Lab Weekly — 07/21/2017

Your weekly fix of consumer tech & media news and what they mean for brands

IPG Media Lab
Jul 21, 2017 · 6 min read

Lab Original

Evaluation of Unity’s VR Room Ad Standard

Last week, Unity in partnership with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Lionsgate announced they are developing the first ever virtual reality ad format called a Virtual Room. Our partnership team met with the Unity team to learn more about this ambitious new VR ad unit and offer our assessments.

News Analysis

Disney Partners With Lenovo To Create Branded AR Headsets & Star Wars-Themed AR Games [link]

With this initiative, Disney is now leading the pack when it comes to developing branded AR content to engage fans. While many brands have experimented with VR to create branded experiences, very few have yet to bother with AR. This makes sense, since VR got an early head start in its development cycle than AR. But the fact is, VR has a hard limit on how much time users can stay engaged — after a while, the so-called “VR sickness” will start to occur. AR, in comparison, does not have this usage limit, thereby presents a far more versatile medium for brands to leverage for engagement in the long run. As developer platforms like Apple’s ARKit and Facebook’s Camera Effects platform become available, mobile AR is poised to go mainstream within a year or two, which means now is the time for brands to start coming up with an AR strategy.

Related: Heathrow Airport created an AR game to keep your kids occupied during the boarding process [link]; Mira unveils Prism, a $99 AR headset that reflects your iPhone screen onto a lens [link]; Google Glass is back with a clearer focus on enterprise uses [link]; Lenovo unveils AR headset concept called DaystAR [link]

Estée Lauder Partners With ModiFace To Create A Chatbot That Let Users Virtually Try Different Lipstick Colors [link]

As chatbots continue to evolve, it is now possible to plug in other advanced capabilities to enrich the chat experience. Estée Lauder incorporated some basic AR technologies to allow for virtual sampling and make this chatbot stand out from the crowd. Other brands curious about developing chatbots should start thinking about how they may leverage things like visual search, facial recognition, and mobile payment to supercharge the chatbot experience.

Related: Facebook added five more messaging tags for chatbots to better manage their responses [link]; Facebook’s M now serves up Food Network recipe suggestions [link]

Coca-Cola Reveals An A.I.-powered Mobile App To Make Its Vending Machines Easier To Use [link]

Using a mobile app as a pre-order channel to bridge the digital interface and the physical vending machine is a good way for Coke to improve the vending experience and make it more convenient and seamless for customers. Using A.I. (mostly machine learning, it seems) to parse customer data and optimize the experience based on the context is a clever move for Coke to deliver a customized vending experience. More CPG brands should think about ways they can leverage digital tools and emerging technologies to modernize the retail experience they offer.

Related: Subway’s new store design adds digital self-order kiosks w/ Apple Pay, faster mobile pre-ordering [link]; A Chinese startup is working on a futuristic “cashier-less, mobile convenience store” concept [link]; Warner Bros. creates Harry Potter-themed holiday experience that let fans shop merchandises in pop-up magic wand shops [link]

Tovala’s Smart Kitchen Appliance Combines A Steam Oven And A Meal Subscription Service [link]

This is a fascinating take on the smart home appliance, combining the connected hardware with the consumable goods — in this case, groceries in the form of meal kits — to deliver a streamlined and optimized user experience. Not unlike Apple’s approach to tightly control both the hardware and the software, this integration turns a one-time purchase of a durable household product into a long-term “‘Keurig for food’ engagement that will yield higher customer value. It presents a way for a hardware brand to transition into a service brand, ultimately leveraging the superior user experience achieved through integration to sell its hardware.

Related: Amazon has started selling pre-packaged Meal Kits to select Amazon Fresh customers [link]; How Best Buy stays competitive against Amazon’s advances by matching price and improving customer experience [link]

Amazon Launches Spark, A Feed Of Shoppable Content Aimed At Prime Members, In iOS App [link]

The design of Spark is quite similar to that of Instagram, but because the way the shopping tags are directly integrated with Amazon’s product inventory, the actual shopping experience should be more seamless than on Instagram. Amazon also plans to make it easier for users to import their previous amazon.com reviews to Spark so as to supplement the content beyond sponsored posts. Still, given the network effect that other established social media platforms possess, it remains to be seen if this feature will be able to attract a significant amount of Prime members for it to become a product discovery channel that brands will need to pay attention to.

Related: TV shopping giants QVC and HSN merge to take on Amazon [link]

Alexa Lands On HTC U11 As The Phone’s Default Voice Assistant [link]

Amazon has been conquering homes with Alexa-powered gadgets, but its reach has always been limited by a lack of mobile support, especially compared to Siri and Google Assistant. Amazon obviously recognizes this shortcoming and has been actively working on expanding Alexa support to mobile handsets. Previously, Amazon has added Alexa to its iOS flagship app as well as integrating Alexa on the Huawei Mate 9. And it is coming to the Amazon app on Android as well starting next week.

However, as the linked review reports, Alexa won’t activate when the HTC U11 is unlocked and even then, it still lacks some of the basic functions that a native, first-party voice assistant would cover, such as sending messages or dialing phone calls via voice. All said, Amazon still has a long way to go in expanding Alexa’s mobile reach.

Related: You can now use your Alexa devices to control your Amazon Fire TV [link]; Kayak launches Alexa skill to let people book travel via voice [link]; Microsoft unveils a Cortana-powered thermostat built by Johnson Controls [link]

Snapchat News Round-up:

  • Snapchat launches its Snap Publisher self-serve ad creation tool, which can convert horizontal videos and websites into vertical video ads [link]
  • Snapchat now allows for six consecutive ten-second videos and color changes on selected objects [link]
  • NBC News launches “Stay Tuned”, a twice-daily news show on Snapchat, which is aimed at younger viewers who no longer watch traditional TV. [link]
  • Snap’s Spectacles are now available directly from Amazon for the same $129 price [link]
  • Publishers are switching affections from Snapchat to Instagram [link]
  • Snap closes below $17 IPO price amid fears insiders will dump shares [link]

The central narrative for Snap Inc. at the moment is whether it can generate enough revenues through ads and other means (eg. selling Spectacles and new content deals) in order to keep the investors and media owners invested in its platform amidst slowing user growth and mounting competition from Instagram. All these news items above reflect the efforts and struggles in monetization that Snap is facing. It might be easy to write Snap off as a sinking ship given the current circumstances, but if the company can manage to hold onto its leading position in mobile AR software today and came out with an innovative AR product before the other AR players get to market, it just might still stand a chance.

Stats To Know:

eSports viewers are tuning into Virtual Reality, as earlier this month over 180,000 unique viewers tuned into the VR broadcast of the ESL One Cologne tournament through SLIVER.tv.

More than 40% of U.S. broadband households now own a Connected Health product, up from 37% in 2016 and 33 percent in 2015, notes tech research consultancy Parks Associates.

AR will take off in the enterprise domain first, as the new AR Landscape report by Venture Reality Fund shows 60% growth in AR startups focused on enterprise use cases.

Netflix added 5.2 million new subscribers last quarter, well above its own estimates. It now has nearly 104 million total subscribers, with 51.9 million domestic subs and 52 million international subs.

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IPG Media Lab

Written by

Keeping brands ahead of the digital curve. An @IPGMediabrands company.

IPG Media Lab

The media futures agency of IPG Mediabrands

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