Category: Marketing

How VR at Retail Stores Is Reshaping the Consumer Experience

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Just as magic mirrors, beacons and even mobile payments once seemed futuristic, VR at retail stores has progressed from science fiction to the next disruptive retail computing platform. Retailers bent on distinguishing themselves with immersive, wow-factor customer experiences ― and enhancing store operations by requiring less space to merchandise more products ― are charging ahead with this revolutionary shopping technology.

In fact, virtual reality is now “an unavoidable topic in discussions about the intersection of retail and technology,” according to eMarketer. Retailers need to “start thinking about and preparing for virtual reality … sooner rather than later,” due to consumers’ expectations of new shopping experiences.

Goldman Sachs envisions VR retail software becoming a $500 million revenue opportunity by 2020, and ballooning to $1.6 billion by 2025. In its recent report, the company says VR is one of the technologies “retailers will have to invest in to serve their customers and keep ahead of their competition.” The investment firm notes that it is “less focused on the software revenue opportunity [than] the disruption potentially caused in the retail markets the technology can serve.”

Tommy Hilfiger, the first major retailer to adopt VR at retail stores, announced that VR is part of its vision “to exceed consumer expectations, inspire them, and offer retail experiences they never thought possible,” according to CEO Daniel Grieder.

How VR at Retail Stores Can Work for You

Shoppers equipped with a smartphone and a VR headset can fully immerse themselves in a cinematic virtual reality shopping environment. As they traverse store aisles and fixate on a product, more information about that item is delivered in panoramic 3D ― including related options such as cross-sells and up-sells not necessarily stocked in-store. Shoppers can learn more about how to use the product, which products it complements, how it might fit, where and how it was made, view demonstrations, conduct tests and then tap their headsets to place items in their virtual shopping carts.

As consumers interact with products and within shopping aisles, retailers can interpret shopping preferences and patterns to streamline their retail strategies. Retailers even can test displays and layouts, all in virtual reality, before physically building them out. New VR software and apps continue to create a multitude of capabilities and rewards. Many of these capabilities are demonstrated at Samsung 837, a digital lab and experience center unveiled in Manhattan in February 2016.

Retailers ready to infuse just a slice of today’s exciting, disruptive VR technology into their customer experiences can join Tommy Hilfiger in delivering “a compelling and interesting elevation of the traditional shopping experience.”

https://insights.samsung.com/2016/03/01/how-vr-at-retail-stores-is-reshaping-the-consumer-experience/?cid=dis-eb-cph-0316-2004294&DFA=1

100 Billion Connected Devices Coming; U.S. Tops In Connectivity

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The world is getting more connected.
Much of this is thanks to advancements in networking technology.
And much also is due to the massive introduction of new connected devices, which require fast and efficient networks so the information they accumulate can be shared in real time.
Many of these devices will be worn by consumers and be located in various parts of their homes.
This new connectivity will provide a host of innovative gateways for messaging from marketers to consumers.
And now a new lengthy and detailed global report just out is projecting that the number of connected devices will reach 100 billion by 2025.
Even if off by half, which is not likely, this will be an extraordinary number of connected devices.
The new Global Connectivity Index (GCI) by Chinese manufacturing giant Huawei is a measure of how 50 nations are progressing with digital transformation using information and communications technology. The 50 countries account for 90 percent of the global GDP and 78 percent of the global population.
The report also includes survey results from 3,000 businesses across 10 verticals in 10 nations to establish their progress in digital transformation compared with the GCI performance of their nation.
The verticals surveyed included retail, banking, finance, securities, and insurance, education, government and healthcare.
The goal of the index is to benchmark 50 countries according to current levels of connectivity and digital transformation, and to act as a leading indicator for future digital development and growth.
In the overall measurement, the U.S. is in the lead spot. Here are the top 10 countries based on the global connectivity index:
United States
Singapore
Sweden
Switzerland
United Kingdom
Denmark
South Korea
Netherlands
Japan
Norway
The report pointed out that the U.S. is continuing to invest heavily in the Internet of Things, with the top applications being smart homes, wearables, smart cities, smart grids, connected cars, connected health and smart retail.
The connections are coming. And then the interactions can begin between connected devices and people.

http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/273431/100-billion-connected-devices-coming-us-tops-in.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_content=headline&utm_campaign=92049

HERE COMES THE MEDIA FOR VR

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IMMERSV LAUNCHES AD PLATFORM FOR VR APPS: In an attempt to get ahead of the impending wave of virtual reality content that will follow the widespread adoption of new VR headsets, former smartphone ad companies are looking for ways to promote VR ads. One such offering is Immersv, a new ad platform for VR content.

The platform, which launched last Thursday, works in a similar way to pre-roll ads, such as those on Facebook or YouTube. For example, a VR user playing a game or watching a video may be shown an ad for separate content and would then be given the option to download the app.

