68 Marketing Trends found for Media / Convergence

... part of marketers increasingly digital marketing tool kit. 

Using this technology American Express has just wrapped its fourth year entertaining fans with AR at the US. Open Tennis tournament during which it explores new custom experiences to engage fans and card members.

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...  "is the best outcome marketers could have hoped for in the industry".

The acquisition puts AOL on solid ground as the third platform CMOs must take seriously in the wake of Google and Facebook.

However, rivaling Facebook and Google is no easy task. Effectively integrating the myriad businesses into a single Verizon entity will be vital.

The deal's benefits to both Yahoo/AOL and the global advertising industry are legion. Speaking to MediaPost's Jay Friedman, Goodway Group's COO explained to Real-Time Daily via email: “This is the best outcome marketers could have hoped for in the industry. This acquisition puts AOL on solid ground as the third platform CMOs must take a meeting with behind Google and Facebook".

Verizon intends to compete with Google and Facebook in an industry where “scale is imperative.” And scale is the name of the game given that Yahoo brings with it an audience of one billion active worldwide users - including 600 million active mobile users, a host of influential consumer brand partnerships, a powerful programmatic advertising and data platform and a robust editorial team.

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... what's not.

The partnership could have big potential for brands and sponsors who want to build apps for engaging audiences and performers before, during or after an event.

Enthuses AGT International ceo Mati Kochavi: "This exciting new venture is centred on the consumer experience, creating a true social IoT.

WME/IMG, founded in April 2009, after the merger of the William Morris Agency and the Endeavor Agency, represents artists across all media platforms, among them films, TV, music, theatre, digital and publishing. 

Details about the joint venture are still in the works (it won't be rolled out until sometime next year) but the companies envisage brands and sponsors using so-called Deep Web social analytics and platform-agnostic technology to engage with fans and consumers about events.

Hypothetically, this could allow event sports-stadium attendees using a custom app to see which queues for the toilets or concessions are the shortest. It could also allow bands to see where and when in a concert the energy drags. It could enable designers to gauge which fashion lines created most excitement, or an audience to learn how models feel while walking down a runway.

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... the two devices have little in common.

The OnHub design (see the dark blue vase shaped object on the right of the picture) replaces the usual flashing gizmos with internal antennas and signals designed to encourage consumers to keep the device on display where it performs best, rather than hiden away behind the furniture.

An app, compatible with both iOS and Android systems, tells the owner how many devices are connected to OnHub and the speeds they get. During the setup process, the router searches the airwaves and selects the best channel for the fastest connection. An antenna design and smart software work in the background, automatically adjusting OnHub to avoid interference and keep the network running at peak performance.

Accoding to Trond Wuellner, group product manager at Google, users can prioritise the device, so that the most important activity - for example streaming a favourite show - gets the fastest speed.

OnHub will become one of many hardware devices that consumers will see from Google, either by partnerships with other companies or by acquisitions as it extends its network of Internet of Things devices.

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... WPP's recent investments in ad tech pioneers Vice, AppNexus and Refinery29.

Despite the rise of the chief information officer and chief technology officer positions, particularly in the US, many clientside companies have failed to pay sufficient attention to the strategic importance of technology in marketing communications.

Instead these companies abrogate responsibility to the powerful tech giants and holding companies.

In so doing, argues Mr Kangisser, they unknowingly empower "partners" who don't always have their best interests at heart and from whom they will be unable to extricate themselves in the future.

Kangisser warns that such companies "are sleepwalking into the fold of wolves in sheep's clothing", although regulators have recognised this trend and are considering preventative action. However, agreeing and implimenting remedial action will take time, something clients don't have in this fast-moving ecosystem.

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... facing the most profound, rapid changes they've ever known, despite which their agencies are blithely ignoring clients' needs and relying on their past performance.

However, not all media shops are similarly blinkered.

According to one senior media agency executive: "Our role as media agencies should become more ambitious - to move from helping our clients buy media to helping them solve business problems; to shift from facing the industry to facing real people; to become stewards through the uncertainty; to know what is changing and what is staying the same; and to unleash the power of new technology to transform our clients' businesses."

"Things have never been so fast before, but will never be so slow again -- from changing TV viewing habits, to apps that explode and die in weeks, to real-time marketing."

"Clients want to know what's next, what is dead, what is changing, and even more importantly, what isn't and how can they test and learn to maximise what they have learned and reduce risk.

"This calls for agencies to operate in a fundamentally different way - to keep their finger on the pulse, be agile and ready to change. Agencies need to be structured differently, to operate with an entrepreneurial culture and to employ new talent to keep a view on what lies ahead."

