Are you paying attention?

Trying to gauge peoples level of interest, attention and overall engagement with content (be it programming or advertising)  has traditionally been the realm of surveys and panels.


Answering surveys can be notoriously biased with the respondent either answering how they 'think' they should answer questions, being influenced by the questions themselves or other factors such as recall affecting responses.


Affectiva Facial recognition research allows the gauging viewers expressions, tracking 22 points around the face mouth eyes nose to then use machine learning techniques to train the software to tell the difference between happiness and sadness.


Using a simple webcam combined with Mindreader software observation of peoples expressions allows audience engagement to be tracked and measured.


try it here : link

Hand Signals

The continued drive for alternative methods of controlling devices gives rise to this neat looking unit from Leap Motion.


It differs itself from other motion gesture peripherals such as Kinetic by being more sensitive to movements, lending itself to more intricate interactions more suited to design and modelling applications.

more : http://www.leapmotion.com/

Touchscreen goes virtual

As devices continue to shrink in size the challenge of controlling and inputting information is becoming more of an issue.

With Apple’s introduction of Siri and Googles continued efforts in voice recognition pointing to an appreciation that the traditional keypads days are numbered.

Chris Harrison, the man who brought you "skinput" - a technology that allows you to tap parts of your body to control menu systems and electronic devices, has now gone one "tap" further – offering an alternative to voice control for devices.

Omnitouch allows for any surface to be transformed into a touchscreen - be it your hand, a wall or table.

Using a pico projector to project the image on the target surface, technology based on the Kinect which takes care of the sensing (including field of depth) and some smart software which identifies the optimum projection area meaning you do not have to move closer or further away from the ‘screen’, allowing for surfaces that are not truly flat to be used, such as your hand.

Being able to transform any surface into an input device interesting on it's own, however becomes a compelling story when you consider electronic ‘smarts’ will be eventually integrated into items such as clothing in the future and how we will ultimately control these wearable devices.

links : wearable technology, Chris Harrson

Live 3D TV

9 pubs in the UK will be the first to air a live sports event, in 3D.

The football match between Arsenal and Manchester United will be the first of many sporting events to be broadcast alongside the traditional 2D version.
marketing technology
Patrons in the pub's will don special glasses to watch the event, the first of it's kind anywhere in the world making use of 3D TV sets and Sky's HD receiver. The coverage will involve two sets of production and commentary staff for the game, making this when worked as a ratio of audience VS cost, one of Sky's most expensive broadcasts to date.
marketing
What it does signal is the start of the push into 3D for the mainstream, however any success in the public broadcast space actually translates into the front room remains to be seen - with the adoption far more readily available technologies such as HD still far from a tipping point of mass adoption, I think this is going to be a long haul for Sky and may end up still being a niche product.


more

3D TV

In the up and coming German consumer electronics trade fair show (the IFA) Sony are expected to announce their entrance into 3D TV.

While the timing of the actual launch of the sets into the market has yet to be announced, it's immanency echo's the general feeling in the industry that 3D TV is prime for launch ( back in 2007 I reported of the advancments in this area )

Recently Gartner published their hype cycle for emerging technologies with 3D Flat panel displays right at the cusp of the technology trigger. Sony's announcement validates their predictions that the technology is now entering mainstream, but with a word of warning - the hype around the technology still has to pass through the high expectations and subsequent disappointment consumers will experience before becoming both widely adopted and appreciated.

It will be interesting to see the reception from the market, with companies such as Phillips in the past having already pulled out from further promoting or developing it's WOWvx technology which gave the impression of depth and allowed for different viewing angles, without the need for 3D glasses ( Sony's implementation will require "active shutter" glasses to view )

Did Phillips pull out of the market too soon, will Sony's entrance into this space ignite again interest from the manafacturers?

source: Reuters

3D - no glasses required

It is thought that this year many movie production studios such as Dream Works will produce much of their output in 3D format for cinema. Already recent releases such as ' Monsters VS Aliens ' and the up and coming science fiction film from James Cameron ' Avatar ' indicates 2009 and 2010 will be the year 3D becomes more widely adopted.

