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7/3/2009 Speech RecognitionSpeech recognition is part of the tooling for next generation user interfaces. While other so-called “natural user interface” (NUI) technologies, such as multitouch, work well for issuing commands and enabling haptic controls, data input is not the strong point of gesture-based interfaces. While on-screen keyboards are often used as a workaround, these are hardly in-keeping with NUI first principles. The answer to the data entry question is probably speech recognition.
Speech recognition has been around for a while but it has never really broken through. Perhaps this is because it has never really worked well enough. Recently though, it has got a lot better. The latest generation of speech recognition software is good enough to control your PC more or less perfectly and the on-board software packaged within Windows 7 is a considerable improvement on previous capabilities. But it is off the desktop where speech recognition really comes into its own – after all this is where you may not have a keyboard to hand. An interesting example of newer applications for speech recognition technology is SpinVox, a UK-based startup which allows you to convert voicemail to text messages. One of the interesting aspects of SpinVox is that it offers an API. This opens up the possibility to connect the service into other software applications - something which has already been done by nFinity in their iPhone app, QuickVoice Pro. Integration with in-store or outdoor interactive digital signage applications would also be possible, allowing users to enter data like their contact details “to the screen” via their own mobile phone, simply using their voice. 4/17/2009 Digital Out of HomeDigital Signage or Digital Out of Home (DOOH) for short is a digital marketing channel which is rapidly gaining the agency attention it deserves. The linkage between virtual and real world touch points is a hot topic in a number of areas including marketing message delivery, brand experience and social media (see O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo speech on "Web meets World"). As display hardware prices sink, infrastructure costs both in terms of outdoor and in-store placements are being reduced, positive impacting ROI calculations. The key benefits of DOOH over traditional signage-based advertising are similar to those for other digital channels: above all increased interactivity, accountability, faster deployment cycles, multimedia capability and the possibility for linkage with other digital channels (above all mobile).
One of the most significant DOOH projects currently underway is the overhaul of the London Tube advertising media placements by CBS Outdoor. The company has been spending heavily on installing 000's of digital sites, many of which are already live. The London Transport system also uses a digital ticketing system based on NFC, currently in a card format known as Oyster. As on other transport networks, London has piloted using NFC-enabled mobile phones in conjunction with their existing infrastructure. As NFC takes off on the mobile phone, digital outdoor will almost certainly benefit, as the technology will make it far simpler for consumers to interact with signage via their mobile than has, up to now, been the case.
Behavioural Targeting TechnologiesThe ability to target individuals or groups of users based on personalisation algorithms isn't of itself particularly new. A number of well-understood techniques such as collaborative filtering, rules-based recommendation engines, as well as keyword/search driven models (and other contextual methods) have been around for years. But the desire to increase relevance to users and drive conversion is higher than ever, partially because the fight for mind-share is pushing up CPC prices and also because marketing departments are under increased pressure to ensure direct return on media investments. This is leading to continued technological development in the search for ever more precise targeting approaches, and one of the main areas of activity surround the marketing trend of behavioual targeting.
While Ad-servers such as Atlas have supported behavioural targeting for some time, Google has recently registered a number of patents hinting at initiatives to augment search and advertising algorithms with behavioural mechanisms.
Another development is the use of so-called deep packet inspection tooling, to intercept web traffic and use this as the basis for deriving behavious. This is not without its controversy. One service making headlines is Phorm. Phorm, like other similar technology providers such as Front Porch offer solutions to ISP's to gather data on their customers' surfing activity by examining the traffic flowing through the network and present users with messaging based on behavioural analysis. The benefit to consumers comes not only in the form of the increased relevance of advertising they are exposed to, but also in lower access costs to the web (in this way, the approach is somewhat similar to the classic ad-supported TV network).
Site-side targeting also continues to be a phenomenon, with providers such as ATG enjoying renewed success in positioning their personalisation technologies across digital channels and consolidation between SAAS web analytics and site-side personalisation.
As new digital channels open up off the browser, the trend will be to even more joined-up thinking throughout the digital customer lifecycle and across all digital touchpoints, with data gathering and resulting optimisations to targeting, user experience and messaging becoming a part of every digitally-supported interaction between brands and customers.
The challenges to this process are not just technological but also strategic. Building custom segmentations for individual brands or products based on socio-demographic and psychographic profiles and alligning these with conversion models such as the customer lifecyle is one starting point. But the mapping of persona to behaviours both within the data gathering and messaging delivery sides of the equation can become complex if these models are overly granular. Early adopters are starting with relatively simplistic models and refining these over time.
1/25/2009 Digital PaperAnother traditional publishing medium is on its way to becoming digital at the point of consumption - print. A massive amount of work is being done, both in industry and academia, the latter primarily research coming primarily from the flexible display unit at Arizona State University.
