Page 100 - The EDIT | Q2 2017

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Thoughtleader
build desired associations through emotion and context — enables new capabilities and ways of reaching and influencing consumers. Much of this will not be seen as intrusive from a consumer point of view... the age-old contract between consumers and advertisers — that they will exchange attention (or data) for value — may have been renegotiated in the digital age, but has still held. Make no mistake, our future augmented reality will come free, and with ads.
Voice-recognition
If you spend any time hanging out in China you’ll notice a phenomenon that is now spreading elsewhere. People have stopped typing into their phones. They now record voice messages and
send them on messenger platforms. For those of
us who worked in the industry before the advent of the iPhone it’s like going back to the future — for those of you too young to know, listening to your voice messages used to be the main way you communicated if not face to face or over the phone. Voice messaging is back — and it’s not hard to see why. It’s faster and easier than typing (something to which my parents will attest) and, on platforms like WhatsApp, is simple and easy to retrieve.
Voice is back, but not just in messaging. Growth of voice search in the last 12 months out-stripped text search. What’s powering the growth in voice is the ability of machines and devices to understand what we’re saying. Technology is enabling increasing accuracy in voice recognition and true-natural language. The next-generation VPAs will achieve 98% plus accuracy level. Baidu currently has a 96% accuracy rate. Apple and Google are not far behind,
with a 95% and 92% accuracy rate respectively. Every additional percentage increase above 96% will make a remarkable difference to the experience.
VPAs and the rise of GAFA and BAT
The convergence of a lot of this technology will result in the Virtual Personal Assistant (VPA). PHD predicted the emergence of these technologies and identified how they will disrupt purchase decision- making in Sentience.
Since that book was published we have seen the rise of this technology in two principal areas. Firstly, VPAs have developed in the first place they called home
— our smartphones. Google’s assistant and Apple’s Siri, as well as Microsoft’s Cortana, now have more advanced capabilities and features, and can now perform simple tasks and requests for us. But they are currently now leaping into a second place where they will be able to do even more... our homes.
The recent launch of Apple’s HomePod joins Google Home and Amazon’s Alexa as VPAs that sit in
and will increasingly manage our homes. From playing our music to setting room temperature and managing security systems, our VPAs are now with us in our homes and our pockets — and we’ve only seen the very beginning of their influence.
VPAs biggest impact is in an area they are only beginning to explore — commerce and retail. Alexa is of course seamlessly integrated into Amazon’s shopping and distribution infrastructure. Soon Siri and Google Assistant will join them and together they will not only answer search requests and
turn up the volume or heat, but they’ll manage
our shopping lists too. Partnerships that are currently with companies like Nest will expand to
THE EDIT ISSUE 06 | Q2 2017