According to eMarketer, the number of people around the world accessing the internet using smartphones reached 2.39 billion in 2017. These mobile users are spending hours each day on their phones, completing tasks, and consuming media in a highly customized environment of apps they have chosen to download and regularly interact with.
Brands are trying to win a coveted piece of their customers’ limited storage space with their own native apps. As more and more shoppers choose to make purchases on their mobile devices, meeting the customer expectation that “mobile equals personalized” becomes more and more crucial.

App Personalization Provides More Value to Mobile Users

Many brands recognize that their own mobile offerings lack in delivering the app personalization their customers want. In order to earn that initial download, remain useful and relevant, and avoid deletion, a commerce app must provide a unique, personalized experience that’s not available through the browser-based eCommerce site. In other words, if your app is just a repackaged, downloadable version of your mobile site, customers probably won’t see the value, and it will be among the first apps to go when “Not Enough Storage” notifications start popping up.
The key to keeping your app and brand at the top of your customer’s mind is to provide targeted, personalized information like product suggestions and notifications about their recent orders, in a tailored-for-mobile environment.
Native apps also provide a great opportunity to use location-based targeting to add another layer of personalization to your customer experience and drive nearby traffic to your brick-and-mortar locations. Give app users the ability to customize which notifications they receive, and they’ll get exactly what they want from your brand’s mobile experience without feeling stalked or bombarded.

Where to Start with App Personalization?

A great place for your brand to start on its path to app personalization is to learn what your customers are actually doing when they open your app. In other words, you need to be tracking user behavior. Once you have a good understanding of how customers are using your app, you can identify opportunities to improve and personalize their experience.
As user data is collected, your “user profiles” will get smarter, and personalized content can be served on a 1:1 basis using machine learning/AI. The more data collected, the better the experience for the customer, as you can deliver things like product recommendations and targeted promotions. It also gives you the ability to understand who’s loyal and more likely to come back to buy more.
This all feeds into the customer lifetime value to deliver better, more personalized experiences.
To learn about other trends affecting commerce this year, download our guide below.

I had the pleasure of attending an Adobe Café in NYC earlier last week. The Cafés are a series of workshops Adobe is hosting for its partners. This one in particular was specifically geared towards business development in the financial services industry.
Christopher Young, director of industry strategy and marketing for financial services at Adobe, presented some great statistics on the retail banking industry. In a recent industry poll, one question pertained to digital marketing strategy plans. This is an industry traditionally built on one-to-one relationships, and one that still relies on offline interactions to drive sales. Study results showed the biggest concern was how to keep those relational benefits alive in a digital space.
As a whole, the survey showed companies plan to increase their digital spend by 22%. Where do they plan to invest, exactly?

• 42% will increase spend on content marketing
• 42% will invest more in analytics
• 41% will invest in personalization
• 39% will increase spend in social media

The industry standard is to see an increase of 16% in digital sales per year driven by the increases in these digital spaces. As a result of the increased digital spend, they will also decrease spend in the following areas to achieve their digital goals.
Decrease spend in:

• Display 11%
• Paid search 8%
• Webinars/virtual events 7%
• Social media 6%
• Video ads 5%

The retail banking industry is also keenly aware that acquiring new customers (or new accounts for existing customers) is happening in the mobile space. Mobile will play an ever expanding role in acquisition.
Mobile plans:

• 87% indicate mobile will be an equal or higher source of new accounts origination in next three years
• 19% say mobile will be primary source of new accounts origination
• 59% will extend analytics to their mobile app

In the ever disruptive world of the digital space, retail banking is at a crossroads, but are navigating their way to drive sales through digital channels. If they can continue to leverage first-party data with their customer’s digital behavior thus improving real time personalization, they will begin growing sales and acquiring new customers and accounts like they did back when business was conducted one on one.
 