The benefit of VR video advertising is that it provides advertisers with the opportunity to fully immerse consumers in their world — on mobile, interactive videos are much more engaging than static ads, notes IAB. But the early stage of the VR market makes serving ads complicated. This is in part because of new formatting challenges associated with converting videos to run on VR devices, but also because developers don’t want to run the risk of upsetting users so early on with intrusive ads.

To address this concern Immersv ads are played like movie trailers, and require opt-in acceptance from consumers. Early trials of the new ad format suggest that consumers are taking to it. So far, its video ads have reported 80% completion rates. While promising, this is probably due in part to the novelty factor of the new technology and may not be representative of eventual completion rates.

But Immersv isn’t the only VR ad platform to emerge. Last year, another mobile ad network called AirPush went live with VirtualSky, its VR ad platform, with similarly high levels of interest from VR developers, according to Business Insider.  And as the smartphone ad industry gets increasingly competitive, it’s likely that other mobile ad tech groups will make the shift as well.

Mozilla Unveils Its First Four Internet of Things Projects

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http://mobile.eweek.com/video/mozilla-unveils-its-first-four-internet-of-things-projects.html

Mozilla is revealing more details about its first Internet of things efforts since the company ended its failed Firefox OS smartphone in December.

Mozilla announced the first of its Internet of things projects that are evolving out of what was once its promising Mozilla Firefox OS operating system initiative.

Ari Jaaksi, Mozilla’s senior vice president for connected devices, unveiled the first four IoT “experiments” in a March 1 post on the Mozilla Blog, just a month after the company announced that it will soon end support for Firefox OS on its now-defunct smartphones. Mozilla’s smartphones and its operating system were the victims of poor consumer response in the marketplace.

After dropping the smartphone efforts back in December, the company said it would keep its Firefox OS alive as it worked to see how it could be used with the IoT.

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Jaaksi’s post describes the first of those efforts.

The first four experiments include Project Link, a “personal user agent that understands your preferences for how you want to interact with the world of devices in your home, and automate your connected world for you,” according to Jaaksi’s post.

The second experiment is Project Sensor Web, which is designed to help map out “the easiest path from sensors to open data for contributors to collaboratively build a detailed understanding of their living environments,” Jaaksi wrote. “We are launching a pilot project to build a crowdsourced pm2.5 sensor network.”

Next is Project Smart Home, which covers a “middle ground between ‘in a box’ solutions like Apple Homekit and DIY solutions like Raspberry Pi,” wrote Jaaksi. “Combining modular, affordable hardware with easy-to-use rules, Smart Home empowers people to solve unique everyday problems in new and creative ways.”

The fourth experiment is Project Vaani, an “IoT enabler package to developers, device makers and users who want to add a voice interface to their devices in a flexible and customizable way,” wrote Jaaksi. “We will prototype interactions at home in the near term, and in the future, showcase the ability to access services from the open Web.”

To grow the projects, Mozilla is now seeking developers and IoT enthusiasts to join its efforts to push the code and the projects into new directions, he wrote.

“We cannot do this without our dedicated and passionate community of developers and volunteers serving in an array of roles, as they are critical at ensuring each project has the best opportunity at making an impact,” he wrote. “If you are interested in participating as a developer or tester, please click here to get involved.”

The development is being organized through “a gated innovation process that includes time to brainstorm solutions to real life problems and evaluate the market opportunity for these ideas,” Jaaksi continued. “Additionally, we are aligning ourselves with users when it comes to simplicity, ease-of-use and engaging experiences, while ensuring everything is built with the Mozilla values of openness, transparency, privacy and user control at the core.”

Community participants are being asked to help develop, test and evaluate the first four projects, he wrote.

“We look forward to giving you updates on these projects as we continue to innovate with you all, out in the open,” he wrote.

In February, Mozilla announced that Version 2.6 of Firefox OS for smartphones will be the last version to be built and that plans for its eventual end are being formulated, according to an earlier eWEEK story. Also being shuttered is the Firefox Marketplace across various platforms, including smartphones, Firefox desktop and Firefox for Android.

Mozilla had announced the end of its two-year-old smartphone line in December after it failed to ignite the imaginations of consumers. At the time, Mozilla said that its Firefox OS would not disappear, however, and would continue to be used for smart TVs and potentially other devices in the future, including Panasonic’s Smart TV line of products.

In a related announcement, Mozilla said it is also ending live technical support in May for the Firefox OS after Version 2.6 on smartphone.

The Firefox OS effort first began in 2011 under the name Boot to Gecko (B2G) and was rebranded Firefox OS in July 2012, according to an earlier eWEEK report. Gecko is the name of the core rendering engine that powers Firefox, and the idea of B2G was to have a thin Linux base tightly integrated with Firefox as the foundation of a new operating system.

