Alexa Has Something To Sell You: A Look At Advertising’s Role In Voice Assistant Technology

Last month, in perhaps the biggest gesture yet that connected-home or “internet of things” devices have hit the mainstream, Burger King made headlines for a TV ad that directly appealed to customers with Google Home devices. Except, it was sort of a disaster — the ad designed to set off Google Home also invoked Wikipedia, prompting pranksters to edit the Wikipedia entry for Burger King’s Whopper hamburger en masse and then Google to pull the plug on the ad’s functionality.

This probably isn’t what advertising on voice assistants will look like. But at true[X], we’re always thinking about the next generation of advanced advertising products that are designed to function in a consumer-initiated, on-demand world. And voice assistants are an untapped medium. So, recently, we’ve started exploring the idea of interactive, voice-assisted advertising driven by the likes of Siri, Alexa, Cortana, and Google Assistant. But not like the Burger King debacle. Imagine a voice assistant advertising something relevant to you — — such as a sale on cookware while communicating step-by-step recipe instructions — and if you don’t want the ad, you can dismiss it with a simple voice command.

We did some research, and what we found was interesting. People responded well to the concept, in fact, better than they do to most kinds of ads that already exist. It highlighted two big truisms of the ad industry for us: one, that ads are most effective and most welcomed when they match their medium, in this case a consumer-initiated and consumer-controlled audio medium; and two, that there’s nothing more effective than being able to reach the right consumer at the right time.

Here’s what happened. We launched a discovery-driven experiment in which study respondents familiar with voice assistants were asked to imagine a voice assistant interactively advertising something relevant to them. Responding to just the written description of the concept, respondents were highly receptive with 53% indicating they liked the idea of interactive voice-assisted advertising “somewhat” or “a lot.”

This is actually better than consumer perceptions of audio advertising overall, indicating that the on-demand, consumer-controlled nature of the ads may make a difference in how they are received by consumers. When asked to compare the concept to ads they are familiar with on the radio, responses were also highly positive with 52% indicating interactive voice assisted advertising is “somewhat” or “much” better than traditional radio ads today. In addition, a third of respondents thought the idea was “no different” than conventional radio ads. Asked to qualify the appeal of the ad concept, respondents were likely to see it as unique, innovative, engaging, useful and relevant. One respondent elaborated that it “will go a long way to help get stuff I may need but don’t know where to get or don’t have time to search for.”

Any fledgling ad medium is subject to two main sets of consumer concerns: annoyance and intrusiveness. And sure enough, a minority of respondents to our study (28%) did not find the concept appealing, noting that it might become annoying, disruptive or invasive. Not surprisingly, there was dislike of the concept due to privacy concerns as well as a general aversion among many towards advertising. Across demographic segments, interactive voice assisted ads were significantly more appealing to females, parents, non-whites, less educated and younger consumers. These exploratory findings suggest that while early adopters of voice assistants are open to the idea of voice assisted advertising in their homes, the industry has to hit the right balance.

Ultimately, the industry must not lose sight of the openness for helpful, relevant, well-timed, interactive advertising experiences, nor can it ignore the concerned consumer belief that the industry may just produce a new generation of more disruptive, taxing and creepy ads. This applies not just to voice assistants, but to any new platform (as well as the existing ones). The Burger Kings of the world might make impressive novelty plays, but the principles of good advertising stay the same: reaching the right consumer at the right time, while placing the right value on their attention.