Lynn Brading
Director of Alliances
Adobe | Rackspace | Google

Last August, Google announced that, starting January 2017, they would not rank mobile pages as high if the content was visually obscured by an intrusive interstitial or popup. The main reasons Google decided they would start demoting mobile pages with annoying interstitials is because it’s a bad user experience for smaller screens and frustrates users from reaching the content they expect to see.

What Deems an Interstitial as Intrusive?

An interstitial that blocks the content, disrupting the mobile user experience after immediately clicking a Google mobile search result, is considered intrusive.

• Popups that cover the main content upon load or while scrolling
• Popups that have to be dismissed before displaying the content
• Popups that appear above the fold, so you have to scroll down to see the content below the fold

Exceptions to the Rule

• Popups that appear in between pages
• Popups that are required legally for age verification or cookie usage
• Popups that require you to log in before displaying the content (unindexable or paywalled content)
• Popups that use a reasonable amount of screen space and that are easily dismissible

The Impact, or Lack Thereof

Since the penalty rollout on January 10^th, SEOs have reported that Google’s intrusive interstitial algorithm has actually impacted very few sites. Although the reason for so little impact being seen is unclear, Google’s Gary Illyes suggests it could be that Google is not done recrawling the web. I speculate that algo’s lack of bite could be related to the delay in Google’s Mobile-First Index which has been rumored to roll out starting this June and will add more mobile UX factors as ranking signals.
Another thing to keep in mind is that the mobile interstitial algo update is only one of literally hundreds of factors Google uses to determine rankings. According to Google, pages with intrusive popups can still rank well in Google mobile results if relevance signals related to search query intent outweighs the annoying popup.

If your site uses interstitials that are deemed as intrusive and you haven’t noticed any Google mobile traffic declines, it’s likely that Google hasn’t demoted you…yet. You should still consider making them less aggressive and focus on placing them in between pages, rather than page entrances.
If your site doesn’t use interstitials but is planning on it for marketing or legal reasons, design the popup based on Google’s guidelines to avoid being penalized in the future. Besides, you never know when a Google algo goes from bark to bite.

In 2016, mobile overtook desktop in its use, with more people using mobile to do more tasks than on laptops/desktops. More than 2,000,000 apps are available in the Apple store and even more in the Google Play store.
However, the trend is that app downloads were way down in 2016 (<1 per month) due to the fact that mobile users are able to use and do more with their core apps: a) Messaging, b) Browsing and c) Social Media. These core apps are integrating more seamlessly together with each other as well as with the mobile operating system itself for core services (location, camera, video, etc.).
Those were just some of the insights Michael Trapani, Product Marketing Manager, IBM Watson Marketing, shared during his IBM Amplify session, The Strange Future of Mobile.
Michael outlined the transformation of mobile starting back in 2007 with the Nokia 1100, followed by Android and Android app store launch to today where the Apple iPhone now is the greatest market share on the planet.
The future of the web is the continued growth of content formats and volumes of data. Growth in 2016 can be attributed to the social and media presences from these core apps outlined.
Future Trends:
–Artificial Intelligence (AI) will mature as a concept. AI will create insights from: a) Data Insights and b) Personalization of this data.
-Finding that innovation is everywhere and no longer centralized in areas like Silicon Valley. Great examples are “peer-to-peer payments,” which was innovated by WeChat and then made available in WhatsApp, and others.
–Virtual Reality (VR): next-gen VR is already in progress and will be with us for some time – this is not a fad.
–Augmented Reality (AR): Watch for an evolution to support sensors for touch, hearing and then sharing this to others.
-Wearables: Will continue to grow and are just getting started…
eCommerce will take advantage of these trends to solve real problems including:

• AR to solve the problem of seeing what an apparel item will look like on the customer.
• Faster delivery for the customer via drones and better transportation logistics.
• AI to create data insights from data to drive a highly optimized personalized experience.

