Lab Weekly - 04/19/2024
Decoding Gen Alpha & their Millennial parents, Plus, the latest news about Meta’s AI, Airchat, and more
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Kids These Days: What Marketers Need to Know About Gen Alpha
.Numbering 48 million in the U.S. alone (or 15% of the U.S. population), Gen Alpha not only brings forth a major shift in media consumption, but also starts to influence household spending and purchase decisions across categories. As the children of Millennials, these digital and AI natives burst onto the scene with a unique sense of humor, attitude, and slang, reshaping where and how brands seeking after a younger audience conduct their campaigns and craft their media strategies.
In case you missed it…
How Climate Anxiety Is Upending Business As Usual
Climate anxiety’s impact on consumer behavior extends far beyond EVs and sustainable products — from emerging travel trends such as “cool-cationing” and “last-chance tourism” to fortifying our home to be a sanctuary from worsening weather conditions, climate anxiety is manifesting in unexpected ways.
2024 IAB PlayFronts Recap: Optimism Abounds
Optimism abounds when it comes to activating in gaming in 2024 –esports, influencers custom editorial with publishers — but two channels have prevailed as most popular with brands advertisers in the last year — mobile and immersive digital environments.
What's Old Is New Again for Hollywood
Is the streaming model broken? Instead of an ad-free, cheaper-than-cable, on-demand viewing experience initially promised by the streaming revolution, we're now being treated to a gradual revival of features typically associated with linear TV, such as ad-supported viewing, procedural shows, and so on. Is Hollywood truly out of ideas? Or is this what the audience wants?
Meta Tests An AI Search Bar On Instagram [TechCrunch]
We already know that younger generations prefer to search on social media over using Google. A widely cited stat from Google’s research is that 40% of Gen Z prefer TikTok or Instagram to search for something, such as a place to eat, over Google or Google Maps. 46% of those ages 18-24 start their information quests by searching on Google, per data shared exclusively with Axios from YPulse. That's compared with 58% of those ages 25-39. 21% of 18- to 24-year-olds start with TikTok, while 5% start on YouTube.
Now, Meta is ready to push AI search into its platforms to supercharge this trend. From testing AI chatbots in WhatsApp in India and experimenting with AI in Instagram's search bar for both communication and content discovery, Meta AI is set to be front and center in the search experience on those platforms.
On the Instagram front, users will be able to interact with Meta AI directly through the search bar, leading to DM conversations where they can explore pre-loaded prompts or ask questions. In addition, Meta is also leveraging it to enhance content discovery on Instagram, as evidenced by the ability to search for specific Reels, such as "Beautiful Maui sunset Reels."
Meta's efforts reflect a broader trend among tech giants to enhance user engagement and content relevancy through advanced AI technologies, a strategy that could significantly alter how users interact with social media platforms and discover content. For brands, this means either leaning in and optimizing brand assets for AI search, or focusing on creating more human-created. high-quality content to stand out in a deluge of AI-generated content.
Related: Meta trials its AI chatbot across WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger in India and Africa [TechCrunch]; Instagram is reportedly testing Creator AI, a program that uses AI to allow influencers to DM with fans – basically a chatbot that mimics the influencer [New York Times]; Brave Search is adopting AI to answer your queries [TechCrunch]
Airchat Is Silicon Valley’s Latest Obsession [Wired]
The tech world has a new buzzy app. Airchat, which reportedly mixed the feed aspect of Twitter with the audio-first format of Clubhouse, has reportedly captured the attention of Silicon Valley. Created by Naval Ravikant, co-creator of AngelList, and Brian Norgard, Tinder’s former chief product officer, the app recently relaunched in invite-only mode after a major overhaul. More than 30,000 of Airchat's 45,000 downloads occurred this month, per Bloomberg.
An interesting detail of Airchat is that all audio plays at 2x speed by default, which speeds up audio consumption. The feed is also equipped with AI-generated captions that let you read the posts in addition to listening to them. Ravikant emphasizes that Airchat's intent is not for catching up on missed conversations but to experience what's happening in real-time, likening it to joining conversations at a house party.
It’s truly surprising to see yet another social audio app “blow up” after the slow death of Clubhouse essentially proved that social audio is more of a feature for social platforms to incorporate rather than a standalone platform itself. So, how to explain Silicon Valley’s newfound interest in Airchat then?
For one, I think this is a result of the tech and media exodus from Twitter since Elon Musk took over. While Twitter alternatives like Thread and Bluesky are steadily gaining traction, none of them has scaled enough yet to re-capture the type of community-driven magic of experiencing a live event on Twitter. And the tech world misses that.
