An Ad-Blocking Browser Will Pay Users To View Ads

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Brave’s ad platform officially launched in April 2019.
This article was originally published in June 2018. 

Brave, a web browser that blocks conventional ads and strips away data trackers, announced the trial launch of its own ad technology on Tuesday. Users may opt-in to test Brave’s “consent-based digital advertising model” before it becomes more widely available. As an extra bit of incentive, Brave stated that users will eventually receive 70 percent of the gross ad revenue while still maintaining their privacy.

Consenting users who sign up for the early access version of the software will be shown about 250 pre-packaged ads directly via the browser and in a private channel. This special browser version will send a detailed log of browsing activities to Brave, which it will feed into its machine-learning algorithms. However, the company assures its users that it will not share this data with anyone, and users can leave the test at any time.

The main difference between Brave’s ads and conventional ones is that the browser chooses which ones are shown to users based on the data it collects from the user’s browsing habits and interests without sharing any of the information with third parties.

Brave also plans to quickly evolve its ads in the coming months as it seeks to understand how browsing behavior is impacted by rewarded user-centric ads. The company will pay users that interact with ads using Basic Attention Tokens (BAT)—its own brand of crypto tokens that can be used on the Brave Payments system to anonymously support different websites, publishers and YouTube channels. According to Brave, roughly 3,500 websites have signed up to receive the Brave Payments in addition to 10,400 YouTube creators and Twitch streamers.

As of April, an estimated 2.2 million people were using the Brave browser, and the company—founded by former Firefox leader Brendan Eich—expects that number to double by year’s end. That still falls far short of competitors such as Google Chrome, which has over a billion users, and Firefox, but recent events have raised awareness about data collection and privacy issues among users. As the testing reaches its final phase, Brave expects its ads to generate strong revenues, causing the BAT payment system to expand beyond the browser.

“The current advertising model exploits users and has eroded trust, as well as net revenue to publishers and other creators,” Brave wrote in a blog post. “We will reward users for their attention while shielding their identities and protecting their privacy. We believe that user data and attention hold substantial value if they are defended vigilantly on users’ devices, and that the transparent Brave ads delivery approach and the Basic Attention Token will provide users a fair share.”

Cannes Lions Sessions: Embracing Creativity And Transparency In A Digital World

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Legacy brands who not only adapt to but embrace digital marketing experience a new era of success. This was the lesson behind YouTube’s “What Matters Next” session on Tuesday, using the beauty and music industries as examples.

Hosted by YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, the Cannes Lions session boasted the direct link between its site and brand success but also delved into the challenges of marketing in a digital age.

L’Oreal just embarked on a digital-first strategy, led by its CEO in 2010.

“Digital has profoundly changed the dynamics of our beauty market and has brought very positive disruption,” said Lubomira Rochet, chief digital officer of L’Oreal. “Digital and beauty are really a perfect match—beauty is one of the most engaging categories online.”

Rochet outlined the century-old brand’s three-pronged strategy to embrace digital into its company culture. First, L’Oreal wanted to make it easy to shop for products online. Today, Rochet said, about 30 percent of all revenue comes from ecommerce.

Data was the second plan of attack, so to speak. L’Oreal uses data to personalize and target market to consumers worldwide. Thirdly, Rochet stressed the importance of an “always on” marketing strategy, constantly producing content and engaging with influencers.

Previously, Rochet noted, the beauty industry took a very top-down approach to marketing and embraced a limited vision of beauty. Platforms like YouTube have democratized beauty, she said, and double-digit growth in the beauty market can be linked to widespread access to creator-based content like tutorials.

Digital helped L’Oreal reach more consumers, but it also had an unexpected result—it allowed the brand to listen. It turns out, for example, that the brand’s marketing team used different beauty terms than consumers did in some cases, which helped them learn about who uses their products.

YouTube Music launched in 17 countries on Monday. The music industry has experienced tremendous growing pains as a result of the digital age, from piracy to distribution. Lyor Cohen, veteran music exec and global head of music for YouTube and Google said that he worried about distribution becoming too consolidated.

“If there’s a healthy ecosystem of distribution, it becomes safe for artists and labels,” said Cohen. “If it’s too consolidated and only one or two players own the distribution, that’s really problematic for the creative community.”

Cohen joined YouTube in 2016. At that time, he said that brands like YouTube only communicated with music labels when they needed to renew a license. Not “treating them like a customer” can lead to misunderstandings, he observed.

YouTube’s relationship with the music industry has been turbulent, but Cohen is convinced that they are moving in the right direction now thanks to open communication.

“We have a new love affair [with the music industry],” he said. “I’m happy to say that we’ve invested a layer of infrastructure that we speak on a daily basis to all the labels. We try to understand exactly what’s important to them. Our people are not simply engineers and tech people but they’re also people that have come from the label system that understands finding an artist and breaking an artist is almost impossible. If we could help them build products that make their lives easier, it would be fabulous. I think they’re starting to sense that we’re here to help them. I believe that the present and future of the music business is direct-to-consumer.”