According to Internet Retailer, eCommerce sales in the U.S. continues to outpace brick-and-mortar stores – as of Q3 2016, digital commerce sales grew by 15.6%.
It won’t be long before we know the final eCommerce growth numbers for 2016. Judging by reported sales from the 2016 holiday shopping season, eCommerce businesses finished strong. (Conservative estimates from Adobe Digital Insights and comScore hover around 11-12% increase in online holiday sales.)
As consumers continue to flock to the convenience of online shopping, brands in this space are under more pressure to deliver engaging and well-designed experiences. Magento recently published a list of top digital commerce initiatives for 2017 after surveying 2,200 brand manufacturers, multi-channel, and web-only merchants from across 15 vertical segments.
I recently interviewed John Ambrose, Senior eCommerce Consultant at Perficient Digital, to get his perspective on key trends that will significantly impact eCommerce this year.

IoT + Omni-channel Accelerate Customer Expectations

“The proliferation of connected devices (IoT, Amazon Echo, beacons, etc.) has initiated an endless channel opportunity for companies to engage and sell to their customers. The content and user experience of those devices are driving new commerce rules of engagement.
Consequently, the rate, pace, and expectation of companies to adapt to these various channels is getting faster.  Processes (such as Agile), software (x-as-a-Service), and virtually limitless cloud infrastructure have evolved to iteratively deliver capabilities faster and more frequently in an attempt to keep up customers’ expectations. Our team has the difficult (but exciting) job of staying ahead of these trends so we are able to strategically guide clients and operationally pivot to different processes, skill sets, and technology to deliver on that strategy,” said Ambrose.

Mobile Sites + Google Search Rankings

“A recent announcement from Google stated that it will place primary ranking emphasis on brands’ mobile versions of their websites. This means companies must accelerate initiatives to build mobile-first, responsive design, and make this a priority for 2017 if they want to maintain and enhance overall organic ranking. Commerce platforms that offer mobile optimized-templates can jump-start this process, and provide clients with a quick way to respond to this change.
On current and future client projects, we plan to adjust the UX/UI and commerce build processes to design, implement, and search engine optimize mobile versions of commerce sites as part of the initial project sprints,” Ambrose continued.

B2B2C Commerce Models

“Another trend we’ve noticed is more manufacturers want to be closer to their end consumer.  Currently, we’re working with clients in manufacturing to enable B2B eCommerce for use in their traditional channels, such as fields sales and distributors. However, they also want eCommerce strategies and solutions that will allow them to sell direct-to-consumer.  While channel conflict and pricing concerns are among the major challenges to address when adopting this model, manufacturers seem more willing to tackle these challenges head-on. This primarily comes from significant insights gained through direct consumer interaction.
One area where we observed this trend is with manufacturers that also sell spare/replacement parts for end consumers.  Spare/replacement parts typically have high margin and offer additional opportunities to engage the distributor channel through buy online and pick-up in store (BOPUS),” Ambrose said.
To keep up with trends and our recent work with digital commerce solutions, subscribe to our weekly commerce digest.