For another, Airchat could be seen as an antidote to the TikTok-tization of social media, where all major social platforms are gradually becoming short video platforms. As Sherin Shibu puts it, “If your eyes glaze over at long social media posts, and you find yourself overstimulated by endless videos, Airchat is a happy medium.”
Then there’s also the fact that voice messages have become more popular since Clubhouse flamed out. According to a 2023 poll by Vox, about a third of Americans used them at least weekly. In 2022, WhatsApp reported that its users sent a daily average of 7 billion voice memos.
Listening to someone actually articulate their thoughts in their own voice is also more intimate than reading a written post. Like a bite-sized podcast, Airchat could provide a feed of soundbites or provoking conversation starters. As younger generations start to shy away from conventional dating apps in favor of using social media to scout for potential dates, perhaps something like Airchat could be embraced for its potential as a dating app too. After all, a lot of people used to meet their romantic partners at house parties.
Related: In the age of AI, users should be more cautious than ever about how their data can be used by Airchat [Bloomberg]; Amazon Music launches Maestro, a new AI playlist generator [Amazon Newsroom]; Spotify’s latest AI feature builds playlists based on text descriptions [The Verge]
TCL's Next Stop Paris Is An Ai-Generated Rom-Com [Tweak Town]
Reaction to branded AI-generated content is hard to nail down. At a time when beloved entertainment brands like A24 and Netflix are catching flak for using seemingly AI-generated images in their marketing materials, TCL is charging ahead with an AI-generated original series for its own ad-supported streaming service, TCLtv+, which is apparently only available on TCL TV sets.
Interestingly, while the show fully embraces AI-generated visuals, it is written and voiced by human writers and actors. The trailer doesn’t look great, but one could see how this approach could, when the text-to-video AI models get better, become a cost-effective way to provide visuals to accompany a podcast or an audiobook, thus transforming a piece of audio content into video content.
Related: Netflix uses seemingly AI-manipulated images in true crime doc [Futurism]; A24 under fire for seemingly AI-generated Civil War ads [Gizmodo]
Situational Awareness:
TikTok teams With AXS to let artists, venues and festivals sell concert tickets in the app [Variety]
Great to see TikTok integrating with AXS, despite having integrated with Ticketmaster last year. Having more options is always good for customers. Of course, TikTok is also covering their bases here, given the brewing DOJ’s anti-trust lawsuit against Live Nation.
TikTok starts rolling out TikTok Notes, its Instagram rival for sharing photo and text content [The Verge]
This is in limited testing in Australia and Canada for now. No words on when it’d roll out widely, but do we really need another Instagram-Pinterest hybrid?
Apple will now let users in the EU download apps through websites, not just the App Store [TechCrunch]
Fascinating to see how far Apple would let these alternative App Stores go, especially considering its current approach to a number of other elements of DMA compliance are under investigation by the EU Commission.
YouTube launches new Shopping features to help creators market products [TechCrunch]
The hope springs eternal for social commerce to take off in the U.S. Worth noting here is that as part of this announcement, YouTube revealed that users watched over 30 billion hours of shopping-related videos in 2023.
Amazon Prime hit a new high of 180 million U.S. shoppers in March 2024, up 8% YoY, despite greater online competition, per a Bloomberg report citing CIRP tracking data. This means 75% of U.S. shoppers now have a Prime membership
The top 3 music streaming services, Spotify, Apple, and YouTube, now make up about 40% of annual revenue at both Universal Music (#1 label) and Warner Music (#3), according to the latest data from Music Business Worldwide. In addition, 50% of Universal Music’s 2023 revenue came from the U.S. No other market globally crossed 10%.
AI may consume a quarter of America's power by 2030, according to Arm CEO Rene Has in an interview. An IEA Electricity 2024 report suggests that ChatGPT requests consume nearly 10 times more electricity than a Google search. This could lead to an increase to 25% of the US' current 4% power grid usage from AI datacenters.
Ability to work with AI is increasingly identified as "top skill of the future" for creatives. Autodesk's 2024 State of Design and Make report, which surveyed over 5,000 industry leaders in creative fields, found that 79% think AI will make their industry more creative, and 66% think AI will become essential across the board within the next three years.
If you find our insights valuable and would like to have a deeper conversation on technology and media innovations, or need to sound smarter in a client meeting or a pitch, please feel free to reach out to Chelsea Freitas, our VP of Strategy, at chelsea@ipglab.com.
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