Majority Of Marketers Use Email Marketing, But Very Few Consumers Like It

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Though email marketing is an important means of generating awareness and promotions, there remains a massive disconnect between brands and consumers. A recent study conducted by Forrester Consulting and commissioned by Adobe found that 70 percent of respondents rely on email for promotions, but only eight percent of consumers feel “very satisfied” with their emails. Additionally, even though 60 percent of marketers feel that their emails are interactive, over two-thirds of recipients tell a different story, with only 26 percent of consumers stating that they find their brand emails are interactive.

The report states that the reason for this divide comes from how many marketing efforts still rely on outdated methods that don’t work in today’s business climate. Therefore, it suggests that this is the time to innovate email marketing by moving it beyond promotional marketing so that brands can pivot to a customer-centric approach. Promotional emails still have value, but it cannot be the sole strategy. Instead of being about transactions, sales, their brand or day-to-day operations, the report states that brands should use email to create “customer obsession.”

Forrester defines customer obsession as “deliberately making your customer the center of your total operating model,” and measures it using six criteria: structure, technology, processes, metrics, talent and culture. By surveying 260 marketing professionals, Forrester found that companies have an inflated view of how customer-obsessed they are. About 60 percent of brands identified themselves as customer-obsessed, but only 12 percent “fully embody best practices” across all six criteria. According to Forrester, 45 percent of the surveyed brands are “customer-aware,” which is the second-least mature category for its approach.

According to Forrester’s findings, more customer-obsessed companies reported that they exceeded their revenue goals than others. They also got higher scores on satisfaction surveys.

In order to strengthen engagement, the report makes three key recommendations:

  1. Turn emails into immersive brand experiences instead of just getting people to click on links. That way, emails can become competitive differentiators.
  2. Reduce low-value promotional emails and try to increase loyalty from your best customers instead of blasting deal-seekers, which has the added benefit of reducing the amount of tracking needed for GDPR compliance.
  3. Use email as a utility for cross-channel experiences. Instead of just measuring opens, clicks and conversions, track when email assists conversion in other channels in addition to how it boosts lifetime value, customer satisfaction and brand engagement. In short, measure the campaign, not customer results.

The report further states that 95 percent of the surveyed marketers believe that they would benefit from a more advanced email marketing program and that customer-obsessed companies use the following practices:

  • Measure customer satisfaction
  • Regularly refresh content
  • Test and learn through email marketing
  • Use tools that enable advanced email applications

Cannes Lions 2018: How Technology Is Disrupting The Creative Process

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First it came for the production line workers, then it came for the truck drivers, and now it seems like technology is coming for the advertising creative. If there’s one thing that stands out from the first proper day of Cannes Lions, it’s that big tech is done with just owning data and making teams work efficiently—it’s coming for the rest of the advertising pie, too.

It’s becoming ever more clear that as the public moves over to even more sophisticated technology to view and interact with content, then the creators of this content need to shape their thinking to fit in with these new expectations. “At the core, the customer wants to be delighted at every turn,” Adobe’s Chris Duffey told the audience at Cannes today. “AI is going to be a massive part of brands’ business, so the relationships creatives have with these providers are going to drive the client relationships. Technology is creating the experience economy.”

Almost all the speakers and panels today showed how new platforms, artificial intelligence and augmented reality were gearing up to radically alter the way that creatives can create. This can be either through lightening the load, expanding horizons, or in some cases even becoming an integral part of the process. Like a virtual bird dog, this new trend in tech promises to point the way and manage all the fetching and carrying and leave the human side of the equation to concentrate on making the decisions.

“A machine can be an assistant, a peer and, the holy grail, a muse,” Duffey told the Interactive Stage at Cannes earlier today, as he teamed up with Microsoft’s Doug Gould to discuss the developing relationship between technology and the creative. “Even though it’s only 16 months away, 2020 is looking like a watershed year. Almost every business is predicting that AI will be infused through their organization, and essentially our mission is to build products that serve the creator and respect the use.”

Showing us a glimpse of this future, the duo went on to present Adobe’s recent partnership with Grey London and Braun, which uses A.I. and deep learning to decode the German company’s design language and present their product team with new avenues to explore. “The key is to start with technology and end with human” explained Gould, “and our work shows how this will be the creative industry.”

This trend towards blending technology and insights was also at the heart of Google’s recent work. Bravely stepping into the 10 am time slot on the first day of the festival, Andre le Masier, the company’s executive creative director, outlined their approach. “We start with people, insights and ideas; not tech. We’re anthropologists at heart, and we study how people act. Making tech for tech’s sake is always a bad idea.”

R/GA, represented by his panel partner James Temple, echoed these sentiments. “We have a simple mission—we want to come together to create innovation and inspire progress,” he told the panel. “The creative canvas has never been more powerful. Our North Star is a more human future; empowering people to lead better lives.”

