ADTECH: For advertisers, the object recognition could be used to serve sponsored filters, but also more involved ads. In one example, an image that includes an object "recognized as a restaurant" would serve a filter of that restaurant's menu. In another, a filter associated with a certain dish from that restaurant may include "celebratory graphics" to "commemorate the user's achievements" if they order a particular item often enough. Snapchat even speculates that it could create an automated auction system for the filters, letting companies compete to buy the advertising rights for certain objects.
ECOMMERCE: ChannelAdvisor Corp., which helps e-commerce companies sell on online marketplaces, says its clients are doing well this quarter. What’s fueling that growth is an uptick in consumers using mobile devices to shop, while retailers are improving their logistics systems to speed delivery of orders, says Scot Wingo, the vendor’s executive chairman. “Amazon is raising the bar with two-hour and two-day shipping and everyone is responding to it and consumers love it,” he says. “[Faster fulfillment] also eliminates one of the key advantages ‘offline’ has—immediacy.”
MEDIA: But it’s not just BuzzFeed’s expertise that NBC is looking to take advantage of. The company has also partnered with dozens of social influencers spanning the lifestyle, comedy, fashion, beauty, fitness and food verticals. These influencers, who have a combined reach of 120 million followers across platforms, will create promotional videos in advance of the games. They, too, have been given a fair amount of creative freedom with just one major request: to mention at the end of the videos that the Olympics, which are only viewable on NBC, begin on Aug. 5.
ECOMMERCE: Much has been said about the implications of AI, particularly for industries reliant upon manual labour, from car manufacturers to surgical clinics. But consider the potential impact of such technology in the multi-trillion-dollar global e-commerce industry, one that has evolved into an integral feature of the average consumer lifestyle and a common medium across countless verticals. The confluence of AI and e-commerce could not only transform the millions of online transactions that occur every day
BRAND: With this approach in mind, Under Armour recently unveiled its new manufacturing and innovation center that has been tagged as the “Lighthouse.” It will bring seemingly futuristic technology to the world of apparel. The 35,000 square-foot center will house top designers, engineers and other manufacturing experts. The goal will be to continue to innovate Under Armour’s line of products as well as drastically cut down the amount of time it takes to produce the products as well lowering manufacturing costs per item.
DATA: Generation Z are a bit of a mystery to many marketers. Those who were born in the mid nineties onwards are not behaving like previous generations, and there is concern among industry experts that businesses are going to miss out on revenue opportunities as the under 20s gain greater spending power. This mobile-savvy, digitally native group are a challenging tribe, according to a panel at Cannes, hosted and sponsored by Teads and moderated by Marketing Week.
DATA: Nowadays, the most in-demand coding skill in the world is not the one that empowers you to build a startup that boosts national GDP, it’s the ability to perform advanced analysis on data that creates rich meaning from raw numbers. If education has overshot the mark when it comes to the real-world skills tech workers need, it falls to businesses themselves to pick up the slack. The next generation of employees can arm itself through independently-taken online courses.
FINTECH: The expanded mobile payments also may provide Wal-Mart with a trove of additional data that it could use to improve its marketing via e-mail, text message or on Facebook, said Omer Artun, chief executive officer of AgilOne, a technology consulting firm. Wal-Mart and other retailers currently use third parties to collect the names, e-mail and addresses of shoppers who pay with a credit card, but that process is time-consuming and not always accurate, Artun said.
ECOMMERCE: Home goods was the second-fastest growing merchandise category (21.6%) in terms of web sales in Internet Retailer’s Top 1000 rankings, behind only hardware and home improvement retailers (21.8%), which also benefited from the large numbers of consumers shifting their spending online. The leading retailers in home goods are doing many things right, and their growth comes from innovative strategies that make shopping online for furniture and decor for the home more convenient than ever.
BRAND: While Amazon topped the list, just three of the top 20 are online-only – Amazon, eBay and ASOS. However, most of these have also experimented with in-store experiences over the last 12 months, highlighting the continued importance of a multi-channel strategy when it comes to retail customer engagement, said DMA. Most notably, Apple came in 14th behind traditional high street brands including John Lewis, M&S, Next, Debenhams.
ECOMMERCE: At a press briefing in Shanghai last week, an Alibaba representative wearing a Vive VR helmet from HTC Corp. of Taiwan showed how a shopper could take a tour of a three-dimensional digital store. The demonstration showed a robotic store associate talking to the visitor and recommending new products. Shoppers can rotate products they see in the virtual store by moving the controller that connects to the Vive helmet and even ask for a model to show how the product works or is worn. Users can also use the controller to click the buy button to purchase the item in the digital store.
ECOMMERCE: Style.com’s rebranding for ecommerce comes at a time when publishers are investigating new methods to remain relevant in a changing landscape where many consumers would rather read and shop online over print and bricks-and-mortar shops. By launching an ecommerce venture, Condé Nast will be in a position to leverage the buying power of its more than 300 million readers of titles such as Vogue and Vanity Fair. Condé Nast has been the clear frontrunner in learning how to adapt to changing behavior to ensure its titles remain profitable and top of mind.