The dust seems to have settled on this fall’s announcement of Adobe and Microsoft’s new partnership, and conventional wisdom says a lot of work remains to be done for these software titans to realize the promise of their new relationship.  That means I’ve witnessed a number of experienced observers of either company yawning, taking a wait-and-see approach to this announcement at best, and a cynical view at worst.
They’re making a mistake.
Maybe a big one.
Tuned-in CMOs are watching with interest, though.  They know this whole thing is about personalization, and they know what that could mean for their businesses down the road.
The exciting news for them is that the work’s being done, and the entire digital world ought to be listening.  Sleep on this partnership at your peril.
The Way Forward
If the ultimate goal of Adobe and Microsoft’s new alliance is, as these new comrades say, a shared ecosystem—an integrated platform and suite of services—providing personalized, mobile and cloud-first digital experiences, then we need to ask what that looks like for technology decision makers.
It turns out we can paint a pretty good picture just based on what’s out there today.
What do we know?  Well, for starters, you can’t build a shared ecosystem without a solid foundation. 
A Shared Ecosystem
In this case, that foundation is Microsoft’s Azure platform.  In the short term, this means the ability for enterprises to build Adobe Marketing Cloud solutions atop the same platform as Microsoft’s own digital experience applications—Dynamics CRM for data and Power BI for visualizations in particular.  In the longer run, that means tighter integration across and between the stacks.
Do Microsoft and Adobe have what it takes to do this?  Let’s take a look.
Cloud?  Check.  Azure is a leader in cloud infrastructure and Microsoft’s biggest bet.
Mobile?  Check.  Adobe’s AEM Mobile provides a quick and easy approach to building and managing mobile apps (with or without AEM for your .com site).
Personalized?  Check.  Take the analytics and personalization capabilities already present in Adobe Target and pair them up with the data in Dynamics CRM and… well, now you see what Adobe and Microsoft are so excited about.  Not just a check, but possibly a checkmate if everything breaks right.
Personalization is the Key
Personalization, then, is the part of the partnership that’s so ripe with potential for both of the software companies.  If this partnership was just about AEM on Azure, it would make great sense but it would fall so far short of what it could become.  Yes, every Adobe-savvy agency is hustling to contract with Azure talent, and every Microsoft systems integrator is looking to add some AEM skills… but while that might sound great to those of us who build your websites, implementation and hosting are low-hanging fruit for these guys.
Microsoft and Adobe both know that big data is king.  They each have products that are ridiculously good at collecting and even analyzing different kinds of customer data—but Salesforce can conceivably do both, together, at once.
They want to own this market, not hand it to Salesforce, and they want to compete hard… and that competition is going to be the driving factor behind some powerful integrations.  Those integrations will drive even more powerful and personalized digital experiences.
Hitting the Bottom Line
Personalization is accomplished when intelligence platforms like Sensei and Cortana collect and sift through reams of data about a user in order to predict or accommodate that user’s needs and next actions.
On a consumer’s side, you appreciate being served content and products that you are (or could be) interested in.  On the business side—and this is the bottom line— that selfsame data that drives your personalized experience helps a business sell you more stuff.
A platform that can sell you more stuff?  Most businesses will say “sign me up!” because the ROI of such a thing works really well in their favor.  That’s where Adobe and Microsoft would like to be, that’s what this partnership is all about, and that’s why everyone in the digital space and especially every CMO with a digital footprint bigger than my toddler’s shoe size should care.

Conferences are the perfect opportunities for Googler Gary Illyes to make big announcements, and this year’s Pubcon did just that. During his keynote, which I was fortunate enough to attend in Las Vegas this October, Gary announced that for the first time, Google’s index would switch from desktop to mobile, a change we touched on in a recent blog post.
Why the switch? We live in a mobile-first world, that’s why.
1. Users don’t like it when they reach a mobile page and the content they are looking for is missing
2. More than half of all searches are done on mobile devices
3. Roughly 85% of pages are already considered mobile-friendly
Don’t know if your page is considered mobile-friendly to Google? Test it out using the Mobile-Friendly Testing Tool here.
What does this mean?
This means that Google will primarily use the mobile versions of your content to crawl, index, and rank organic search results rather than desktop versions.
Wait, what’s currently happening?
Currently, Googlebot crawls the desktop version of your website and adds those pages to its index. Thus, search engine results for both desktop and mobile are generally based on desktop pages. Search results for mobile and desktop can be and often are different since there are certain mobile-specific ranking factors.
You can read more about the mobile-friendly ranking factor from the Google Webmaster Central blog.
So what’s coming and when?
Google has been experimenting with this for a while and will most likely start making the transition to a mobile-first index in the coming months (rumored to be early 2017). No official launch date has been announced and don’t expect one from Google. The switch will be made so that the mobile versions of your website will be the ones used to decide how both mobile and desktop results are ranked. This means that the content and links on your mobile versions of your site will essentially be the only one that matters to Googlebot. So if you’ve stripped down your content and links for mobile and want to rank for it in Google, you need to reconsider.
The switch will be made so that the mobile versions of your website will be the ones used to decide how both mobile and desktop results are ranked. This means that the content and links on your mobile versions of your site will essentially be the only one that matters to Googlebot.
Now you’re likely thinking one of two things…
1. Crap, I don’t have a mobile-friendly site. Now what?
Google will still crawl and index your desktop pages if you don’t have a mobile version, just as Google’s mobile user agent. Keep in mind that the mobile-friendly ranking factor will apply to both mobile and desktop results, so you could see your competitors get a boost on desktop and mobile, where previously it was just on mobile.