Debuted in 2006 by Burton technologies their system which involves firing laser pulses at point in space to ionise the air ( thus creating a ball of plasma ) has been upgraded to increase the firing rate from 200 to 1000 ' flash-points ' per second - in effect increasing the resolution available.

In previous posts on 3D the technology involved has been to project images onto screens to give the illusion of 3D, however these recent advancements in laser technologies means true ' projected ' 3D images could be coming to a cinema ( or at the very least an advertising billboard ) near you pretty soon.


marketing technology
source : new scientist , delotte

Making mobile

Neat little tool from Ubik which allows you to create mobile web sites. Using a simple template driven approach very much in the same vain as blogger, you are able to create and publish mobile sites within 10 minutes.

Google Visual Rank – picture search to get smarter

google image search for "ape"

Searching for images on the web is still a hit and miss affair.

Efforts from many organisations to make the task of finding images and video on the web easier are really only just getting underway.

Currently all mainstream search providers rely on text descriptions of the image known as ‘ meta data ‘ or ‘ tagging ‘ to return results to our queries. Adding these descriptions to the images in most cases is a human task,time consuming, prone to error / interpretation and can very laborious marketing technology.

Google last year added ‘ face ‘ recognition to its search algorithms – however exactly whose face it was still relied on good old fashioned tagging ( see above ).

Taking this one stage further they recently published documents outlining trials of “ Visual Rank “ which combines image recognition technology with their ranking algorithms, ranking and returning pictures based on similarities found across a set of images.

Initially focusing its efforts on product images the search giant is expanding the trials to take in the travel related queries.

From a marketing perspective it adds a new dimension, now not only do advertisers have to grapple with ensuring keywords and phrases are associated to their products, the product imagery itself must be optimised.


Official Google Research Blog: VisualRank: "The idea was simple: find common visual themes in a set of images, and then find a small set of images that best represented those themes"

Grouping the search

A diversion from the norm here ( however a great example of how enhancing search adds context and relevance) with a music search tool called Yamelo.



The service which is still currently in beta allows you to search for music ( nothing new here ) but also usefully groups popular music by year. marketing technology

Youtube provides the content and also the visuals which are displayed from your search, along with ' tag clouds ' which enhances the entire experience and often leads to you revisiting some classic songs and artists.marketing

Adding Context

Something a little different from Penguin publishing.

marketing technology

The first in a series of 6 digital books :

"21 steps by Charles Cumming" which uses Google Maps to add context to the story.

trevor attridge marketing technology
marketing technology

You need to get out more

With the ever increasing accessibility to media there is little need to venture out into the wilderness (especially with this winter weather expected over the Easter break)

News, TV programmes and music are all delivered to our homes 24x7. Time shifted programming, PVR's and music services that learn our preferences and recommend entertainment based on these means our choice is huge – the reasons to leave the sofa are becoming less and less, as Robert Putnam highlighted - the bowling alleys of America are empty.

But what if you do fancy some ‘ old skool ‘ live entertainment?

The challenge

Having as most a music library that is digitally stored and accessed (therefore running into thousands of songs) does mean most of us have a music taste which is generally more varied than our predecessors.

In the past keeping an eye out in the press for tours of bands and artists was a hit and miss affair, relying exclusively on the promotion of these artists to make connections with their fan base.

A new service called SongKick aims to change this.

Working through a plugin to iTunes or Media player SongKick scans your music library and matches your library and recently played songs to up and coming tours. In addition to this based on your tastes it makes recommendations for other artists which may whet your appetite for an evening out.

Users

We are all time precious - it makes the job far easier than relying on listing and advertising, by also adding recommendations it opens up other avenues of music.

The record company

It gives an immediacy - ‘ we are in the zone ‘the recommendations are relevant to us – with all this choice we act like butterflies dipping in and out of each media channel , capturing our attention when it is most relevant is key.

Bands

For new breaking artists it gives a chance for them to be recognised who may not have a record contract but are touring venues it opens up a new audience to their music.

SongKick recognises tapping into Word of mouth for promotion of music is also essential, ( portals such as MySpace evolved from a user base whose love of music underpinned the service ) so provides plugins which displays tour dates and links to tickets for artists it’s users are blogging about.

