Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you needed instant access to information but were on the go or just too busy? Just like many others, you probably turned to your mobile phone and searched the web to find what you were looking for. It’s all about convenience and the mobile experience pretty much does the trick.

Over the last few years, mobile technology has evolved to fulfill this need for more convenience. New ways of searching and interacting with mobile devices have arisen, allowing the users to get information or complete daily tasks in a more natural way by using alternative input methods such as voice commands.

Voice technology is growing fast and represents an important turning point in the way consumers will expect to connect with brands. By 2020, 50% of all searches will be done through voice. Voice is the future of search and this future has already started now.

As a result, voice search, chatbots, smart speakers, digital assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, Cortana, Siri, ... are clearly becoming more than new buzzwords in the digital world.

Voice is about customized convenience

With the new possibilities that come with new mobile technologies, expectations evolve. Users expect to get personalized and direct answers, and they care about convenience.

That’s pretty much what voice technology has to offer. Voice technology is the practice of communicating with a search engine, website or app by only using spoken language. Speech is converted into computer query and the AI powering smart assistants is then able to process and complete users’ vocal requests, like playing their favorite music, searching online, setting their alarm, ordering a new product, ...

Today, more and more people are integrating voice-activated devices in their everyday lives. Early January, Google said it sold ‘more than one Google Home device every second since Google Home Mini started shipping in October.’ Smart speakers have started to fill in the houses and are pushing these expectations and behaviors by making daily routines easier. It becomes natural. By the way, 72% of people in the U.S. owning a voice-activated speaker say that their device is part of their daily routine.

What does it mean for you as a business? It represents new opportunities but also challenges. You may want to jump onto this transition before competition does. A good place to start is understanding the basics, the technologies and how it will affect the way users can interact with your brand.

Voice Search vs Conversational Search, a blurred line

The voice landscape is still growing and rapidly evolving. That’s why we took it upon ourselves to try and map what’s out there, to help us, and you, understand what to do next.

You have probably heard about the concepts of voice and conversational search. Both leverage the AI capabilities of speech recognition and natural language processing to turn user’s speech into text that is then turned into queries understandable by machines (smartphone, smart speaker, …). Even though they might seem the same, they’re not. Voice search and conversational search differ in terms of user interaction, in the way their technology delivers output to answer a user’s request.

Voice search is a technology that enables users to search for information, products or services via search engines using spoken language. It recognizes and translates speech into computer query. The machine algorithm processes it and eventually returns output listed in a search engine results page.

For example, with a simple click on the microphone, you can ask Google Search ‘where is the closest supermarket?’ or ‘what’s the cheapest flight to New York at the moment?’ and you will get a SERP as you usually get on Google Search. 

Here, the combination of voice and mobile technologies makes the results relevant to your current context and location.

Conversational search is a technology that enables users to ask a question, additional information or to complete an action via a digital or smart assistant, by using their voice in a natural, conversational manner. It recognizes and processes user speech, translates it into computer query and returns one vocal output before letting the user follow up with another query or close the conversation.

For example, you can ask ‘where is the Empire State Building?’ to your Google Assistant app and you will get an instant vocal answer. Then you can follow up by asking ‘When was it built?’ and ‘How tall is it?’.

Here, voice technology translates vocal input into an understandable web query. Then, machine learning processes the query and enables the assistant software to understand the context and follow up, knowing that you are still referring to the Empire State Building with your following questions.

To make it more concise, here below is an overview of how we interpret and understand the basic components of voice landscape at this stage.

What about your digital strategy? SEO vs SEA vs Applications

The shift in the way people are searching, from text to vocal, and their expectations for more personalized instant answers will require to rethink your digital approach, especially in terms of content optimization and web indexing.
Here you can see which of your digital activities will be affected by the use of voice technologies.

SEA: With voice search, optimal SEA strategies will need to address longer-tail and precise queries, often turned in a question form and more local. Mobile voice-related searches are 3X more likely to be local-based than text-related searches. Thinking local and automation will be the main enablers, and many automated solutions can help you with it, like smart bidding, ad customizers or feed-based ads.

SEO: As of January 2018, there were an estimated one billion voice searches per month. This trend will impact the way of building and structuring web content. With voice, ranking first is even more important.

• Focusing on user intent and context elements by performing semantic search rather than keyword search only;
• Writing content in a conversational form to answer question-like queries in a natural way (e.g. creating FAQ sections);
• Adding structured and informational data that help the algorithm crawling your content more efficiently and focus on featured snippets, direct answers or knowledge graph integrations.

All these aspects will be worth considering to help your brand ranking at the top in voice search results.

Apps: Smart assistants are learning with every user interaction. As a brand, the opportunity you have now is to be a frontrunner in this realm and integrate this touch point within your consumer journey.

