Four days after losing an auction with Comcast for control of Sky, 21st Century Fox has decided to sell Comcast its 39 percent stake in the European media giant in a deal valued at more than $15 billion. “In light of the premium Comcast has agreed to pay for Sky, we and Disney have decided…
The Fourth Industrial Revolution is here. As explained by the World Economic Forum (WEF), it’s a time defined by technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence, the Internet of Things (IoT), 3-D printing and quantum computing. While these innovations are improving our daily lives, they’ve also increased consumer expectations for personalized brand experiences, causing massive disruption…
“The experience at the DMV is more favorable than it is at the doctor’s office today,” said Clay Johnston, dean of the Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, on a panel this year at South by Southwest.
He’s right. Think of the last time you visited the DMV. I don’t know about you, but I knew exactly what to expect, and I walked out with exactly what I needed. I wasn’t even mad at my driver’s license photo. I can’t say my last visit to a doctor’s office ran as smoothly.
It’s confounding that the point-of-care experience is so underwhelming given how seamlessly our lives are integrated with health information. The watch I wear on my wrist knows how fast my heart is beating. I carry a supercomputer in my back pocket that gives me access to exponentially more information than “Gray’s Anatomy.” Yet somehow, instead of improving the consumer experience, this proliferation of technology has made our providers colder and our care more costly.
When a brand has an existential crisis, it tends to express itself in less-than-conventional ways.
While changing the font or the color of their mark has become status quo, lately new identities have been more than just decorativethey’ve adopted a character limit.
We’ve seen stunts in which brands change single letters in their name temporarily, to companies that have decided to remove punctuation marks to distance themselves from controversy and, well, some that figured abbreviating their names to acronyms or initialisms would simplify their cultural footprint (or potentially create an influx of new business).
Marketers get excited about data, artificial intelligence and the internet of things because of their combined power to potentially impact consumers’ everyday lives. Across the commerce landscape, the potential applications may be limitless: Farmers are now using satellite data to help increase crop yields and improve the quality of the food we eat. Shippers are deploying blockchain technology to modernize the supply chain and get products into stores more safely and quickly. Banks are relying on encrypted mainframe computers to help protect consumers’ personal data and prevent cybercrime.
One of the areas in which marketers have only just begun to tap the exponentially increasing unstructured data of the internet is the weather. Corporate America’s growing interest in weather data makes sense, given the near universal influence of environmental factors like weather on consumer purchase behavior. Fluctuations in weather can determine the frequency and timing of everything from doctor visits to shopping trips to attendance at entertainment and sporting events.
New and emerging technology platforms allow marketers to leverage weather data and connect with consumers in more targeted and relevant ways. For example, IBM Watson Advertising has informed its WEATHERfx platform with the Truven MarketScan database, which includes more than 250 million unique patients from across the health care spectrum, through a strategic partnership with Watson Health called WEATHERfx Health with Watson. A wide array of the platform’s triggers can help predict when certain weather patterns may exacerbate particular health conditions. By analyzing the two sets of data, WEATHERfx Health with Watson empowers brands to connect with consumers during these critical moments in order to drive both awareness and action.
Ads are already available on sister Instagram Stories platform.
LinkedIn announced two new additions to its integration with Microsoft Office 365, building upon last September’s integration of LinkedIn profile cards and Microsoft Office 365 profile cards. Director of product Liz Li revealed in a blog post that insights from LinkedIn on people that users are about to meet with can now be added directly…
WPP confirmed the news today, first reported by The Wall Street Journal on Sunday and backed up by sources close to the matter, that it will merge creative agency Y&R and digital network VML to create a new entity called VMLY&R. This marks new CEO Mark Read’s first significant move as head of the world’s…
Embora as informações disponibilizadas pela Wikipedia sejam de livre acesso e uso para qualquer pessoa, algumas empresas que têm utilizado seu conteúdo em larga escala costumam contribuir financeiramente com a Wikimedia Endowment, organização por trás da plataforma. Entre essas empresas estão gigantes como Facebook, Google, Microsoft e Apple, que utiliza bastante o serviço em sua assistente pessoal …
O post Agradecido pela ajuda com a Alexa, Amazon doa US$ 1 milhão à Wikimedia, a organização por trás da Wikipedia apareceu primeiro em B9.