Google and R/GA provided multiple examples of how technology-led creativity can have a transformative effect on communities and lives. Google’s Crisis Response uses real-time information and an array of cross functionality to ensure the safety of people trapped in the center of a crisis, while R/GA’s recent “Love Has No Labels” campaign used augmented reality to challenge longstanding biases, and has since become the second most-viewed public safety campaign in the UK. Both showed, that when done right, technology continues to power campaigns that can shape, improve and even empower lives and can provide eye-catching vehicles for brands to promote their values and visions.

As projects like this show, digital innovation is starting to change the public’s relationship with the media, and people are expecting ever richer experiences as part of the buying process. Where once retail was a purely human-led experience, the rise of richer, more rewarding online experiences is starting to fundamentally change the way we shop. In fact, the evidence is everywhere, from the long, drawn-out death of the mall in the United States to the disappearing brands on the British high street, consumers all over the world are starting to turn away from human-driven interactions and are starting to embrace the more personalized experiences that virtual and augmented reality can offer.

“Technology is already profoundly changing our experiences, so it’s vital that we internalized this process,” proclaimed Lubomira Rochet, L’Oréal’s chief digital officer to the festival’s vast Innovation Stage. Speaking about the French cosmetics giant’s recent acquisition of ModiFace, she was discussing the central role that technology and innovation has when it comes to the company’s relationship with their customers. “It’s helping us to move away from [a] top-down idea of what beauty is and helping people to discover things for themselves. The future of the beauty industry lies in personalization—we need to put experience at the core.”

L’Oréal is showing that brands can play a vital role when it comes to turning theoretical ideas into practical applications. ModiFace and its ability to allow users to try out different looks and products has the potential to fundamentally change how customers discover and use the company’s products. Through a combination of AR and smart mirror technology, the acquisition has given L’Oréal both a novel way to engage with its customers and a huge advantage over its competitors who are all mostly finding their feet in this new world. Brands’ eagerness to incubate, partner and disseminate these new advances can only accelerate the pace of innovation and their adoption by the wider public. “In digital, no one can win alone,” said Rochet. “You have to put yourself at the centre of innovation and do so in a way that is both credible and valuable.”

As the technology becomes ever more capable, the old model of the copywriter/art director duo has begun to feel irrelevant in these times of machine learning and more and more both agencies and brands are grappling with ways to integrate artificial intelligence, insights and analytics with creative thinking and strategy. More than just being a problem of capacity and functionality, technology is becoming an organizational headache, and everyone from Microsoft to Google was keen to stress that the old siloed way of working, with an insights team over here and a creative team over there, was as dead as the dodo.

So, like it or not, the future is here and it looks like a robot body with a human brain. Before we all take a leaf out of the luddites’ handbook and descend on Google’s HQ with torches and pitchforks though, it looks like the old ways might still have their uses. One thing that was clear today, is that for the most part these innovations only work when they can access market intelligence on a scale that many companies can never provide. While Burger King can put out incredible reactive campaigns driven by user interactions, it’s a fact that many industries will never have this level of interaction, especially if it’s a grudge purchase like travel insurance. While all of today’s speakers were keen to show us a digital utopia, the reality is that until they can make thousands of people spill the beans on how they really feel about Stu’s Autoshop, then unfortunately a lot of us are stuck doing it the good old-fashioned way.

Consumers Get Choosy As Mobile AR Becomes More Commonplace

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Mobile AR may be on the (slow) rise, but having more options make consumers more selective about which apps to try.

There are roughly 2,200 ARKit-enabled apps for iOS devices in the second quarter of 2018, compared to 1,950 in the first quarter, according to SuperData estimates made available to AListDaily.

The possibilities of mobile AR have piqued the interest of developers and consumers alike, but the marketplace is growing at a less-than-breakneck speed.

“Early excitement for the new technology brought a lot of curiosity, but with a modest addition of 250 apps since the last quarter, there aren’t many new ways to experience AR,” SuperData said in a statement.

Users accessed an average of three AR apps last year, according to SuperData Research. Now that the hype has subsided a bit, consumers have become hesitant to try every new app that gets released. In the last quarter, the average number of mobile AR apps accessed has dropped to two per user.

“App developers are also less attracted to the tech now that the hype has come down due to a lack of a clear monetization path,” added SuperData.

All is not lost for mobile AR, however. The research firm predicts a resurgence of interest later in the year, causing revenue to double over last year’s figures.

“There is still [an] opportunity for AR,” said SuperData. “Developers are dealing with a time of discovery—both for them and consumers—as they seek to understand how to best create for the tech. But this doesn’t mean times will always be tough for AR.”

Apple’s ability to develop AR tools is helping the company to give Android a run for its money. During its annual keynote, Apple unveiled ARKit 2, a new version of its AR development platform that includes multiplayer support, updated image tracking and a spectator mode, allowing a user to watch others play from a separate iOS device.

