Lab Weekly — 09/04/2020
Charting the future of small businesses; New Floor 9 episode on digital privacy; Plus, news and stats roundup
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Lab Originals
The Future of Small Businesses
The pandemic forced many small businesses to join the digital economy, but will they be able to fend off the aggregators in the long run? Let’s take a look at some of the key trends that are shaping the future of small businesses and how B2B brands that work with small businesses can help them make that transformation smoothly.
In case you missed it…
Four Ways Retailers Can Future-Proof Their Businesses
UM’s Global Chief Innovation Officer and the Lab’s Managing Partner Chad Stoller charts the ongoing retail transformation accelerated by COVID-19 and pinpoints 4 ways retailers can future-proof their businesses in a thought leadership piece published by Think with Google.
What TikTok Tells Us about the Future of Music
The rise of music streaming services has transformed the music business. Now, the meteoric rise of TikTok is set to usher in a co-creative vision for the future of music.
The Long-Lasting Impact of COVID-19 on Digital Payments
The pandemic is pushing contactless payment and mobile wallets into the mainstream, setting up a cascade of implications that will reshape the banking industry
Floor 9 Podcast
Episode 81: Data Privacy as a Business Imperative
(Ft. Arielle Garcia, SVP, Business Operations & Compliance, Chief Privacy Officer of UM)
On this special episode of Floor 9, we welcome Arielle Garcia, the newly appointed Chief Privacy Officer of UM, to a timely discussion on data privacy. From the regulatory landscape, to consumer sentiments, to responsible collection and use of data, Arielle offers a comprehensive primer on how brand marketers should be thinking about data privacy today.
News Analysis
TikTok Ramps Up Social Commerce With Teespring Integration [The Verge]
TikTok has taken another step to build out social commerce features in the U.S. as it unveils a new partnership with Teespring. The integration will allow creators to create their own products on Teespring, push it directly to TikTok, and then allow fans to buy them directly through TikTok. Similar integration has been in place on YouTube for a while as a product carousel under the video, but the UI design will look a lot different on TikTok as it will need to appear a lot more native.
TikTok’s Chinese equivalent Douyin has already become a powerful social commerce platform, which offers TikTok a clear roadmap for growth, particularly in leveraging viral videos and live-streaming to hawk products, funneling audiences to ecommerce sites or, increasingly, ByteDance’s own online mall. As uncertainty over the impending sales looms large, TikTok is doing everything it can to prove its worth as a platform in the meantime.
Related: TikTok teamed up with video shopping company Ntwrk for first shoppable livestream [AdWeek]; TikTok launching new app on Amazon Fire TV [The Verge]
Alexa Can Now Pay For Gas At Over 11,500 Exxon And Mobil Stations [TechCrunch]
This feature was first announced during this year’s CES in January, but it finally went live this week at over 11,500 Exxon and Mobil gas stations across the U.S., allowing customers to say “Alexa, pay for gas,” to begin the payment process via Echo Auto and other Alexa-enabled mobility devices. This presents an interesting new use case for Alexa outside the home, which can help reduce touching payment terminals at the gas pump for COVID concerns — another example for ambient computing being accelerated by the pandemic, something no one saw this coming back in January.
It is also worth noting that Amazon teamed up with Fiserv to help power the transactions, but the transactions themselves will be processed through Amazon Pay, which uses the same payment information stored in the customer’s Amazon account. This makes it an interesting example of Amazon leveraging its card-on-file payment info to branch into facilitating offline transactions.
Related: Google is rolling out an update to Google Assistant that adds simple Siri-like in-app shortcuts with an Explore tab to find them [Android Police]; Review of Amazon’s Echo Frames, $180 Alexa-enabled glasses that debuted last year reveals Alexa is not yet ready for wearable devices [WSJ]; Walmart rolls out a voice assistant for use by its in-store workforce [TechCrunch]
Movies Anywhere Officially Launches Its Digital Movie-lending Feature, ‘screen Pass’ [TechCrunch]
For those who are unfamiliar, Movie Everywhere is a digital locker service that grants users centralized access to their purchased movies from multiple platforms such as iTunes, Vudu, Amazon Video, YouTube, and Xfinity. It was formerly known as Disney Movies Anywhere, but was rebranded in 2017 and is now jointly operated by Disney, Universal, WB, and Sony Pictures.
This new feature, dubbed “Screen Pass,” lets all U.S. users lend out one of their purchased movies to a friend or family member for free. Links to shared movies can be sent out over text, email, or messaging apps to the recipient. In addition, Movies Anywhere also recently introduced a co-viewing feature called Watch Together that offers a synced viewing experience with up to nine other people, which works via Screen Pass.
This new feature presents an intriguing new model to share digital media, conduct co-viewing and drive customer conversion to its own platform. Transactional VOD may be slowly going out of fashion thanks to the rise of subscription-based streaming services, but it could still serve as a great exclusive window for new releases. Coupled with Disney’s “Premiere Access” release of Mulan, we are witnessing the media companies moving quickly to reinvent the windowing strategy for the digital age.
Related: Mulan will be available to all Disney Plus subscribers for no extra fee on December 4th [The Verge]; Twitch’s Prime Video watch parties are now available to everyone [Engadget]; ‘The Mandalorian’ season two hits Disney+ on October 30th [Engadget]
Amazon Wins FAA Approval For Prime Air Drone Delivery Fleet [CNBC]
On Monday, Amazon received approval from the Federal Aviation Administration to operate its fleet of Prime Air delivery drones. This means Amazon joins UPS and Alphabet-owned Wing, who previously won FAA approval for their drone delivery operations. Wing was approved in April last year while UPS was approved back in October.
This is a major milestone that has been a long time coming — Amazon began testing delivery drones in 2013, aiming to drop off packages at customers’ doorsteps in 30 minutes or less. Compared to the other two approved entities, Amazon may be able to scale its drone delivery operation faster given its addressable customers, whereas the other two will have to get vendors AND customers on board.
Related: Walmart to launch its Walmart+ membership service on Sep. 15 [TechCrunch]; Amazon drivers are hanging phones in trees near Whole Foods and Amazon delivery stations to game Amazon’s dispatch system and get more deliveries [Engadget]
Stats To Know
- Back-to-school advertising this year has fallen 70% on national television as U.S. retailers pull back on their promotional activities. Retailers spent $23 million on back-to-school ads from June 22 to Aug. 8, compared with $76 million a year earlier, according to Kantar data.
- Viewership on Facebook’s video game livestreaming platform Facebook Gaming totaled 345 million hours in July, per new data from StreamElements, a 215% year-over-year increase. While this pales in comparison to Twitch’s 1.4 billion hours, both platforms continue to see substantially higher viewership hours compared with pre-pandemic levels.
- Snapchat had a big August amid TikTok uncertainty. According to estimates from Sensor Tower, Snapchat’s mobile app across both iOS and Android saw approximately 28.5 million new installs last month — its single largest month for first-time downloads since May 2019, when it had then seen 41.2 million new installs. Snapchat downloads were up 29% year-over-year in August 2020 compared with 9% growth in July.