When a brand has an existential crisis, it tends to express itself in less-than-conventional ways.
While changing the font or the color of their mark has become status quo, lately new identities have been more than just decorativethey’ve adopted a character limit.
We’ve seen stunts in which brands change single letters in their name temporarily, to companies that have decided to remove punctuation marks to distance themselves from controversy and, well, some that figured abbreviating their names to acronyms or initialisms would simplify their cultural footprint (or potentially create an influx of new business).
Marketers get excited about data, artificial intelligence and the internet of things because of their combined power to potentially impact consumers’ everyday lives. Across the commerce landscape, the potential applications may be limitless: Farmers are now using satellite data to help increase crop yields and improve the quality of the food we eat. Shippers are deploying blockchain technology to modernize the supply chain and get products into stores more safely and quickly. Banks are relying on encrypted mainframe computers to help protect consumers’ personal data and prevent cybercrime.
One of the areas in which marketers have only just begun to tap the exponentially increasing unstructured data of the internet is the weather. Corporate America’s growing interest in weather data makes sense, given the near universal influence of environmental factors like weather on consumer purchase behavior. Fluctuations in weather can determine the frequency and timing of everything from doctor visits to shopping trips to attendance at entertainment and sporting events.
New and emerging technology platforms allow marketers to leverage weather data and connect with consumers in more targeted and relevant ways. For example, IBM Watson Advertising has informed its WEATHERfx platform with the Truven MarketScan database, which includes more than 250 million unique patients from across the health care spectrum, through a strategic partnership with Watson Health called WEATHERfx Health with Watson. A wide array of the platform’s triggers can help predict when certain weather patterns may exacerbate particular health conditions. By analyzing the two sets of data, WEATHERfx Health with Watson empowers brands to connect with consumers during these critical moments in order to drive both awareness and action.
Twenty months after Procter & Gamble Chief Brand Officer Marc Pritchard called on digital players to get accredited third-party measurement of whether ads are seen by real people in brand-safe environments — and nine months past the deadline he set — Google still isn’t quite there.
But in a blog post today, the industry heavyweight outlines its progress and touts new measures reflecting the reality that marketers and agencies are all over the place on the viewership measures they want to pay for.
Is that good enough? P&G returned to YouTube earlier this year, and has kept advertising on other digital platforms, citing progress in keeping brands away from unwelcome content. News reports about ads running on YouTube videos that promoted violence, bigotry and terrorism had earlier driven many major marketers away, at least temporarily.
Facebook teamed up with Sphero Edu to develop CodeFWD, a free online education program targeted toward underrepresented and female students from fourth to eighth grades who are interested in studying computer science. CodeFWD is designed for both English and Spanish speakers. Sphero Edu uses programmable application-enabled robots to teach students coding and other computer science…
Category: Beyond Madison Avenue
Summary: Inspire Brands which owns Arby’s and Buffalo Wild Wings, is paying nearly 20% more for Sonic than what shares were trading at on Monday.
VML global chief executive Jon Cook has been handed the same role at the new agency being created by WPP through the merger of Y&R and VML.
Alibaba A.I. Labs, which develops Alibaba Group’s consumer AI products, said it will introduce a robot for the hospitality sector, making it the latest in a series of hotel-specific robots that make deliveries to guests in order to free up human staff for more complicated tasks. The Alibaba robot will be deployed in October to…
WPP’s new CEO Mark Read didn’t take long to make his first big move: The holding company is officially merging Y&R with VML.
VML global chief executive officer Jon Cook will lead the new agency, which will be called by an alphabet soup of letters: VMLY&R. WPP says the shop will be a “contemporary, fully integrated digital and creative offering to clients on a global scale.” David Sable, former global CEO of Y&R, will continue as non-executive chairman and transition into a new role within WPP.
In a statement, Read said the new shop “will be a powerful brand experience offering and a core agency brand for WPP. VML and Y&R have distinct and complementary strengths spanning creative, technology and data services that make them a perfect match.”
Yes, we know it’s nearly October, but it really was hot back in July, wasn’t it? Laurence Thomson draws summer to a close with the last of the playlists.
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