Brands are especially interested in using the technology to create interactive marketing campaigns. Recent Apple partners include Pixar, Fender and Lego. Last month, Universal released Jurassic World: Alive, which has been described as “Pokémon with dinosaurs.” This is probably a welcome comparison, considering the fact that Niantic’s 2016 monster-collecting game kickstarted the race for AR apps we see today.

Nielsen: CMOs Increase Digital Spend But Crave Better Insights

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Nielsen’s first annual CMO Report finds that marketers prioritize digital media channels in terms of importance, but don’t necessarily find them the most effective.

For the Nielsen CMO Report 2018, roughly 3,000 US marketing executives were interviewed and surveyed about trends impacting their industry.

Digital media spend is expected to increase over the next 12 months, according to 82 percent of respondents. An increase in perceived importance has been placed on digital compared to traditional media, the Nielsen found. In fact, only 30 percent plan to increase spending in traditional media over the coming year, and 44 percent plan to decrease spending.

When asked how much of their marketing budgets were allotted to traditional vs. digital media, 30 percent indicated that digital accounts for between 20-39 percent and traditional accounts for less than 20 percent.

Nielsen asked how marketers felt about digital channels in terms of importance and effectiveness. Across the board, social media was considered the most important, with 79 percent naming the channel “very” or “extremely” important. Interestingly, Only 69 percent named social media “very” or “extremely” effective.

“Our research shows that while digital media had relatively high confidence scores when compared with other media, there is still a lot of room for improvement,” Nielsen says alongside its findings.

Only four percent of respondents claim to be “extremely” confident in their ability to quantify digital media ROI, while 22 percent said they are “very” confident and nearly half—48 percent—feel “somewhat” confident in this ability.

“If you take into account the respondents’ high digital media effectiveness rankings, this suggests that marketers may believe they are generating good ROI, but are not fully convinced they are measuring it accurately,” Nielsen noted.

Despite its challenges, marketers are pushing forward onto digital channels, with only four percent indicating that spending would decrease on the channel.

WWDC 2018: Apple Touts Augmented Reality With Social Experiences

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Apple is going all in with augmented reality, but the technology still has a ways to go before consumers adopt it fully, analysts say.

WWDC 2018 kicked off Monday with a slew of feature announcements ranging from asking Siri to find your keys to a 30-person FaceTime session, but one trend became abundantly clear—Apple wants to outpace Android for AR.

“Apple is continuing to pull ahead in the race against Android to develop quick and easy AR tools,” SuperData VP of strategy and XR Stephanie Llamas said in a statement. “They’ve moved fast on a new iteration of ARKit (less than a year) and are creating more value for iOS users in their ever-difficult endeavor of surpassing Android market share.”

During its annual keynote, Apple unveiled ARKit 2, a new version of its AR development platform that includes multiplayer support, updated image tracking and a spectator mode, allowing a user to watch others play from a separate iOS device.

Other features include item measurement and persistent AR will remember where a user left off—say, if they were putting together a virtual puzzle—so they can return and continue an experience at their leisure.

Apple has partnered with Fender to illustrate AR measurement tools, Pixar to develop a new file format for sharing AR content and Lego to bring their products into the virtual space. Shiny new features highlight the potential of such partnerships, but if Apple wants to use AR to attract new users.

“AR is just too new to be the reason for adoption, and despite a new version, iOS AR is still on the back-burner in terms of consumer interest,” said Llamas.

Social interaction, Llamas says, may be the key to overcoming hesitance from consumers when it comes to AR. In other words, Apple will need to offer interactive opportunities that users cannot already do beyond text messaging and video chat.

“One of the best ways AR can make its mark is by helping provide presence to users where distance holds them back,” said Llamas. “This has been one of the key ways VR has found success (e.g., Rec Room and VRChat) because XR users want to do things they can’t in reality, and playing Legos with friends from around the world is one of those things they can now do [in AR].”

GSMA Brings The Women4Tech Summit To MWC Shanghai

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Following a successful launch at MWC 2017, Women4Tech—the GSMA’s targeted gender diversity program, was back with a bang in Barcelona. It was an action-packed week for W4T—with a total of 11 activities across the four days, including a Hack_D_Gap challenge, GLOMO Awards, Speed Coaching & Networking, Mobile World Live Panel, Main Stage Keynote and day-long Summit.

And now, for the very first time, the Women4Tech program is set to touch down in China at Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2018.

The GSMA developed the Women4Tech program to address gender diversity in the mobile industry, and on Thursday, June 28, the leader’s stage will host a series of interactive panel discussions, an AMO Award, Speed Coaching and a dedicated Networking Drinks Reception, all designed to explore how we can increase female leadership in the digital age.

Get Involved:

To submit a speaker, idea or simply find out more information, please contact Keren Bowman.