• Invest in a mobile solution, preferably responsive which uses a single URL
  It’s about to be 2017, and whether you like it or not, your users and their behaviors have changed. Mobile is the new default web experience, and it’s here to stay. Don’t believe me? Take a look at your Google Analytics reports and compare the YOY growth of your desktop vs. mobile users. More than likely, your mobile traffic is growing at a faster rate than desktop.
• Fetch and render your pages as Googlebot mobile
  If you decide not to invest in a mobile solution, you aren’t going to stop ranking in Google, but you may see your organic rankings gradually decrease if everyone else in your space has mobile-friendly pages. Understanding how Googlebot mobile renders your desktop content can help prevent crawling and indexing issues. You’d be surprised by the results. Simple mistakes like blocking CSS or other critical resources can severely limit search engines from understanding what you should rank for. Test out some of your top pages using Google Search Console’s Fetch as Google tool. Make sure you select Mobile: Smartphone as the user agent. If you don’t see something in your snapshot, then most likely neither can Google.
  
  More on fetching as the different Googlebots here.

2. I already have a mobile-friendly site. Nothing left to do here, right?… Not so fast.
While you’re one step closer to reaping some potential ranking boosts, UX, and crawling benefits with mobile-friendly pages, there’s still some work to do. Especially if everyone in your SERP is already mobile-friendly, here’s how to prepare for mobile-first indexing.

• Ensure your pages can be easily discovered
  Typically, mobile versions have less internal linking, meaning that it may be harder for Googlebot to discover your pages. Help aid this URL discovery by ensuring your technical SEO is in check. Investigate common technical errors using Google Search Console and identify issues with important files like your XML sitemaps and robots.txt, as well as HTML tags like meta robots, rel=alternate, rel=canonical, and rel=next/prev (If you don’t know what these mean…find someone who does). If you have separate mobile and desktop sites like an m. subdomain, you’ll need to verify both versions in Google Search Console.
• Compare your desktop to your mobile pages
  Is content that could boost ranking missing on mobile? Are there omitted internal links?
  Ask yourself these questions and compare your desktop to your mobile pages to identify discrepancies. Keep in mind that it’s totally acceptable to hide content on mobile for the purpose of a better user experience with accordions and other ways, but you still need to make sure Google’s mobile bot can see the essential links and content, and that your users can access them.
• Maintain and align structured data on desktop and mobile pages
  If you’re already leveraging structured data like schema.org or Facebook’s Open Graph markup, make sure all essential markups exist and match on both your desktop and mobile pages. If you aren’t currently using structured data, I urge you to strongly consider it as part of your 2017 digital marketing plan. Search engines and social platforms love structured data, because it helps them understand your content better. You’ll love structured data because it could result in SERP enhancements and rich snippets, which can take up more organic real estate and improve click-through rates.

Validate your structured data using Google’s Structured Data Testing Tool here.
So if I’m mobile-friendly and these are in check, my site should be great, right?
Alas. A mobile-friendly site isn’t a pass/fail kind of thing. You can still have a site that passes Google’s mobile-friendly testing tool, but have a horrible UX and be super slow. You should really plug your pages into the different page speed tools for ideas on how to optimize page load times and also do manual testing on actual mobile devices and browsers your users use.
Get a mobile-friendly and UX grade here.
TLDR:
Most likely by early 2017, Google rankings will soon be based primarily off of mobile pages instead of desktop. It’s still too early to speculate the impact of Google’s mobile-first indexing switch and there’s a lot we don’t yet know. If you have mobile pages, ensure valuable content, links, and structured data aren’t stripped out. If you don’t have mobile pages, your desktop pages will still be indexed but you should still invest in a mobile solution. Google wants us to believe that this change won’t significantly impact rankings but we’ll have to wait and see. Either way, stay calm and make good mobile decisions. Your users and Google will thank you for it.
Sources:
http://www.thesempost.com/details-googles-mobile-first-indexing-change/
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2016/11/mobile-first-indexing.html

