. The largest companies of all time have honed their business models, understanding when to take share and how to show patience. Facebook was able to scoop up Instagram for $1B because they saw the potential that mobile & image-forward social had. Google was able to scoop up YouTube at a bargain ($2.5B now valued at $100B+) because they saw the advertising potential in video.  

As technology matures for the next generation of new platforms to emerge into social consciousness, the fight for supremacy from the existing tech giants will be cutthroat - none willing to give into the others. 

The question is what will the new micro-targeting opportunities be for advertisements in the metaverse & AR.  Will ad placements evolve or just be similar ?  Will this new medium create more value for advertising or just same stuff different place?  Growing the industry like Social Media has, at the cost of print news and TV, is what the Metaverse has on the horizon.

Sources:

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/nike-courts-next-generation-of-athletes-with-new-roblox-platform-nikeland/610343/

https://www.marketingdive.com/news/niantic-pushes-vision-for-real-world-metaverse-in-first-brand-campaign/610287/

Google Is Not Worried About the Metaverse as They Figure out Their Next Trillion Dollars

After crossing the $2 trillion dollar valuation, Google CEO Sundar Pichai said that the next trillion dollars for Google will not come from any of the current technology trends we’re hearing about, i.e. metavers, crypto, or blockchain. Instead, in an interview with Bloomberg Television as described in this Fortune article, Pichai said the next trillion will come from its original, timeless product - internet search.  Assuming he means that the growth will be in the advertising revenue generated from search, he is probably right.  With companies like Facebook focused on the virtual possibilities of Web 3 and the metaverse, and with other billionaires focused on conquering space, the amount of information that will be generated will still require the most basic functions of search.  The mode may change, i.e. we may get more comfortable with voice search, but the basic function will not be going away any time soon.  

Google’s own approach to immersive computing and other emerging technology trends, has been investing further in AI and the underlying technologies that support “deeper cloud computing.” But let's not forget, Google took its own unsuccessful foray into virtual/augmented reality, for example Google Glasses, and those initiatives were transferred to a division that reports directly to Pichai.  What is unclear is if what they’ve learned from those experiences will influence their growth strategy.  However, it is very clear that they continue to rely heavily on revenues from search. Is it terrible that Google is so heavily reliant on this for their growth? Only time will tell. But it is obvious that the hype around immersive computing can have multiple iterations and may not require every company entering the space to monetize this trend through ugly headgear. 

Retailers To Rethink This Holiday Season

 

From the privacy changes with Apple to the ongoing controversy with Facebook ethics, consumer and moving away from Facebook apps.  As a result, many retailers need to reconsider and potentially change their marketing methods this holiday season. We can expect more catalogues, TV ads and celebrity sponsorships.

Many direct-to-consumer companies have built their businesses on Facebook, which is becoming an issue as these companies have to think of new ways to connect with customers.  More interestingly, companies are looking to brick-and-mortar stores to diversify their marketing mix.  Are retail stores back?

And while there is definitely a shift in the marketing spend mindset, another challenge for retailers is the supply chain disruption.  Companies will face the issue of meeting customer demand this holiday season.

Make It Look Google-y

In a small, but important, update in the world of Search, Google has revised their visual guidelines to suggest that logos uploaded to the schema looks appropriate on white backgrounds. This revision adds on to a number of other guidelines for properties that Google has communicated, such as size and file format type. The kicker with this revision is that if the logo does not display properly, it may not qualify for inclusion in search. This has obvious repercussions for brand value and identity and further forces marketers to go out of their way to make sure that things fit in the way Google would like them to. However, this change mainly affects logos that are mostly gray or white and I'd be willing to bet that most of the marketers at those companies are aware of this nuance and are prepared to handle adjustments on an as needed basis. Regardless, it's yet another example of the power of Google and how it forces companies and brands to conform/adjust to their standards. 

Sources: 

• https://searchengineland.com/google-logo-schema-markup-now-requires-logos-to-look-good-on-white-backgrounds-376170
• https://developers.google.com/search/docs/advanced/structured-data/logo#structured-data-type-definitions

Nike embraces the Metaverse...

 https://www.businessoffashion.com/news/news-analysis/nike-jumps-into-metaverse-with-virtual-world-on-roblox-platform

Just when we thought that the buzzword metaverse was a well-timed Media ploy by Facebook to divert attention away from the fracas caused by whistleblower revelations of a toxic company culture....

Turns out, veteran sports brand Nike has fully embraced this new digital world in a new partnership with video-gaming platform Roblox. Called "Nikeworld", the new digital sphere will allow players to engage in free games and - more importantly - outfit their players with the latest, exclusive Nike garb available on the Nikeworld website. Talk about Digital Marketing! Even if we all agree that putting a heavy headset on to join a metaverse world, the idea that you can interact with a sport of your choosing, and dress your player in cool gear that you yourself might never own or afford, is truly genius. 

But scary too... If we can now own digital products like Nike sneakers, where is the fun in the real-life thing?

Maybe in a digital game or two!

Email newsletter open rate

 https://pressgazette.co.uk/marketing-newsletter-experts-tips-on-improving-open-rates/

Recently, I have been doing some email newsletter marketing for OMAO. The first one has to do with the Nov. 1st NYC plastic straw ban. We sent out two email newsletters from NYC Hospitality Alliance, targeting NYC restaurant owners. As I was working with the people at NYC Hospitality Alliance, I learned that the average open rate of typical newsletters is about 15%. Obviously, given a certain size audience, the higher the open rate, the more effective our marketing would be. 

In this article, titled 'How to improve your newsletter open rate: Marketers share their insights'. The author talked about the following tips to increase open rate:

1. Must be better than paid content
2. Segmentation and automation
3. Content that solves readers problems
4. Ask a question with your subject line
5. Imagine you are writing to an individual
6. How to improve newsletter open rates: Send it from a person
7. More entertaining or informative content
8. Bold colours and designs can go a long way