Maybe some things are better not spoken about, but while writing this I’ve been alerted Neil Diamond is on tour .. best get those tickets booked.

Look whose talking.....

Measurement is a good thing

As the saying goes, how can you manage something if you cannot measure it in the first place ?

Measuring the buzz around your brand can be a tough, with multiple media channels to manage it is no longer a simple case of scouring over the newspapers, performing customer surveys and watching the news to find out what people are saying about your brand.

Internet measurement has traditionally been a case of using web metrics such as page impressions to gauge a relative popularity, but this in most cases is showing you the past – you are seeing the effects rather than the cause.

Identifying , listening , understanding and engaging in these conversations is now part of the marketing mix – Blair Witch with its huge online following before the films release proves that this is a space where must all now operate and understand.

Here and Now – Are your key and emerging markets where you think they are ?

What you need is the now, the present, where and what are people talking about.

You are a chocolate sauce manufacturer and your sales are soaring without any significant change to your traditional marketing strategy – what is the cause of this ?

In the online space wisdom would point you to the cookery blogs to find out what people are saying, but are your key influencers actually there?

You may have a large pocket of ‘ chatter ‘ in one place but are these people the real brand advocates or those who have already been influenced and while valuable, may not be the right people you need to engage for further product launches.

You also find that upon investigation, this group of people are indeed fans of your product but not responsible for the increase in sales or interest on your site.

Yes directly engaging all customers in some form of market research will eventually glean this information – but how fast and nimble is this process?

Companies participation in forums and blogs is an essential part of managing this relationship – but without some help you may be missing advocates and influencers by focusing in the wrong place.

Lets also not forget this is a big task and not always top of the marketers priorities.

marketing technology

Help is at hand

Marketing technology tools are now coming to the market which in essence scour the internet for conversations about your brand and it’s competitors.

Buy using such technology companies are now able to build maps measuring and reporting these conversations looking for key phrases and associated words - for example the number of times I use your brand name and other favorable words, thus identifying me as an advocate ( or not ).

These maps can identify the flow of these conversations ( key ) along with the most active and influential by seeing the connections in and out of these people.

marketing technology

The horse has bolted.

By coupling this with my relationships or ‘ connections ‘ marketers are able to build visual relationships between users, groups and forums allowing them to engage and monitor these conversations.

Just one example of its application is the ability to be able to respond to possible PR disasters from this chatter.

Sony were able to issue a PR statement highlighting their care in response to ‘ chatter ‘ that was emerging on the net surrounding there paint adverts, moving themselves into a proactive rather than a reactive position – it allowed Sony to see the shape of the crash and respond accordingly.

The human element

Now you may be thinking that using technology solves the issue, that large data centers will now be chugging away sucking in data and spitting out hit lists of users for the marketing department to bombard; not quiet.

Fortunately for us ( the consumer ) all of this data does need interpretation to give context and meaning.

Just like any other form of market research these maps showing the flow of sentiment and conversations require the human touch to gauge it’s importance and also ensure that our brilliant ability for sarcasm does not suddenly mean efforts are wrongly targeted.

technology marketing

links :

marketing technology

Sonar - Trampoline systems

Seer - VML

Truview - Visible technologies

Online ' TV ' - 2007 dawn of a new era ?

More than 3.5 million BBC programmes have been watched using the BBC's online on-demand iPlayer TV service during the fortnight after Christmas Day

Almost half the programmes viewed were outside the top 50 most popular demonstrating the long tail online offers.

more

Digital gives relevance... beware

flight BA 38 over shoots runway

The software is indeed serving the correct adverts, based on computer logic.

But what if this air traffic incident had been more serious, is this really the place to advertise one of the most recent and emotional terrorist acts the world has seen ?

more examples

Motorola adopts Google approach.....

Motorola is developing software which scans SMS messages on the users handset to then deliver ' relevant ' advertising, using a combination of key words from the text and also your GPS location.

The article in the Times goes on to give examples of a user texting the word ' hungry ' to then be sent adverts for restaurants in the local area.