The Firefox OS system had the look of an Android operating system on the phones, with a home page full of app icons. Facebook and Twitter were preloaded. Also included was an adaptive app search system that lets a user search based on intentions, rather than proper nouns. If you put in “sushi, “for example, you wouldn’t just get apps with the word “sushi” in them but information on local sushi restaurants and maybe information on how to make sushi. A search for a band would turn up not just albums but information on buying concert tickets.

Amazon Echo has some new hardware

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AMAZON RELEASES NEW ECHO DEVICES, INTEGRATES NEST AND HONEYWELL: Amazon made several major updates to its Echo connected speaker and smart home hub yesterday. The Echo is quickly becoming one of the most popular smart home products in the US, and recent research from Argus Insights showed that consumers favor the Echo over Apple’s and Google’s platforms for controlling smart home devices. The latest updates should make the Echo brand even more popular and help improve the Alexa voice assistant platform that powers Echo speakers. The new updates include a pair of smart home integrations and two new speaker products.

Amazon announced that it will integrate Echo speakers with Nest and Honeywell smart thermostats with a software update by the end of this month. Amazon just added commands for smart thermostats to Alexa’s voice recognition capabilities last month, and has already integrated the Ecobee 3 smart thermostat. The integration with Nest’s thermostat is particularly notable as the Echo and the Nest thermostat are two of the most popular smart home devices on the market. Enabling the Echo to control Nest thermostats should heighten its appeal for smart home customers.

The first new speaker, the $89 Dot, is a small hockey puck-sized device that connects into any speaker to give it Alexa’s voice recognition capabilities. That means any speaker connected to the Dot can do all the things the Echo speaker can: play music on voice command, deliver news and weather updates, control smart home devices, and order an Uber car.

The second new device, the $129 Tap, is a smaller, portable version of the Echo speaker. The Tap has Alexa’s full set of voice commands, but the device is not voice activated. Users have to manually trigger the voice recognition system by pressing a button on the Tap. Amazon said this change was made to help preserve battery life on the smaller speaker. The Tap also has to be tethered to a smartphone to get a Wi-Fi connection, allowing users to take the Alexa platform with them on the go.
US consumers’ use of Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant is still lagging behind other voice assistants, including Apple’s Siri, Google’s ‘OK Google’, and Microsoft’s Cortana, according to a recent MindMeld survey. While adoption is low, MindMeld notes that the US consumer use of Alexa has doubled from 2% to 4% in the past year.

The enterprise is growing faster than consumer:IOT

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HIGH PRICES MEAN THE SMART HOME MARKET WILL DRAG ON CONSUMER IoT ADOPTION: Lack of consumer demand will inhibit IoT adoption, as many consumers are turned off by the high prices of many consumer IoT products, a recent Motley Fool article predicts. The article questioned the reliability of forecasts predicting billions of IoT devices will be deployed over the next few years, citing a consumer survey by Accenture in which 62% of respondents called IoT devices too expensive. The Motley Fool article points out that enterprises will be faster than consumers to adopt IoT devices, as  the data extracted from these devices will be extremely valuable for them.

BI Intelligence agrees with the assessment that enterprises will adopt IoT devices faster than consumers. We predict that 24 billion IoT devices will be connected by 2020, with enterprise IoT devices making up the biggest share of that installed base, followed by the government and then consumer sectors. The consumer sector will make up only about 20% of the IoT devices connected in 2020, according to our projections. Additionally, we believe that the smart home market will slow overall consumer adoption of the IoT because of the price concern that Accenture found, but other consumer IoT device categories will flourish.

The connected car, smart home, and wearables categories will make up the majority of the consumer IoT market. The connected car market is set for fast growth as automakers are connecting more and more of their models. Between 35-40% of cars shipped in the US last year were connected, and we expect about two-thirds will be connected in 2016. Typically, the car’s connection is already built into its overall cost, and consumers can often get their car added to their mobile data plan for around $10 per month.

BI Intelligence also predicts that annual wearable shipments will grow by 39 million over the next four years. Fitness trackers (the most popular category of wearables) can be bought for less than $100. To compare that to a popular smart home device, the Nest thermostat costs $250. The majority of consumers are not willing to pay $250 for Nest’s product when they can buy a non-connected thermostat for $20 or less. So we expect the smart home market to grow slowly in the near-term until device manufacturers can bring down the cost of their products to make them more affordable for consumers.

The enterprise is growing faster that consumer:IOT

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HIGH PRICES MEAN THE SMART HOME MARKET WILL DRAG ON CONSUMER IoT ADOPTION: Lack of consumer demand will inhibit IoT adoption, as many consumers are turned off by the high prices of many consumer IoT products, a recent Motley Fool article predicts. The article questioned the reliability of forecasts predicting billions of IoT devices will be deployed over the next few years, citing a consumer survey by Accenture in which 62% of respondents called IoT devices too expensive. The Motley Fool article points out that enterprises will be faster than consumers to adopt IoT devices, as  the data extracted from these devices will be extremely valuable for them.