Let’s consider Google technologies here. On top of the built-in connections that the Google Assistant has with its own ecosystem and other apps (like your gmail inbox, your calendar, Google search engine, Google map, Spotify, …), the option you have as a business is to develop your own assistant/chatbot. A conversational agent that the Google Assistant will call on when asked questions related to your business.

It will require designing your own conversational flow based on the way your users want to interact with you and the questions they might ask through voice. It is an opportunity to highlight your brand personality by building your own voice and assisting users with convenient and personalised solutions where and when they need it.

All three elements will be indispensable as part of a business strategy to adopt voice technologies.

Conclusion

In brief, voice technologies are growing fast and are rapidly altering the way users search and expect to get information. Users expect to connect with brands in a more natural, personal and conversational way, without any friction. They expect brands to offer them convenient solutions that assist and delight them in their daily lives.

As a business, it is the perfect time to consider conversational interactions supported by voice technologies as a part of your consumer journey. Start by understanding the basics of voice and assistant technologies, how they work and how they will affect your digital approach.

Now is the right time to start experimenting, learning and building your own voice!

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In this article, we are taking a closer look at online audio advertising and how changes are being made in the way these ads are bought. First of all, we will hand you a brief introduction to what exactly programmatic audio buying is, followed by what the advantages are compared your standard digital audio buying and lastly, what the possibilities in Belgium are.

What is programmatic audio buying?

Only recently introduced in Belgium, programmatic audio buying is a different way of reaching audiophiles all around the country and at any time via audio ads online. This through programmatic media buying. But what does that mean? By using Demand-Side-Platforms or DSPs such as DoubleClick’s bid manager, advertisers and media buyers are able to enter auction-based & real time bidding for ad placements.

Buying media programmatically has already been available for quite some time for display (bannering) and video advertising. However, now, audio formats are being added to that list.

Advantages of programmatic audio buying. How is this a step forward?

With 27% of time spent per day on mobile devices listening to audio, programmatic audio advertising allows us to reach out to our target audience where and when we want.

Being able to buy audio ads programmatically is a large step forward. Before, audio ads where only possible through direct deals which had to be negotiated with and created by the streaming services. This process lead to quite some red tape which can now be resolved to some extent using DoubleClick. The main advantages are:

• Run time flexibility: An advertiser/media agency can now choose to activate/pause their audio ads at any given point. In a direct deal, the run time period is fixed.
• More flexible pricing: While direct deals work with a fixed media budget, programmatic audio buying allows for setting your own budget. 
• Campaign monitoring and reporting: Follow-up on the evolution of a campaign’s performance becomes more transparent. Campaign results can now easily be followed in the DoubleClick platform where this used to be on SSP side.
• All-in-one reporting: with the integration of audio ads in DoubleClick, we can easily report on both digital and audio formats within the same platform.
• Customisation & personalisation: Using additional data signals, the possibilities of customisation become endless. Think here for example about customizing your audio ads based on a person’s music preference or past behavior on your website through remarketing.

There is however a general disadvantage to buying audio ads through auction-based bidding. One of the key characteristics of programmatic buying is the fact that delivery of ad impressions is not guaranteed, which is the case using a direct deal negotiated with the SSP.

Possibilities of programmatic audio in Belgium

At this point in time, in Belgium, programmatic audio buying is still limited to the music streaming platform, Spotify. To get a little more technical, audio ads will be available through a specific kind of deal (PMP - Private Marketplace Deals) and can be set up with different Supply-Side Platforms or SSPs such as Rubicon and AppNexus in DoubleClick Bid Manager. The ads will be available for both mobile and desktop devices using Spotify.
Right now, Spotify is the only music streaming platform in Belgium partnering up with Google’s DoubleClick in order to make this happen. Nonetheless, we can expect others to follow in their footsteps. To name another, think about other popular music streaming website such as for example Soundcloud.
Ultimately, the technology behind this form of buying could be pushed even further beyond online music streaming. In the long term, programmatic audio buying could even be applied the buying of audio ads in the form of radio spots on the most popular radio stations, which, would be milestone in the fast-evolving industry of online advertising.

In summary

With Spotify audio ad buying through DoubleClick, Google has opened up the niche market of online audio advertising to the Belgian advertiser. Doing so, allows advertisers to be more flexible in terms of timing and pricing when running audio campaigns online and of course receive greater value in terms of reporting and monitoring. We expect this space to grow quickly over the years and months to come, making it a dominant buying method over time. {snippet jeroencools-en}

With Snapchat leaving the closed beta phase on its Snap pixel behind, it is time for an update on this feature. In this small post we are taking a closer look to how advertisers can capitalize on the growing presence of measurability within the platform.

The introduction of the Snap pixel was something avid Snapchat advertisers have been longing for quite some time. With both its self-service platform and the snapchat pixel, Snapchat clearly shows signs of shifting away from focusing solely on those big branding advertisers and welcomes advertisers who are more performance driven.

