Home AdExchanger Talks Podcast: Marketing Finds Its Voice

Podcast: Marketing Finds Its Voice

SHARE:

AdExchanger Talks is a podcast focused on data-driven marketing. Subscribe here. This episode of AdExchanger Talks is supported by Exponential.

The rise of voice interfaces has the potential to be a highly disruptive trend in consumer technology. About a quarter of US broadband households own at least one smart home device, and 50% will accommodate smart speakers alone by 2021, according to Parks Associates.

Resolution Media President George Manas joins us in the podcast studio to discuss voice interactivity and it is affecting brands. Resolution is helping marketers leverage voice interfaces. It’s early days but not too early to have a strategy, Manas says. The fundamentals are similar to any channel: insights, activation and measurement.

But understanding consumer voice adoption is hard.

“One of the challenges in the market is the difficulty of understanding what’s happening in the ecosystem,” he says. “Predominantly because voice activity lives behind a bunch of different walled gardens – Amazon, Google and Microsoft being the big three.” Apple is a dark horse, he adds.

Amazon Alexa features centrally in this episode as the most successful voice platform, now integrated with more than 50 devices. In addition to smart speakers, Amazon is accessible via thermostats, light systems, dashcams, smartphones and some new Ford trucks. Given its growing pervasiveness, Amazon has a big opportunity to integrate advertising and trade marketing deals with the Alexa platform.

But with any new technology, platforms shun advertising while making their land grabs.

“Advertising within the voice ecosystem today runs the risk of being an annoyance,” Manas says. “If you look at any new technology, they all started ads-free. Facebook started ad-free, Google started ad-free.”

Also in this episode: How voice search differs from traditional search, where voice meets commerce and what marketers can do today.

Must Read

Google Rolls Out Chatbot Agents For Marketers

Google on Wednesday announced the full availability of its new agentic AI tools, called Ads Advisor and Analytics Advisor.

Amazon Ads Is All In On Simplicity

“We just constantly hear how complex it is right now,” Kelly MacLean, Amazon Ads VP of engineering, science and product, tells AdExchanger. “So that’s really where we we’ve anchored a lot on hearing their feedback, [and] figuring out how we can drive even more simplicity.”

Betrayal, business, deal, greeting, competition concept. Lie deception and corporate dishonesty illustration. Businessmen leaders entrepreneurs making agreement holding concealing knives behind backs.

How PubMatic Countered A Big DSP’s Spending Dip In Q3 (And Our Theory On Who It Was)

In July, PubMatic saw a temporary drop in ad spend from a “large” unnamed DSP partner, which contributed to Q3 revenue of $68 million, a 5% YOY decline.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

Paramount Skydance Merged Its Business – Now It’s Ready To Merge Its Tech Stack

Paramount Skydance, which officially turns 100 days old this week, released its first post-merger quarterly earnings report on Monday.

Hand Wipes Glasses illustration

EssilorLuxottica Leans Into AI To Avoid Ad Waste

AI is bringing accountability to ad tech’s murky middle, helping brands like EssilorLuxottica cut out bots, bad bids and wasted spend before a single impression runs.

The Arena Group's Stephanie Mazzamaro (left) chats with ad tech consultant Addy Atienza at AdMonsters' Sell Side Summit Austin.

For Publishers, AI Gives Monetizable Data Insight But Takes Away Traffic

Traffic-starved publishers are hopeful that their long-undervalued audience data will fuel advertising’s automated future – if only they can finally wrest control of the industry narrative away from ad tech middlemen.