BI Intelligence agrees with the assessment that enterprises will adopt IoT devices faster than consumers. We predict that 24 billion IoT devices will be connected by 2020, with enterprise IoT devices making up the biggest share of that installed base, followed by the government and then consumer sectors. The consumer sector will make up only about 20% of the IoT devices connected in 2020, according to our projections. Additionally, we believe that the smart home market will slow overall consumer adoption of the IoT because of the price concern that Accenture found, but other consumer IoT device categories will flourish.

The connected car, smart home, and wearables categories will make up the majority of the consumer IoT market. The connected car market is set for fast growth as automakers are connecting more and more of their models. Between 35-40% of cars shipped in the US last year were connected, and we expect about two-thirds will be connected in 2016. Typically, the car’s connection is already built into its overall cost, and consumers can often get their car added to their mobile data plan for around $10 per month.

BI Intelligence also predicts that annual wearable shipments will grow by 39 million over the next four years. Fitness trackers (the most popular category of wearables) can be bought for less than $100. To compare that to a popular smart home device, the Nest thermostat costs $250. The majority of consumers are not willing to pay $250 for Nest’s product when they can buy a non-connected thermostat for $20 or less. So we expect the smart home market to grow slowly in the near-term until device manufacturers can bring down the cost of their products to make them more affordable for consumers.

How will wearables influence mobile advertising – News magazine hitech digital posting the new technology

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Having read with great interest over the past few weeks a number of different MarketingTech articles on the role of wearable technology in marketing, I wanted to take the opportunity to share my thoughts on what’s happening with wearables in another fast growing area of digital marketing mobile.How will wearables influence mobile advertising,newshitechdigitalMuch like wearables, mobile is still seen by some as a new kid on the block. But while mobile fought to have a presence on media plans in the beginning, in the last 18 months the industry has turned a corner. Mobile ad spend in the UK now accounts for over one fifth 23% of all digital advertising, according to the IAB UK’s 2014 figures.

This change is being driven by proliferation smartphone penetration will hit 2.89 billion globally by 2017 according to the GSMA and by usage many reports estimate that consumers now look at their mobile screens up to 220 times a day. Brands can’t afford to miss out on the mobile opportunity.

Wearables on the other hand are still very much at an early juncture in their trajectory. However, the expectations are just as immense as mobile. In February this year, Cisco forecast that global wearable device connections would total 578 million in 2019, compared with 170 million in 2015.
But will the growth of both these sectors impact each other and, if so, why should marketers really care.

Driving wearables adoption

As well as Cisco’s predictions, industry analysts are falling over themselves to predict an explosion in the Internet of Things IoT over the next few years with the introduction and adoption of connected cars, appliances, wearable technology, and more. Whilst some heralded the shelving of Google Glass earlier this year as the death knell for wearables, we’re still actually just waiting to see where consumer usage on a mass scale will take wearables.

For example, with the recent launch of Apple Pay in the UK, how will Apple Watch users be driven to use their wearable device as a commerce tool? And how in turn will that influence ads being served to them on both that device and their smartphone?

The wearables debate at the moment seems to focus on whether we make technology wearable such as the aforementioned Watch or if you enable wearable things with tech. In these earlier stages, both are arguably as relevant as the other, but the one thing we can be sure of is that it is consumers who will decide how they want to use wearable tech and engage with brands through those devices.

With that in in mind, I believe that the app ecosystem, with mobile at its core, is only going to be more prevalent as IoT and wearables become a reality.

Brands are already considering new screens and interfaces, and will push themselves to innovate and connect with consumers in smart new ways. When it comes to advertising on wearables, wherever the consumer attention goes, and wherever new innovations are delivered through apps, advertisers will follow.

Mobile at the heart of connectivity

In the next few years, we’ll see technology moving into the background as it gets embedded into products we already own. For example, soon we’ll see fabrics that can react to electric charge to change colour, enabling wearers to control light patterns to match other elements in their outfit or colours in the surrounding environment. It would be relatively easy to make part of this fabric a screen when required.

The wearable itself isn’t necessarily where ads will be displayed but the data that will come from wearables will prove to be most valuable. For example, consumers may not carry their mobile on a run, or wear it in bed, but with wearable and smart clothes, brands will be able to acquire and use the data generated.

This increased connectivity between the different parts of our lives, with mobile at its core, will start to give brands a much more holistic view of their audience. It will mean we no longer target consumers by buying ‘off-the-shelf’ audiences, but that every brand audience will be fully bespoke.

Marketers seeking to get ahead need to use the data available to them to analyse how consumers engage as they move across screens, media, and moments.

http://newshitechdigital.com/will-wearables-influence-mobile-advertising/