Recent studies from Dynamic Logic for the Hilton’s Hampton hotel chain showed a positive increase in the Hotels brand awareness by advertising on weather.com’s WAP (Wireless Application Protocol) site, demonstrating there is indeed a market for relevant mobile advertising content.

All sounds interesting working in a similar fashion to Google Mail, therefore the same concerns have to be raised over privacy and relevance.

Speaking of relevance, I can't help thinking with the circle of friends and the ' colourful ' language they use, I could have a quite a few offers from the local sex shop if the technology goes live...... marketing technology

What are you looking at ?

During the click

Before and after the click , cause and effect. Two major areas of investment, research and interest to ad agencies and clients alike.

The click is the result of a conscious ( driven possible by a subconscious ) action, but what leads us to this point ?

Marketing departments portray the journey of the customer mapping and plotting the ‘ causes and effects ‘ media and previous experiences have on us ultimately to a point in time, be it a supermarket checkout or a webpage.

Insight and the future

Understanding this journey is important, it is an insight as to what brings people to these points and can be the difference between success and failure of a product or brand.

Gaining insight is a key area of growth and an area where increased effort and marketing budgets are focused as media becomes more diverse.

Brands and companies spend millions on market research to gain understanding, books are written on the subconscious elements which affect our decisions all the while pushing for a better understanding of an ever increasingly more complex consumer.

Behavioural targeting in the online space is growing , it monitors your browsing habits and makes connects and assumptions based on your previous history and serves advertising based on these assumptions – not perfect but at least this adds an element of relevance.

The question : Using web analytics gives us insight as to our final decisions, but what made us actually click?

Research again helps, however it does not always tell the full picture, we tend to answer in after thought rather than the there and now.

When I am actually on a web page what triggers me to click on a section or message as opposed to another similarly designed placement ? Does position really dictate success ?

Where is your Focus

Eye tracking used to involve headsets to track the users gaze – not the best way to give a ‘ real world experience ‘ with 10lbs of plastic on your head and wires running down your back.

As always though newer technology which uses infra red laser built into the monitor allows a users gaze to be tracked and monitored, the end result ‘ gaze maps ‘ and ‘ hot spots ‘ maps.

By following a users eye focus it is possible to build maps of where their eyes are spending time on the page ( Hot spots ) and the path of the eyes take over the page ( Gaze map )



maeting " heat map " n tend tecy" marketing" gaze map "

Things to consider

When looking at Heat and Gaze maps you must also take into account our peripheral vision, they are therefore not entirely ‘ pin point accurate ' but act as a guide.

Try this

Find a book or article which has over 15 words on the line, place this in front of you on a table or flat surface and focus on a single word while closing one eye.

Place your thumbs either side of the word and then slowly move these outwards, keeping focused on the single word as you go.

Stop when you can see no further words without moving your eye.

As you can see, your peripheral vision is quite large even when considering text as a format is one of the more difficult types of visuals we deal with.

So does eye movement monitoring give us the answer to our actions on a page?

On their own they do tell an intriguing story, but combined with web analytics and survey data they help increase our insight into peoples online ‘ click ‘ behaviour.

Note :

Advertisers may also do well to consider the technology to measure the effectiveness of their placements ' in game advertising ' .

In game advertising

A winning combination or an own goal ?

marketing technology

Numerous reports and acquisitions over the months have highlighted in-game advertising as a significant growth area.

But does this offer advertisers a way to place their message in front of engaged consumers or offer no more than a novel way for games producers to gain additional revenue.

Television

Ofcom’s* recent report highlights viewing figures are down yet again, with the average person spending around 3 ½ hours a week watching television. Compare this with Entertainment Software Association* figures of an average time spent playing games of around the 7 ½ hours per week.

Games - the benefits are obvious ?

You have an audience which is spending considerably more time captive to the game, far more opportunities exist to present your message to the gamer and advertisers are not held back by regulatory bodies in the same way as TV.

Also there is a degree of relevance knowing where the advert is being placed and in the future online gaming ( combined with with user profiles ) could be used to further tailor and deliver relevant marketing messages - it seems the lure of spending marketing dollars seems irresistible.

