Lab Weekly - 10/06/2023
What’s next for social commerce; plus, the latest news about the generative AI and streaming, along with some must-know stats
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The Social Commerce Pivot
On September 13th, TikTok Shop officially rolled out to all users in the United States. It came at an interesting time, as social commerce in the U.S. is facing a pivotal moment in its development. For years, social media has served as a highly effective discovery channel, but it has been less successful when it comes to directly driving sales. As experiments with embedded in-app purchase and live commerce fail to gain traction among U.S. consumers, will TikTok’s latest attempt point this sector to a viable growth path? Read this insightful article written by our Associate Director of Strategy, Katy Geisreiter, for the Lab’s take on the future of social commerce.
In case you missed it…
Meta Connect 2023 Recap: Everything Brand Marketers Need To Know
During its annual Connect conference, Meta offered crucial updates regarding its AI and metaverse strategies, signaling another attempt at consumer attention land-grabbing.
The End of the Anti-Amazon Alliance
Three key takeaways from the surprising Amazon-Shopify deal last week: While logistics continues to be Amazon’s biggest competitive moat, and ease of payment still matters a lot to online shoppers, in the end, scales always win out.
The End Is (Finally) Here For Cable TV — What Comes Next?
The recent Disney-Charter dispute laid bare a heightened conflict between the content providers and distributors that has simmered beneath the surface for years. Add in WBD’s decision to bring some live sports content into Max, the long-waited end of cable TV finally seems to be near — but is this just the beginning for another round of re-bundling?
Google Debuts New Pixel Smartphones, Merges Bard Into Assistant [Engadget]
While merging Bard into Google Assistant has been a long-assumed move, this announcement still marks an important milestone in the adoption of generative AI. Integrating the new AI Assistant also dovetails with the recent boom in AI-powered hardware. While the market share of Pixel phones is too negligibly small in the US (accounting for about 3% of total smartphone shipment) to really move the needle, Google Assistant itself is currently used by more than 500 million users worldwide, thanks to the prevalence of Android phones and Google’s popular services.
Google suggests the expanded capabilities could be used for personal tasks, like trip planning, creating a grocery list, or writing a caption for social media. Google also says it will examine how people use Assistant with Bard before launching the functionality broadly to the general public across Android and iOS. With it soon arriving on mobile devices, all the microphones, cameras, and other types of sensors embedded on our mobile devices could potentially become new inputs for Bard. Overall, this should further normalize the use of generative AI in everyday digital interactions, and accustom more mainstream users to it.
Related: Designer Jony Ive and OpenAI's Sam Altman discuss AI hardware project [The Information]; Amazon is set to supercharge Alexa with generative AI [The Verge]; Google’s Bard chatbot can now find answers in your Gmail, Docs, Drive [The Verge]
Meta’s AI Stickers Are Here & Already Causing Controversy [VentureBeat]
Surprising no one, Meta AI’s sticker-generating feature, which just rolled out late last week, is already being put to the test by the internet. The AI models behind the stickers are not perfect and can be fooled by users into generating offensive or otherwise inappropriate content. For example, users have been able to generate stickers depicting child soldiers, nude politicians, and cartoon characters in compromising positions, often by using creative prompts or typos to bypass Meta's filters.
This is but the latest incident that raises concerns for brand safety, as marketers may find their brands associated with offensive or harmful content if they are not careful about how they use generative AI. There are works being done to eliminate such concerns, such as the AI image generator made by Getty that only trained on its licensed images. But ultimately, the responsibility falls on the consumer-facing platforms, most of which are rushing to integrate AI features in recent months, to work with advertisers to set the guardrails around what branded assets will show up in the AI model and what gets excluded.
Related: You can now use the DALL-E 3 AI image generator inside Bing Chat [The Verge]; MrBeast calls TikTok ad showing an AI version of him a 'scam' [NBC News]
Comcast and Charter Launch Xumo Boxes For Spectrum Customers [Variety]
The budding re-bundling of cable TV got another push this week, as Comcast and Charter, two of the biggest telecom companies in the U.S., launched a new streaming box via their joint venture Xumo. The new Xumo box combines live cable TV with access to popular streaming apps like Netflix and Disney+, and it represents a recognition from cable TV providers that they need to adapt to the changing viewing habits of consumers. More and more people are cutting the cord and switching to streaming services, and the Xumo box is an attempt to keep these consumers within the cable TV ecosystem.
The Xumo box also has the potential to disrupt the streaming market. By offering a single device that combines live TV with streaming apps, the Xumo box could make it easier for consumers to find and watch the content they want. This could make the Xumo box a competitor to existing streaming devices like Roku and Amazon Fire TV, especially in regions where Comcast and Spectrum have de-facto monopolies over residential broadband services.
That said, most U.S. households already have a TV streaming device or connected TV set, and most people are used to their streaming interface of choice at this point. For Xumo to be competitive, the integration of live TV and on-demand streaming alone won’t be enough. Selling hardware with inferior user experience rarely works, and it’d take some heavy incentives, through bundling or discount, for Xumo to help cable companies grab a new foothold in the streaming space.
Related: Netflix reportedly set to raise prices again after actors' strike [Reuters]; AT&T Looking to shed stake in DirecTV [Bloomberg]
Hilton's third annual report on travel trends identified four major themes predicted to guide people's travel spending in 2024. Some highlight stats include:
For 80% of global travelers, being able to utilize personal devices seamlessly with on-property technology, from Wi-Fi to streaming apps, is important.
About 75% of Gen Z and Millennials are interested in experiencing local, unique hotel bars during their 2024 travels.
78% of global travelers appreciate healthy grab-and-go markets when they are traveling.
Desiring in-room white noise is an emerging trend, driven by the nearly 10% of global travelers who say they travel with a white noise machine.
24% of global business travelers plan to take a friend or family member with them on a business trip next year.
Just under a year ago, the buzzy new social app BeReal looked to be on the rise, with reportedly 20 million users launching the app every day to snap their candid photos. However, in the months since, BeReal’s traction has declined, according to a recent report from Similarweb, which claims that the app’s number of active users has dropped to 16 million. But, BeReal pushed back at the report and shared that it now has 25 million daily users, TechCrunch reports.
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 our Group Director Josh Mallalieu!
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