LCD's have been getting cheaper, bigger and ever more ubiquitous for years. But current LCD design still has its limitations. LCD's require a backlight, which means they are power hungry, the use of glass makes displays both heavy and fragile, and the manufacturing process is technically tricky and can only be performed in batches. Display technologies are starting to emerge which resolve these issues.
Currently only available in black and white and with refresh rates too low for moving images, the first mass-market ePaper screens are built into e-book readers like Sony's, or Amazon's. These devices use screens capable of displaying text clearly using reflective light only. They are also able to take advantage of another ePaper property, namely that power is only required to change the display, and not to retain its state. Both features mean hugely extended battery life and, some claim, a significantly better reading experience devoid of the "flicker" associated with LCD technology.
In the next generation, for example the device due to be launched by Plastic Logic in 2009/10, remaining glass components in the first generation of digital paper displays will be completely removed in favour of plastic. This means that screens can become thinner, flexible, extremely lightweight and more durable. At the same time, innovations are taking place to revolutionalise the manufacturing process of digital displays so that they can be created using a continuous manufacturing process rather than in batches. This will drive costs down substantially.
For digital marketing the impact of the technology could be huge. Even with the first generation of reader, it is possible to subscribe to or download newspaper and magazine editions to your device. As with other digital distribution technologies, this will offer advertisers greater transparency and control over media spend, greater integration with ecommerce and the opportunity to personalise and target. Another effect will be the impact on the publishing of product catalogues and promotional collateral - possibly even sidelining the relevance of the website for all but transactional purposes.
In time, further enhancements to the technical properties and manufacturing processes of will bring colour and moving images to cheap digital paper displays. Digital paper will further accelerate the demise of paper and print as the dominant advertising medium.
7/17/2008 Tools and AppvertisingThe separation between on- and off-line platforms and experiences is narrowing.
These technologies make brand-driven interactive experiences that have become familiar within the context of the internet available in applications on the desktop. In particular the technologies WPF (the presentation technology behind Microsoft Vista) and Adobe Air (a container for running Flash applications locally) can be used to develop apps offering customers powerful functionality while doing so in a brand-supporting way. Typical use cases might include product configurators, POS/Kiosk applications or content explorer tools. Here are a couple of examples : The North Face kiosk demo demonstrates an interesting way to display product information. The New York Times offline reader demonstrates an intuitive and exciting way to interact with news content. The Adobe AIR showcase highlights a couple of demos and includes a video explaining the capabilities of the ebay desktop application. These technolgies also enable applications delivered over the internet to break out of the sandboxing of the browser, to interact directly with data stored locally on their computers and with applications installed locally. In particular Google Gears and Yahoo BrowserPlus use technology stacks very similar to those used to programme web 2.0 apps, thereby making the process of providing functionality available while connected to the internet also available while offline. Although this is arguably an increasingly unlikely situation in these times of ubiquitous connectivity, there are scenarios (for example in a POS implementation) where an application may, or may not have access to the internet depending on where it is deployed - but it still has to function identically in both situations. There may even be situations where the same application may have occasional web access to support syncing or updating but not continuously during runtime. In this kind of situation, these technologies can help. Here are a few interesting examples: Remember the Milk task manager Zoho Office Suite, a competitor to Google Docs Whatever their strengths and weeknesses, these types of technologies have been collectively referred to as "next generation web platforms". In fact, many of their capabilities are similar to the ideas contained within upcoming web standards such as HTML5. As usual though, the standards creation process is lagging somewhat behind the proprietary attempts to achieve the desired results without waiting for consensus to emerge within organisations such as the W3C. Nonetheless, these technologies give an insight into how all web applications will feel in the future. Innovations in UI/HCIInteraction between man and machine is changing in nature.
