Tap Into the Power of Voice AI Without Alexa Limitations
Amazon recognizes that with all the popularity of Alexa, it still is not achieving anywhere near their goals of e-commerce activity. People are just not buying enough on the platform. According to recent reports, only 2 percent of Alexa owners have ever made a purchase via Alexa in 2018. According to the site Recode.com, in response to this dilemma, Amazon is chasing CPG’s to include an Alexa utterance, essentially for free. In other words, they are pursuing brands to include Amazon branding + purchase words for Alexa in their outside ad campaigns with something like — to make an Alexa purchase, say Tide Detergent or Blue Bottle Coffee, etc. In exchange, Amazon would offer the participating CPG’s data about how well their product is doing as well as some advertising on Amazon sites.
Alexa is challenged to generate significant sales via voice due to the fact that shopping, for many categories, tends to be a visual experience and often brand specific. Take for instance a case where the consumer wants to buy an appliance. They may ask for a microwave. How many specific brands will they get to choose from? Clearly not a great match. It seems for the moment, the most likely categories for e-commerce sales on Alexa are inexpensive goods that consumer buy often like soap, diapers, etc. In the final analysis, brands cannot currently buy ads on Alexa but consumers can only make an utterance which is a big challenge to drive sales for Amazon on the Alexa platform.
At the same time, AI-powered voice-activated advertising on mobile platforms is a game changer to drive e-commerce and beyond. It reverses the paradigm. With voice-activated ad technology, brands can target very granular audiences and engage it in interactive dialogues. That provides the ability to measure campaign performance in real time with empirical performance data, which makes it easy for marketers to drive performance-based needs like increasing e-commerce without the Alexa or other voice first platform challenges.
A typical voice-activated ad starts with a highly engaging and short audio tease, typically less than ten-seconds, delivered to targeted audiences including demographic, geographic, psychographic, even purchase intent to maximize response. Based upon the consumer voice response, we deliver a relevant second audio response and execute a target action like open a page to learn more, call the company, download an app, etc.
Measurement capabilities allow the marketer to make an instant change to creative or A/B test various creative to optimize response.
The net result of voice-activated advertising on mobile platforms is to avoid the current shortfalls and challenges of Alexa and other voice first platforms and gain the ability to leverage the power of voice to increase brand sales via smartphones and beyond. Voice shopping is expected to be a $5B marketplace within a couple of years.
