Lab Weekly - 03/10/2023
Takeaways from the IAB Playfronts 2023 event; plus, the latest must-know news and stats
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IAB Playfronts 2023 Recap: Gaming Is The New Mythology
Key takeaways from the 2nd annual gathering of ad and media players interested in reaching the ever-growing gaming audience
In case you missed it…
Four Ways Consumer Behaviors May Evolve Amid Recession Fears
Beyond some of the more obvious behavioral changes in the face of a potential recession, here are four emerging trends in consumer behaviors that brands should pay attention to.
Bing 2.0 Comes to Mobile as Microsoft Plots to Add Ads
Microsoft’s crusade to disrupt search continues, but not without some speed bumps. While the company continues to make the AI-powered Bing more widely available, it is also trying to fix some of the issues that early-adopters have encountered that grabbed headlines.
What Brand Marketers Need to Know about ChatGPT
We asked ChatGPT what it can do for brands, and then pulled apart its answers to see where the real use cases lie
Microsoft Launches “Co-Pilot” AI Assistant [Bloomberg]
Microsoft continues to strike while the AI iron is hot, as the Seattle-based company announced a new AI CoPilot feature in Dynamics 365, its set of enterprise apps for customer relationship management and resource planning. Leveraging OpenAI’s generative AI capabilities, this new CoPilot feature can help enterprise users streamline tasks like writing customizable emails to customers, automatically generating meeting summaries, or writing a response to customer service chats and emails based on prior conversations. Think of it as “auto-complete” feature on steroids.
As it has done with other AI tools, Microsoft is pitching this as something that workers will use, rather than a way to outright replace employees. The speed with which Microsoft is integrating generative AI into their tools is quite impressive, and considering its large market share in the enterprise software market, this move comes as a clever way for the company to solidify its lead while testing out some AI use cases before transplanting them into consumer-facing scenarios.
Related: Apple Watch gets OpenAI’s popular chatbot with watchGPT app [9to5Mac]; ChatGPT is now available in Microsoft’s Azure OpenAI service [The Verge]; ChatGPT is making its way to Slack [CNN]
Spotify Unveils Major Redesign With Vertical Home Feed [The Hollywood Reporter]
The impact of TikTok on app design continues to manifest itself in unexpected ways. The latest example? Spotify is adding a vertical scroll feed that features autoplaying snippets of video and podcasts, in a new UI that resembles TikTok’s “For You” page.
As part of the announcements from Spotify’s Stream On conference this week, this new interface is supposed to be populated by “Spotify Clips,” a new service allowing musicians to add 30-second videos to their profiles so that they can share behind-the-scenes info about their music or promote a new album.
By emphasizing the visual elements in music discovery, Spotify’s redesigned interface marks an interesting departure from most music streaming services. Of course, visual elements have always been part of music marketing -- just think of all the money that record labels spend on making music videos every year — but this TikTok-like interface reflects just how central the short-form video format has become in music discovery these days. Instead of losing that listenership share to TikTok or Instagram Reels, Spotify is determined to take on its own share of eyeballs (and ears). Of course, if that creates more video ad inventory for Spotify, that’d be a welcomed bonus as well.
Related: Spotify introduces Countdown Pages and its own Stories feature [TechCrunch]; Spotify is going big on video podcasts [The Verge]
TikTok's Series Feature Will Allow Creators To Charge For 'Premium' Content [Engadget]
Speaking of TikTok, the short video app is now gunning for more long-form content, as it continues to iterate on its creator support programs. This latest feature allows top creators to put select content behind a paywall that users would need to pay extra to unlock. The creators of the series can decide how much to charge for their videos, from as low as $0.99 to as high as $189.99 for one-time access to their collections. Aiming to encourage more creators to monetize their content on TikTok rather than YouTube, the company said that creators will get to keep 100% of their earnings from this feature, minus app store fees, “for a limited time.” Time will tell if this gambit will be successful in getting some fans to open their wallet and pay for content on TikTok.
Related: Nissan brings TikTok’s BeReal lookalike to March Madness [Ad Age]; Chipotle embraces viral TikTok trend with new menu item [Marketing Dive]; TikTok rolls out new screen time controls and wellness features [TechCrunch]
In-store fulfillment is hot. Following its Q4 earnings call, Walmart announced that it has nearly tripled its store-fulfilled delivery sales since 2021. The retail giant has also boosted same-day delivery capabilities from 3,000 stores to close to 4,000 in the same period.
Amazon announced plans to shutter 8 Amazon Go c-stores located in NYC, San Francisco, and Seattle. The move comes as the Imagee-commerce giant shifts its strategy from rapid expansion to cost-cutting. Amazon will continue to operate over 20 of these stores across the country.
Bing is gaining momentum. Microsoft shared on Thursday that its A-supercharged search engine Bing has crossed 100 million DAUs, driven by the new Bing preview's millions of active users, of which roughly a third are new to the search engine.
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