Chips are cheap and processors are embedded in an increasingly broad range of consumer electronic devices. The computer is no longer just the grey box in the corner but is also the mobile phone in your pocket, the black box under your TV or the interactive console in your car. As computing becomes more ubiquitous, so the means for interacting with information and applications become more varied. Different contexts require different interfaces to the user, the old paradigm of keyboard and mouse is not always appropriate. Although many UI/HCI trends share certain characteristics, they can be clustered by principle purpose: Usability and Efficiency Multitouch is an interaction paradigm based on physical gestures made by the user on a "touch sensitive" panel. The implementations vary. Some technologies such as Microsoft Surface offer a means for multiple users to work collaboratively. Others offer a more intuitive and powerful means to interact with functionality and data within an existing problem domain. The iPhone would be a good example of this type of usage. Finally, multitouch can be scaled to work over larger physical areas, allowing users to access, sift through and organise vast quantities of information quickly - a usage reminiscent of the popular seeding of the multitouch concept in the film Minority Report. A system of this ilk, developed by Peceptive Pixel was used in CNN's coverage of the US election primaries in 2008. Digital Marketing applications for these kinds of technologies are likely to be found at the POS and in promotional spaces (e.g. trade fairs, roadshows). These technologies can work well when leveraged in the UI to an appvertisement or product configurator. Cases include the in-store kiosks launched by AT&T (developed in collaboration with AvenueA|Razorfish) and installations at Harrah's casinos. Fun Some of the new UI concepts have less to do with efficiency and rather more to do with entertainment. Unsurprisingly, the most prevalent examples in this application category come from the gaming space, where the Nintendo Wii has introduced a new HCI paradigm to a huge number of consumers. Other examples might be camera-driven systems such as Sony's Eye-Toy which allow user's to interact with the console based on their movements. Possible applications for this kind of technology may be found in interactive storefront media. Data Input Steady progress is being made in reducing the computer's dependence on a keyboard in data entry. Speech recognition software is getting better and better. As the next generation of automated call-center technology begins to deliver greater intelligence, navigating automated call-center apps will become a slightly less irritating experience for consumers. The increasing importance of mobile in the digital marketing space will also drive the uptake of voice-driven UI's. A good example of this kind of application is GOOG-411, which adds a speach-driven interface to Google's mapping technology. The speech recognition technology embedded within Windows Vista is a further demonstration that things are moving ahead on the desktop on this area. An interesting marketing case which also featured voice interaction was Cisco's much-praised BOOMING campaign. API's and Standardisation in Web 2.0Perhaps the biggest technological social media trend is that of data portability.http://www.dataportability.org/ Here is a quotation from the data portability website which explains in short form what the movement is about:
In January 2008, several major web industry players supported the workgroup: Google, Facebook and Plaxo. Since then further key technology players have joined the working group including Drupal, Netvibes, Mystrands, LinkedIn, Flickr, Six Apart, Twitter, Digg and Microsoft. Specifically the data portability movement is about breaking down the data silos within the worldwide social graph. Included within the frame of reference of this trend are technologies and standards such as: Google's OpenSocial initiative, supported by a wide range of social media platforms including Bebo, Engage.com, Friendster, hi5, Hyves, imeem, NetModular, mixi, MySpace, Ning, orkut, Plaxo, Six Apart LinkedIn, Tianji, Salesforce.com,and XING. The OpenID single sign-on intiative supported by an equally impressive roster of technology companies: AOL, BBC, Google, IBM, Microsoft, MySpace, Orange, VeriSign, Yandex, Yahoo! and digg. Both of the above lists are expanding all the time. In addition to the above, there some other platform-specific tools which support data portability and enable third party sites to leverage the authentication services and features of social media platforms. Particularly worthy of note given their reach are the following: Microsoft's Windows LiveID (formerly known as passport) Underlying technologies which are assisting in the implementation of these services are FOAF and SIOC which are both semantic web standards facilitating the formal description of social media data. So what do these technologies do for digital marketers? Data portability is important to users. There is increasing consumer resistance to concepts which rely on the premise of registration as the quid-pro-quo for content. Web users are increasingly privacy conscious and have built up a massive key-chain of credentials on the web, none of which tie together. The thought of adding yet another account to this mass is, for many, simply not worth the effort. OpenID and other SSO frameworks which allow users access to protected resources via existing credentials can be a way around the problem. Other data portability frameworks allow marketers to leverage users' existing social graphs into their own marketing efforts. A user can not only use their FB account to log into a 3rd party site which supports FriendConnect, but they can also interact with their friends there directly. This makes it easy for consumers to bring their friends with them when out and about online. One obvious application for this is the provision of customer referral programmes or "send-to-a-friend" tools which work directly with the existing social connections of a site visitor. Media on the desktopThe borderlines between productivity and entertainment devices are becoming increasingly blurred. As with most usage trends, part of this this phenomenon is being driven by the behaviour of consumers in particular audience segments. Younger consumers particularly are choosing to spend a greater percentage of their free time online, and in so doing are on the look-out for entertaining content. At the same time both content and technology providers are developing new delivery channels and platforms that take advantage of the increased penetration of broadband connectivity both with and without wires. The trend towards the integration of entertainment media within channels which are relevant for digital marketing will continue. The challenge for digitial marketeers is how to embrace this channels and integrate them within the overall mix. The IPTV platforms of the major ISP's (such as Maxdome or T-Home) are building out the broadcast entertainment offering over digital channels and generating further interest and awareness amongst new slices of the consumer population. Some traditional content providers are entering the space directly and using this kind of technology to distribute their content without network intervention: one example of this phenomenon is the BBC's iPlayer. Web media publishers such as Youtube are creating new memes and ways of consuming "snackable" media and tieing their platforms to the upsurge of social media activity. The major manufacturers of traditional desktop hardware and software are also entering the fray with their own delivery platforms - noteworthy examples here are AppleTV and Windows Media Center. The major games console manufacturers are also powering forward in the space, adding video distribution services to their platforms and functionally extending the kinds of online services available from their in-living-room platforms. The XBox Live platform was first to do this, but Sony is not far behind.