Agenda At A Glance, Early Confirmed Speakers:

1:00 to 1:45 p.m. Empowering
Equality | Career Development
Integrating gender equality into the mainstream of our work environments.
Chair: Mary Clark, CMO & EVP Product, Synchronoss

1:45 to 2:30 p.m. Encouraging
Mentorship | Education & Youth
Educating our youth and providing inspiring role models, thought leaders and career mentoring relationships. How do we engage with young women and encourage them to pursue education and careers in STEM subjects?

2:30 to 3:15 p.m. Transforming
Communication | Business Verticals
Women transforming technology is at the crossroads of marketing and technology. Diverse teams make better decisions and mirror the societies they build for and communicate with. What are best practices from industries such as FinTech, retail and marketing?
Speakers:
Kirti Lad, Executive Director, Meraki Executive Search & Consulting

3:15 to 4:00 p.m. Innovating
Entrepreneurship | Startups
Achieving greater diversity in investment, innovation and entrepreneurship. How can we increase investment and funding for female-led companies?
Moderator: Nicole Peng, Senior Director, Mobility, Canalys
Speakers:
Azita Arvani, Head of Innovation Partner & Venture Management, Nokia

4:00 to 4:30 p.m. Break

4:30 to 6:00 p.m. Speed Coaching
The Women4Tech Speed Coaching session will guide attendees on mapping career goals & building bridges in the professional community.

6:00 to 7:00 p.m. Women4Tech Networking Drinks Reception
Join us at the Women4Tech Cocktail Reception, straight after the Speed Coaching, for a chance to meet and network with Women4Tech attendees and speakers.

We hope to see you there!

Facebook Pledges More Diverse Hires; Removes Trending News

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This week in social media news, Facebook commits to diversity, stops trending posts and its users appear remarkably unconcerned about recent privacy scandals.

In other news, Pinterest is offering full-screen video ads, Twitter started deleting underage accounts, Snapchat set its sights on Indian advertisers and Pew Research revealed which platform US teenagers like best. Earlier this week, Facebook revealed that it is developing hardware and updated parental controls on Messenger Kids, Snapchat is teaming up with third-party apps and addressed workplace complaints, YouTube is promoting with AI, Alexa named the most popular websites in the US, Snapchat introduced a Lens that reacts to sound and Pinterest enjoyed sales growth thanks to marketers last year.

Editor’s Note: Our weekly social media news post is updated daily. This installment will be updated until Friday, June 1. Have a news tip? We’re looking for changes to and news surrounding social media platforms as they relate to marketing. Let us know at editorial@alistdaily.com.

Sheryl Sandberg Commits To Diverse Hiring At Facebook

During the Advanced Women’s Leadership Forum on Thursday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg said that the company is applying its “diverse slate” approach to hiring board members to ensure diversity in the workforce.

Sandberg also shared this information earlier in the day during the annual shareholders meeting, saying that she wanted to make the commitment publicly. Facebook’s statements are a direct response to shareholder Reverend Jesse Jackson, who accused the company of underrepresentation.

“Beyond the board, the C-suites, the top 15 employees are white, and that does not represent a random—it represents some lack of intentionality to be inclusive,” Jackson said.

Facebook: Out With Trending, In With News

After four years, Facebook is discontinuing its Trending News posts, stating that they accounted for less than 1.5 percent of clicks to news publishers. Instead, the social network has partnered with 80 publishers across America to test a “Breaking News” label and notifications. A new section called “Today In” will serve as a Facebook hub for local news updates and a dedicated news section will be added to Facebook Watch for news-related videos.

Scandals? Most Facebook Users Seem Unconcerned

A recent survey by Thomson Reuters asked if consumers had altered their Facebook habits in light of recent data and privacy scandals. Surprisingly, only 18 percent of respondents said they now share less content on the site. At 47 percent, the top reason for withholding information on the platform is concerns about privacy, followed by a need to self-regulate—31 percent said they spend too much time on the platform.

Twenty percent are withholding Facebook posts after hearing negative stories about it on the news. Political bias on the platform is motivating others to take a break, with 15 percent saying the news feed is liberal leaning, and 12 percent saying it leans Conservative.

Pinterest Offers Full-Screen Video Ads

A promoted video tool is now available on Pinterest that takes up the entire screen. The idea-sharing site is pushing this and other marketing products to the entertainment industry, saying that more than 11 million boards on the site are dedicated to movies and that they reach 42 percent of people who saw a movie in theaters in the last six months.

“Entertainment is one of the fastest-growing categories on Pinterest, with more than 42 million people already using the platform to find new entertainment ideas,” Pinterest’s US sector lead of partnerships Meredith Guerriero wrote Thursday.

Snapchat Seeks Advertisers In India

Last year, Snapchat faced outrage from Indian users when a former employee quoted CEO Evan Spiegel as saying he had no interest in “poor countries” like India and Spain. If that statement was true, Spiegel’s tune has now changed. Snapchat has partnered with adtech firm Tyroo to ad monetization infrastructure and fuel growth in the APAC region.