Email has been a part of our lives for a long time. Once searching the web and email communication were embraced by the masses, marketers quickly capitalized on this opportunity – a way to establish direct, personal communication with their customers!
Of course things have evolved since the early days – brands have to make sure customers opt-in to avoid getting black-listed. And as consumers, we can never escape email with the ability to check our inboxes via mobile phones.
In the latest #AdobeChat, the conversation focused on consumer email habits and how brands can further evolve their email marketing. Some common themes emerged, including knowing your audience and using data to personalize messages/provide relevant info at the right time.
Here are the key takeaways from the discussion – all good things to remember for those of us who have done email marketing for a while.

Some claim that email is dead or dying. Thoughts from the group?

The majority agreed that email is still very much alive:

• Marketers cite email as a top tactic for lead generation via @kenburbary
• Time spent with email is up 17% year over year via @AdobeInsights

However, at a time when consumers are flooded with messages on a daily basis, it needs to evolve. According to @Livefyre, it needs a new approach – highly personalized, mobile optimized, and contextually relevant. (I couldn’t agree more!)

A study by Adobe Insights revealed that 50% of consumers prefer to be contacted by brands via email compared to other channels. What’s behind this?

• Regarded by consumers as permission-based marketing
• Email gives consumers choice and control – “less disruption and potential for personalized email” (@kenburbary)

What are three keys to email marketing success?

The majority of the answers revolved around these main points:

• Know your audience – why do they want to hear from you?
• Use data to provide relevant & timely offers
• Mobile-friendly design is a must
• Consider drip campaigns and link tracking for follow up (@danieldidthat)

According to Adobe Insights, respondents found less than 1/4 of email offers interesting enough to open. So, what are brands doing wrong?

• Ignoring context
• Using weak/non-compelling subject lines
• Lack of personalization to appeal to customer/prospect
• Contacting subscribers too often with offers that are too similar

What companies are doing email marketing well? How are they getting it right?

• Examples mentioned included JetBlue, LinkedIn, Apple, Domotalk because of perceived value, clean design, and frequency ratio (not too much)
• Quartz and Target for their email personalization

What does the future of email marketing look like?

• Personalization and improved understanding of the audience

A8: The future of email is more personalized and dynamic. IoT will have huge impact on how we consume and market via email. #AdobeChat

— Giselle Abramovich (@GAbramovich) October 5, 2016

• Mobile and kinetic email

A8) On the creative side – see more kinetic email w/ frequent use of icons, emojis, animated GIFs and interactive design elements #AdobeChat

— PRFT DigEx (@PRFTDigEx) October 5, 2016

• Integration of cross-channel messaging

A8) Major email clients to integrate cross-channel messaging while collecting subscriber data to narrow preferences #AdobeChat #BigData https://t.co/EVCX5i8Igk

— PRFT DigEx (@PRFTDigEx) October 5, 2016

Check out the weekly #AdobeChat every Wednesday at (4 p.m. ET/ 1 p.m. PT). This week’s edition is all about User-Generated Content – should be interesting!