Which, of course, harks back in time to the Don Draper era when ad agencies handled every aspect of their client's accounts, from strategy planning and creative through to media evaluation and buying. 

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... $29.5 billion in 2020.

According to IDC, devices, connectivity and IT services are expected to account for the majority of the global IoT market in 2020, with devices alone generating 31.8% of the total.

Purpose-built platforms, storage, security, application software and “as a service” offerings are expected to capture a greater percentage of revenue as the market matures.

As the IoT ecosystem continues to grow, companies will increasingly look to platforms and services that help them manage and analyse the streams of data coming from connected cars, thermostats and smartwatches.

This is likely to create a whole new ball-game for companies' Chief Information Officers as firms seek new ways to process and analyse data from multiple sources in real time.

Predicts Vernon Turner, IDC’s research fellow for the Internet of Things: "In China, a large and growing population using mobile devices, alongside a push to make manufacturing practices more efficient, may spur a significant number of new devices and IoT standards, while well networked countries like South Korea and Singapore may also ramp up smart city initiatives.

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... marketing thinking.

These days Choice Hotel's marketing minds have concluded that their guests also like reruns of Big Cat Diary on the Animal Planet channel, via which they can reach a similar audience for far fewer dollars.

In reaching that conclusion, the marketers are emulating digital advertising techniques by using new sets of data to pinpoint viewers with far greater accuracy than the traditional demographic categories of age and gender.

A new crop of tools from companies such as Simulmedia, Nielsen Holdings, Rentrak and TiVo is now available, enabling advertisers and agencies  to apply the lessons of “Big Data” to television.

As the rise of digital and mobile advertising increasingly diverts ad dollars from the big cable companies and TV broadcasters, networks and advertisers alike are crossing their fingers in the hope that the new technologies will be able to leverage huge databases with information on which products consumers buy and which obscure TV shows they watch.

Assuming they succeed, America's TV advertising landscape will become increasingly similar to its online rival. And, as with most things American, the trend will migrate across the Atlantic.

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... IFTTT's über-canny backers Andreessen and Horowitz.

IFTTT’s offering is very different to other online services of a similar nature. The clue lies in its title - an acronym for “If This Then That”, wordplay that neatly summarises the product's function.

IFTTT is essentially a giant switchboard that connects disparate services, ranging from from Facebook to text messages to telephone calls.

Users can create “recipes” in which an action performed on one service triggers an action on another entirely different service.

New York Times blogger Mike Isaac explains how the system works: "Earlier this week ... I connected my Instagram and Dropbox accounts to IFTTT."

"I [then] made a recipe that forced IFTTT to upload any new Instagram photo I took to my Dropbox online storage account. More than 100 other internet services connect to IFTTT, among them Twitter and YouTube."

The concept's underlying idea, IFTTT co-founder Linden Tibbets told Isaacs, "is to give people more creative control over the many online services they use on a daily basis."

"So even if your text messaging service, by itself, is not meant to be a sort of alert system for when your friend checks in on Foursquare, the start-up wants to make that sort of remixing possible.

Mr. Tibbets expects to double his staff of twenty-one employees over the next six months, focusing on expanding the business development and design departments. Josh Goldman, a partner at Norwest Venture will join IFTTT’s board of directors.

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... steel plants and refineries.

All seemingly unrelated things, including suburbs, fast food and drive-time talk radio.

Likewise, argues Mr Hardy, "today’s dominant industrial ecosystem is relentlessly acquiring and processing digital information".

Hardy continues: "Our twenty-first century ecosystem demands newer and better ways of collecting, shipping, and processing data in much the same way as cars needed better road building. It’s a trend that is spinning out its own unseen background businesses."

Proof - if any is needed - of the spread of this new ecosystem came today with the announcement by General Electric that it has created a “data lake” method of analysing sensor information from industrial machinery in places like railroads, airlines, hospitals and utilities.

Working with a company called Pivotal, GE said that in the last three months it has looked at information from 3.4 million miles of flights by twenty-four airlines using GE jet engines. This, GE claims, has enabled it to identify things like possible defects 2,000 times faster than previously possible.

However, according to William Ruh, vice president of GE Software: “We’re only one-tenth of the way there. In ten years, 17 billion pieces of equipment will have sensors.” 

Meantime, billions of humans are already augmenting that number with their own packages of sensors, called smartphones, fitness bands and wearable computers. Almost all of that data will get uploaded someplace too.

Earlier this year, researchers at the University of California in San Diego announced a method of engineering fiber optic cable that could make digital networks run ten times faster.

This will enable more segments of the system to work near to the speed of light, without involving the “slow” processing of electronic semiconductors.

Read the original unabridged NYTimes.com article.

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