“This strategic partnership with Tyroo will allow us to bring Snapchat to more advertisers in India, and help them see the value in connecting with our highly engaged users through the most fun and effective ad products on the market,” Geoffrey Reed, Snapchat head of international expansion, said in a statement.

Twitter Blocks Users That Signed Up While Underage

In an effort to comply with GDPR requirements, Twitter is blocking users that, based on their self-proclaimed birthdays, signed up for the service while under the age of 13. Even if they are well over the age of 18 now, users need to get parental consent before their profiles can be unlocked.

A source inside Twitter told The Guardian that the company’s hands were tied because it wasn’t possible to separate content a user created before and after they turned 13. The company is, however, looking for a more permanent solution to the age problem and several users on Reddit have been able to restore access by repeatedly submitting documentation proving their current age.

US Teens Prefer YouTube Over Facebook

Pew Research found that among US internet users between the ages of 13-17, 85 percent say they use YouTube, compared to 51 percent who use Facebook. When Pew Research asked the same questions in 2014, 71 percent of teenagers reported using Facebook, indicating a significant drop in young consumer preference.

Facebook isn’t missing out completely, however, as 72 percent of teenagers in the study said they use Instagram. Also, YouTube was not included in the previous survey, Pew noted.

Facebook Takes A Hard Look At Hardware

With the sheer volume of data that Facebook collects and is expected to sort through for inappropriate content, the company is designing its own computer chips to handle the load, Tom’s Hardware reported.

During the Viva Technology conference in France last week, Facebook’s chief artificial intelligence scientist Yann LeCun said that the company would like to take down offensive videos such as a murder or a suicide as they happen. To accomplish this, however, requires a massive amount of computing power and energy consumption.

“There’s a huge drive to design chips that are more energy-efficient for that. A large number of companies are working on this, including Facebook,” LeCun said. “You’ve seen that trend from hardware companies like Intel, Samsung, Nvidia. But now you start seeing people lower in the pipeline of usage having their own needs and working on their own hardware.”

Being able to filter pre-determined content as it happens could solve many of Facebook’s problems but raises concerns about abuse of that power, such as to silence views contrary to staff opinion—something the site has already been accused of doing.

YouTube Gives Google Assistant The Key To Its New Show

Subscribers to YouTube’s new premium service will soon be able to watch an exclusive new series called Impulse, but Google Assistant users can check out the first episode for free. Google Assistant users can say “Talk to Impulse,” at which point the AI will provide a synopsis and ask for a password. Those who answer correctly (“Henry”) will be sent a link to the unlisted first episode on YouTube.

Impulse tells the story of a teen girl named Henry who can teleport away from harm’s way but destroys everyone and everything around her when she does. The series is directed by Doug Liman (Bourne Identity, Jumper) and debuts this summer exclusively on You Tube’s new Premium subscription service.

Snapchat (Finally) Turns To Third-Party Developers 

Traditionally, Snapchat has been protective of its users but in doing so has missed opportunities such as fostering its influencer community. Now Snap, Inc. is addressing both problems, albeit one publically and one in secret.

Sources close to the company told TechCrunch that SnapKit—Snapchat’s developer platform—will allow users to “sign in with Snapchat” on third-party apps. In addition, software creators will gain access to a number of tools such as the Bitmoji avatar and AR camera.

The ability to sign into other apps with Snapchat may entice users back to the platform, as well as offer an alternative to signing in with Facebook amid widespread privacy concerns.

Snapchat Addresses Workplace Concerns

A former employee of Snap, Inc. has inspired change within the company’s work environment, Cheddar reported Wednesday. In November, software engineer Shannon Lubetich resigned and just before she left, sent a scathing email to her co-workers about sexist and hostile conditions. Among the complaints were off-color jokes made by senior vice president of engineering, Jerry Hunter and scantily clad workers hired for a company Christmas party.

Lubetich also alleged that Snap, Inc. encouraged a “pervading sexist vibe” and that talking to HR yielded no resolution. But Hunter, with whom Lebetich had the most beef, calls her email a wake-up call.

“We’ve worked hard to make Snap a place where everyone feels respected and everyone can grow,” Hunter told Cheddar. “I’m excited about the progress that we have made this year, but know that we certainly have more work to do.”

According to sources within the company, CEO Evan Spiegel told employees that he wants the company to “contribute to human progress,” and be more inclusive.

Messenger Kids Cuts Certain Parent Ties

If you like your kids’ friends but not their parents, you no longer have to be friends with them on Facebook to let your kids chat on Messenger. Facebook rolled out an update on Wednesday that makes it easier for parents to approve their children’s Messenger connections. Parents can invite other parents to download Facebook Messenger Kids by searching for their name but no longer have to be Facebook friends.