Irresistible indeed, Yankee group’s recent report estimates that by 2011 in game advertising expenditure will be over $900 million.

So does spending time, engaged and engrossed within a game equate to increased awareness ?

marketing technology

Focus

Recent article in Wired Magazine “ focuses “ on a technology that tracks the players eyes during game play, it concludes that people are concentrating so hard that there awareness for objects and items that are not directly related to the game is very limited.

In short – people are concentrating too much to notice the messages that are secondary to game itself.

All is not lost

Some of the highest brand recall rates are recorded where the brands themselves have an integral part within the game itself ( a good example of this is brands of cars in racing games ).

It is simply not enough to rely on these extended periods of game play and therefore exposure to get your message across, it has to be relevant and engage the player in some manner to be a success.

marketing technology

For an indepth view of game based marketing visit read " taking gaming to the next level " by Nigel Hollis.

* remember - double click in the article to find out more

Price check !

web price comparison instore using your camera phone

Barcodes have been around since the late 1980’s. It’s use in retail and supermarkets is unquestionably successful, however consumer applications using the technology have been less widespread in there adoption.

In Asia it is reasonably common for outdoor advertising to carry barcodes which when scanned by camera phones, action some form of trigger - normally a download to the unit or a redirection to a website.

Marketing’s preference in the UK is to use short codes, we are all familiar with texting a short keyword to a 5 digit number to fulfill the same purpose.

However it seems an awful waste when you consider barcodes are present on every item for sale in the retail world, surly some form of marketing technology can make use of humble barcode?

ScanZoom

The idea is simple. After installation of specialty barcode reading software from ScanZoom your phone becomes a hybrid barcode reader, but with a twist.

Scanning items using your your camera phone the barcodes are then translated into the product or item information which is then sent to Price-Grabber and Amazon ( for books ) for price comparison.

marketing technology

Two key benefits

For the consumer : A neat way of ensuring you can barter for the best deals for those impulse purchases.

For the compaines : An important way to gain insight into our considerations and decisions

Video Search - The Eyes have it.....

tveyes - using voice recognition to enhance search

In a previous post I discussed the issues around searching the web for video content.

The issue - relying on meta tagging ( the information used to describe the content of the file ) to find exactly what you are looking for. This data can more often that not be unreliable, too short in it’s description of the entire clip and in most cases is a manual human task.

This problem is only going to increase – today over 60% of the traffic on the Internet is video based, weekly we see more content providers and portals coming online.

Joining Blinkx is TVeyes, a content search service that also uses voice recognition technology to index and therefore make searchable television and radio content from the US, UK Canada.
While not necessarily guaranteeing 100% results it does go a long way in providing a viable complimentary technology for video search and marketing opportunities.

What next for the humble TV ?

TV goes 3-D

The move into High Definition broadcast now offers couch potatoes around the world a better viewing experience, outdoor advertising is using more interactive and engaging methods to connect with users - what will be the future of this technology ?

A number of manufacturers now have introduced displays which are able to create the illusion of ‘ depth ‘ to the picture with there “ autostereoscopic* “ displays – which in laymen’s terms means you get 3-D images without the need for the red and green glasses we are all used to.

Of course you need to have specially created 3-D material to display ( it will not take todays traditional broadcast feeds and add depth ) however it does give us a glimpse of the next generation of TV.

Another technology which has been around since the 1860’s has been undergoing some radical technology changes and offers display marketing some exciting options.

‘ Peppers Ghost ‘ used a combination of glass ( which was placed in front of stage performers at an angle of 45 degrees ) and projected images to give the illusion of images and objects materialising from thin air.

Bringing this concept forward 150 years today’s marketing technology from companies such as Vizoo uses a thin gauze and modern day computing horse power to produce 3-D images which quite literally float in mid air.

Linking these displays to touch screen consoles could give users an interactive and visual experience over and above traditional displays - lets hope these are put to good use in the outdoor and display advertising world.

Holographic Lexus floats and spins in mid air

* note - remember you can double click on any word in this blog to find out more information.