First of all there is the simple fact that digital's audience share is increasing as it permeates new facets of consumers daily behaviours: marketing budgets needs to reflect this. The rise of digital media distribution opens the door for more selectively targetted television advertising as video streams can be personalised to match customer interests at the point of delivery rather than relying solely on effective planning to achieve optimal results. An accompanying dynamic is the increased possibilities for accountability and quantitative metrics for ad-placement in broadcast media. Multimedia publishing sites such as YouTube and Flickr can be integrated within the content strategy of online marketing planning initiatives, the shift here though is towards providing content that is in and of itself inspiring and interesting, rather than simply placing ads on relevant 3rd party properties. At the same time, the traditional network model is not completely disappearing but the delivery mechansim is changing. Media-buys are now possible on a broader range of digitally-delivered channels. This may be a hindrance or a help depending on how the complexity of the new terrain is managed. In-game advertising or indeed completely branded games such as Burger King's XBox titles are another new way to reach certain audiences. Data TrendsThere are a quite number of current trends which revolve around the management, storing and distribution of data on the web. Some of these technologies have been around for a while, but are becoming increasingly important in the social web ecosystem. The first bucket of technologies helping which are assisting with data dissemination and exchange are web feed standards, in particular RSS and ATOM. These formats allow applications to publish and consume content in a distributed way. This is important for marketers because it is a means for reaching into new communication channels, in particular via widgets, consumers' desktops (whether these are web-based like iGoogle or embedded in the desktop OS, such as the Google Desktop ). The standards have been extended to support the distribution of multimedia content, enabling podcasting or vodcasting. In their turn these multimedia feeds may be consumed by dedicated reader applications such as iTunes or Miro. These technologies also have a bearing on how digital marketers communicate with their target audiences, particularly in a "push" context. For example, implementing newsletter-style communications in a feed rather than via email enables consumers to take control and lowers the barriers associated with compulsory registration, thereby increasing reach and lift. Blog Search Engines: Buzz Charting: Multimedia: Forums & Message Boards: Website Traffic: Search Data: The value to marketers from these types of tools is first and foremost that they allow insights into what users are saying on issues of relevance to a companies marketing initiatives. This may be as simple as opinions about products, but it can be useful to monitor buzz surrounding the company and in general proximity to a company's brand.
Next up are applications which can be embedded within social media platforms or on the desktop that enable interaction with marketing data in a more functionaly rich way than with feeds. These types of components are generally bundled under the heading widgets or gadgets. Examples might be mashups with map API's for showing local promotional events or tools which allow for interaction with a user's social graph.
Another data trend which has been around for a while but which is steadily gaining intensity is that of the semantic web. Semantic web technologies are designed to
make content on the internet more easily understandable not only for humans but also machines. They allow systems to catalogue and query pools of information in an intelligent way: enabling consistent messaging while also allowing cross referencing and slicing of an information pool along semantic pivots. Specific technologies underlying the semantic web include:
The RDF standard is a low-level format for specifying metadata Semantic web technologies can make a huge difference to how a company communicates digitally. Implementing a metadata-driven content management approach can drive all sorts of benefits including search engine optimised web presence, personalisation, syncronised multi-channel communication and facilitate the allignment of consumer communications with marketing strategy objectives.
Personalisation itself is also enjoying a revival as a trend. In particular, ad-server technologies which assist segmentation and targetted media delivery such as that integrated within Atlas can increase lift by more accurate consumer targetting. Site-side personalisation on the other hand can help increase conversion and sales by increasing the relevance of on-site messaging, key products in this space are offered by companies such as ATG and Omniture. Cloud ComputingCloud computing is attracting a lot of media coverage right now. Essentially cloud computing is a means to provide IT infrastructure as a service. Here are some examples of cloud computing platforms. The relevance to digital marketing, while at first site possibly rather remote, could in fact be significant in some situations. A marketing department could buy scaleable IT capabilities on an as-needed basis without the need for significant internal personnel, hardware procurement and software licensing overhead. Clearly there may be times where non-technical considerations such as legal or data policy will prevent the use of such an approach, but for some projects these issues may not come into play, depending on requirements. Examples of cloud computing providers are: |
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