What is the Snap pixel?

First, let’s explain what the Snapchat Pixel is. In short, the Snap pixel is a piece of code that allows Snapchat advertisers to have actions taken on their websites be attributed to their Snapchat advertising campaigns. Under actions, we can understand for example leads & conversions such as filling out a contact form or even making a purchase.

Advantages of Snap pixel integration

More qualitative measurement & optimization

The key advantage of implementing a Snap pixel is of course more qualitative measurement. Here, Snap is still a relatively new advertising player who follows in the footsteps of other platforms such as Facebook, Google AdWords, Doubleclick,... who have have been using this form of tracking and measurement for some time.
Let’s, for example, say we sell shoes and we decide to run an advertising campaign on Snapchat to drive shoe sales in our webshop. Conversion tracking, using the Snap pixel, will now allow us to more accurately assess sales performances during and post-campaign. 
This means that the real value now lays in reporting that moves beyond standard metrics available such as number of view, swipe ups etc. In the case of the shoe store, we can now assess more valuable KPIs such as our Return on Investment (ROI) / Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) and cost per pair of shoes sold that provide more concrete business information.

Performance driven budget distribution

Following on the above, ultimately, as an advertiser, identifying where we can get the optimal (lowest) cost to drive product/service sales is a large step forward when deciding on budget distribution. By tracking relevant actions (leads, conversions) attributed to campaigns across different advertising platforms we have the possibility for more valuable comparison and thus allocation of said budgets.
Of course on the level of targeting, budget can be optimally allocated as well. Here below an example of events split over for example devices & OS.

What types of actions can you track?

At this point in time Snapchat provides standard events that can be tracked using the pixel. This ranges from your standard page views to signup events as well as e-commerce purchase events. A list can be found here below. 

However, it is worth noting that these are standard events that can be tracked. With some knowledge of tag management systems, more customized events can be tracked easily.
In the platform itself, it is possible to quickly switch between different events tracked.

Unfortunately, app install tracking did not make the list yet. Nonetheless, the possibility to track apps through the advertising platform is there via workarounds. Third party tracking tools will need to be utilised in order to effectively measure these installs for now.  

How to setup Snapchat conversion tracking?

Setting up the Snap pixel runs very similar to the Facebook pixel setup and it’s recommended to make use of a tag management system to do so. More information on the technical implementation of the pixel can be found in the Snapchat business help center

The Snap pixel separates itself into two pieces of javascript code:

• One standard base pixel to track page views:
  

• Event javascript code (here for example purchase)
  

Remarketing audiences

At this point in time, building remarketing audiences based on the Snap pixel events for your advertising campaigns is not yet available. Nonetheless, when opened up this could be the first stepping stones towards building remarketing strategies for Snapchat using funnel flows or even dynamic product remarketing.

Summary and conclusions

In short it is interesting to see the direction Snapchat is moving in with their updates to their advertising platform. What you should take away from this article:

• Shift of large branding to performance driven advertising becomes more highlighted
• Allows for more qualitative measurement and budget allocation
• Standard tracking possible, not yet app tracking (only 3rd party)
• Remarketing audiences are not available but should be coming in the future.

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Amazon’s  Advertising

The biggest ad companies are strongly increasing their investments in advertisements on Amazon. Omnicom Group is even planning to double its Amazon investments in 2018.  Where agencies were asked for strategies on Google and Facebook a couple of years, there is an increase in similar requests for Amazon.

Facebook and Google excel in the top of the funnel, but Amazon started to influence the customer journey - especially low funnel. The e-commerce platform is more and more becoming the first stop for people shopping online and this is the reason of an increasing interest by advertisers.

After being secretive about its advertising business ambitions, Amazon has been ramping up its Marketing services, hiring experienced profiles and testing with Application programming interfaces which will enable Amazon advertising to grow.

How to advertise on Amazon?

First of all, you’ll need an account on Amazon to sell your products, for which there are two different options: Vendor account or Seller account.

Having a seller account, you use some space on the Amazon website to sell your products, with the possibility to also use their fulfillment services. With a seller account you have more control on your listing and the price.

With a Vendor account, Amazon control the listing and the customer price. In this case you actually sell your products to Amazon, who then sells it to their customers. Next to the less control, you do have access to some advantages like Brand store pages, full Amazon Marketing Services and some additional extra programs.

Different Advertising Products

 

1. Sponsored Products allow you to push specific products to be shown between and next to search results. It supports keyword targeting and leads towards the product detail page within Amazon.
2. The Headline Search Ads give you the possibility to appear right underneath the search bar in the Amazon search results page. This means you’ll be present with your ad at the top of the page, above all search results.
3. The third possible ad format is Product Display Ads, which allows you to increase your reach with additional targeting methods like interests, product categories and additional placements like the customer review pages and even emails.

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