“Parents still have to approve every single contact their child can talk to on Messenger Kids,” Facebook assured users. “This change will just make it easier to complete the connections you want to make for your child without having to friend the other parents.”

Users Visit YouTube More Often, Spend More Time On Facebook

According to the latest tracking from Alexa, Google is still the top-visited site in the US, followed by its video-sharing site YouTube. While visitors spend an average of 8:31 minutes on YouTube, users spend 10:49 minutes perusing Facebook. Facebook has the advantage of an impressive 7 million backlinks to its content to drive viewership.

Twitter boasts over 5.4 million backlinks to its site and is number eight on the list of most-popular websites in the US. Reddit rules in terms of page visits, with an average of 9.73 pages viewed per day per visitor. Its loyal users also spend an average of 15 minutes per day, as well.

Snapchat Mixes AR With Audio

Snapchat has introduced its first augmented reality Lens that reacts to sound. The filter outfits users with animated ears and eyes that react to their voice and surrounding audio, growing and pulsing when the sounds get louder. While the Lens does not react to the pitch of a user’s voice or background music, it illustrates the possibilities for interaction and sponsored content.

The company told Engadget that it will roll out additional audio filters in the coming weeks.

Pinterest Piques Marketer Interest

Marketers spent more on Pinterest digital ads last year, a person familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. As a result, sales jumped 58 percent to $473 million last year, compared to $298.9 million in 2016. Attracting marketers will be an important selling point before the photo-browsing site eventually goes public.

Pinterest has steadily rolled out changes over the past year to attract brands, including shoppable Pins, visual discovery and audience targeting options. The idea-browsing site capitalizes on its discovery-based layout and illustrated this during SXSW with an activation called Pinterest House.

The Key To Creating Engaging AR And VR Experiences

BY

Marketers have much to consider when faced with the opportunity of creating content in augmented reality or virtual reality—not the least of which is to make sure to develop an engaging experience that users will remember.

Over one billion augmented reality-capable devices are expected to be in existence by the end of the year, which is why the technology is currently experiencing a kind of renaissance in marketing. Partly, this is driven by camera features on social media platforms such as Facebook and Snapchat.

By comparison, virtual reality is considerably less accessible to users—since it requires viewers such as Google Cardboard, expensive in-home headsets, or special venues—but it offers the highest degree of immersion for branded experiences.

“Many people are still sorting out the difference between AR, VR and mixed reality,” said Joey Jones, executive creative director at a.new reality, speaking with AListDaily. “A lot of AR experiences right now are one-trick novelties, which is fine, but it’s not going to get people interested in returning to it as an evergreen touchpoint.”

According to Jones, AR has a lighter touch than VR and it’s designed for shorter interaction on phones. The technology works well because it integrates brands with the real world, but Jones also notes that current apps tend to be static, with most users pointing their phones at one object. Stronger AR experiences use movement to give users opportunities to explore their environment and see how brands fit into it.

VR still has significant benefits like allowing creators control every aspect of the environment, which “can be both a blessing and a curse.” VR can offer much bigger and fantastic experiences, making it ideal for movies and other theatrical experiences—and more expensive.

Premium Experiences

Then, there is the matter of choosing between a mobile experience, a premium experience for high-end headsets or a combination of both.

“It comes down to the type of property that you’re trying to get the message out for,” said Jones. “If it’s a car, where the fidelity of its craftsmanship, look and feel are very important, then it’s better for a more premium VR experience.”

If premium experience is the right choice, it will likely require an installation at an event or arcade—with the added benefit that it can include features like haptic feedback, wind machines and props that expand user immersion.

When creating a VR experience, “always consider your audience,” said Rewind CEO and founder Sol Rogers. “Designing compelling and engaging experiences is user-centric, and wherever possible in the scoping, development and testing phases you should engage with the likely end-users and assess their responses.”

Key questions marketers should address are what users are focusing on, which details generate the biggest negative and positive reaction. 

Measure The Measurable

As for the issue of reach, Rogers said it’s important to address it with a smart content and marketing strategy. “If you’re releasing on a platform, make sure the media gets early access for reviews,” he explained. “If you’ve created a VR experience for a PC powered head-mounted display, make sure there are 2D assets for social. Amplification around the high-quality content is vital to extend reach and awareness and ensure ROI.”

“For both VR and AR ads, we find valuable insight in how users experience them, from the formats, templates and triggers that encourage engagement,” added Vince Cacace, founder and CEO at Vertebrae.

Both Rogers and Cacace agree that engagement and in-time experience are some of the primary metrics creators should keep in mind when measuring the success of experiences.

For AR, measurements include the number of photos taken or products that are engaged with.

For VR, marketers need to monitor what users are engaging with and whether they’re fully exploring the virtual space, keeping an eye out for blockers and areas that never get visited.

Additionally, Rogers explained that marketers need to define what success looks like when it comes to an experience.

“If it is crucial that a user takes away three key points of information, but you create a purely visual feast for the eyes, you will have failed,” Rogers said. “Always consider what the objective and takeaway need to be.”

Creators will have to build in cues to help direct the user’s attention to the right objects. Vertebrae’s analytics show that most people look straight ahead almost the whole time when viewing a 360 video, which is something that Cacace believes will remain the case until more people understand the medium. Rewind also developed a set of internal tools to track where users are looking, how they position themselves, and typical routes they take to help optimize the design.

A Provocative Example

A major case study includes last year’s partnership between Unity and Lionsgate to create a VR advertisement for the theatrical release of the horror movie Jigsaw. The experience was built using Unity’s Virtual Room interactive ad format, which was developed within the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s (IAB) emerging ad experience guidelines and distributed within the Samsung Internet for VR app and the interactive VR comic book Nanite Fulcrum.

Tony Parisi, Unity Technologies’ global head of VR/AR brand solutions, told AListDaily that the company partnered with Isobar Marketing Intelligence Practice and used its Mindsight Technology tools to measure user biometrics and to better understand their unconscious emotional responses to VR when compared to mobile video experience—seeing which format inspired fear and excitement. The results indicated “massive advertising potential behind a fully immersive VR ad experience.”

Virtual reality generated a substantially greater emotional arousal and engagement than mobile video. Heart rates were elevated by 24 percent, skin response peaks per minute and sweating grew by 44 percent, and muscle activation—often associated with smiling—occurred more than three times as often.

“These statistics were for people who went through the entire VR experience, not just those who saw the trailer in VR,” Parisi explained. “Such results indicate that it’s not the act of being in VR that elicits such emotion, but rather the fully interactive ad format that Unity and Lionsgate employed.”

Behavioral data for VR is not yet at scale, so Unity is using emotional responses and user navigation through the experience to help guide future builds. By leveraging this information, more personal and responsive experiences can be created.

“Currently, we are merely scratching the surface of the potential metrics we can draw from immersive experiences which can be used to further enhance it,” said Rogers. “Imagine an experience that works out what you are enjoying the most during it, and dynamically shifts the content towards more of what you like in real-time. Seamlessly, you have created a unique campaign based on that single user. Personalization has been a marketing trend for a while now, and this takes it to another level.”

The More Famous Brother

Despite the potential VR marketing holds, augmented reality has the potential to reach more people.

“With VR, we can transport users directly into the brand world, amazing places that can positively affect brand affinity,” said Parisi. “But, VR is still limited in reach given that the devices number in the small millions. As a result, these types of in-store activations and bespoke applications are typically seen only by hundreds to thousands of people. By contrast, this is where the massive scale of AR presents a very exciting opportunity.”

Jones is also a strong believer in the potential for augmented reality, even though he admits that marketers are just starting to explore engaging uses and ways to make it more intuitive. But someday, branded augmented reality experiences may become as ubiquitous as webpages and dedicated apps.

“Right now, the catchphrase for AR is that ‘the phone’s camera is the new browser,’” said Jones. He imagines a near-future where QR codes can be found almost anywhere for users to point their phone cameras at to launch new experiences. Those experiences may be further enhanced with data such as location, time, weather, culture and biometrics, depending on how much information users are willing to share.

“AR is about personalization and utility,” Cacace added. “It’s about blending the physical and digital worlds to let consumers experience products in their real environments. For entertainment companies, it’s about making the consumer the star of the show and breaking down the glass barrier between themselves and the content.”

Parisi said that some techniques for creating engaging AR experiences include adding virtual objects—such as a product, beloved character or recognized brand—that can be seen through the camera. Augmented reality can also be used to completely transform a room so that users feel like they’re in an all-new space, or devices can be used as windows to see into fantastical 3D worlds.

With this in mind, marketers can deliver impactful, short-form fixed duration brand experiences leveraging a high scale advertising platform for AR distribution.

Mind The Gap

“With the high reach, deeply-compelling, brand experiences, marketers can understand user behaviors and interactions with the content to learn more about how people not only love the content of the app, but now the brand experiences that pays for it,” explained Parisi.

“As with other marketing channels, the idea is fundamental to success—and with these new mediums, arguably it’s even more so, due to the immersion and engagement of the user,” said Rogers. “Compelling content is king. Without this, it’s just tech.”

The gap between AR and VR may be closing with the recent launch of the Oculus Go portable headset and the expected release of the HTC Vive wireless adapter. Although the Oculus Go is better geared for 360-degree videos and light entertainment apps, VR headsets are likely to become smaller and more discreet while providing improved quality for experiences.

“The hardware is going to improve, and as it does, the measurement of how users interact with their environment will become more precise. The more input that you put into the experience, the richer they’re going to be,” said Jones.

“[When creating experiences], don’t think about today’s technology, but think about two or three years from now, and how much easier, ubiquitous and effortless they will become.”