Join us next week as we talk “User-Generated Content” in #AdobeChat. pic.twitter.com/K3uayd7vRs

— Marketing Cloud (@AdobeMktgCloud) October 5, 2016

There are several methods to validate and debug analytic implementations using Adobe App Measurement Libraries. Over-the-Top (OTT) Providers can use the following method to validate their analytics implementation for iPhone, android, Xbox 360,  Roku and connected TVs of all kinds, and more.
The web proxy is the most common method for capturing analytics requests. Using a web proxy, it’s possible to log all requests, making it quick to set up, exposes measurement behavior on actual device. Additionally, since some web proxies allow you to modify requests, developers can test out new configurations without modifying any code on their live site. The details in this post are intended to help those responsible for validating app analytics by showing how to use a web proxy like Charles (http://www.charlesproxy.com), Bloodhound (https://marketing.adobe.com/resources/help/en_US/mobile/bloodhound_win_2x/), or Adobe App Measurement QA Tool.
Charles is a full TCP proxy that allows rewriting requests. It works with Android because everything can run through it–not just Omniture data. I use its rewrite rules to split off any Omniture traffic and direct it to Bloodhound’s port on my laptop; everything else passes through.
By configuring WiFi proxy settings on your device and using a packet sniffer on another computer attached to the same network, you can watch http/https requests made by the application, including requests sent by the App Measurement libraries.
You can set up your device to use Bloodhound as its proxy by modifying your device’s wifi connection. The following instructions may be different depending on your flavor of Android, but it should give you an idea of how to make it work.
Steps for Getting Up and Running with Bloodhound

Open the “Settings” app
Click on “Wi-Fi”
Tap and hold your currently connected Wi-Fi network and select “Modify network”
Check the box “Show advanced options”
In the “Proxy” field, select “Manual”
In the “Proxy hostname” field, enter the IP address Bloodhound has been assigned
In the “Proxy port” field, enter the port number Bloodhound has been assigned
Hit “Save”
Assuming your device and Bloodhound instance are on the same network, your data should be filtering through Bloodhound now.

 
 

What is Pokémon Go?

The game, now available on iOS (Apple) and Android, gets you to go out and explore the real world with your mobile phone while you have the app turned on. It’s now bigger than Tinder and close to beating Twitter’s “daily active users,” since its launch on July 6th.
The game takes place in the real world, but is populated by monsters who look like rats, dinosaurs, snakes, birds, trees and more. The players are called “trainers” who travel around around the world to tame the creatures and then use them to fight against one another. You can capture special types of Pokémon when you’re in a park (more grass- or bug-type Pokémon) or by an ocean, lake or river (more water types) or out at night (nocturnal fairy and ghost types). Your goal is to collect as many of these virtual creatures as possible.
The games took the world by storm in the late 1990s — a big fad widely known as“Pokémania.”

“The app has been an undeniable phenomenon.” – Steve Johnson, Chicago Tribune

Four big reasons that Pokémon Go is so popular

In fact, the game is SO popular that Pokémon Go lifted Nintendo’s stock price 9% the day the game debuted!

1. It’s free and works on both Android and iPhone.
2. It’s easy to download and to play.
3. The game bridges online with offline. As Advertising Age’s David Berkowitz wrote today, “Somehow, Pokémon became one of the best exercise apps ever. Players are going for walks just to catch critters and to hatch virtual eggs, which requires walking up to 10 kilometers (6.2 miles) to discover what’s inside.” The game uses your time and your location to imitate what it would be like if Pokémon were roaming the world around you. “To catch them all (and earn the medals attached to catching Pokémon), you’re going to have to explore far and wide, during the day and night.”
4. Many original Pokémon fans are now adults, so there’s a nostalgia to playing with Pokemon again.

Facebook user Matt Schlicht posted a video at 10 p.m. showing hundreds of Pokemon players out at night on their phones, catching Pokemon:

And this is a big part of the game’s appeal and charm. It marries the virtual world with the real world, applying the desirable and fun aspects of gaming to your everyday life. You can collect and move up in levels of skill.
Technically, because it marries the virtual and real world, it’s considered “augmented reality.” According to Tech Times, “augmented reality is the blending of virtual reality and real life, as developers can create images within applications that blend in with contents in the real world,” while “Virtual reality is all about the creation of a virtual world that users can interact with.”

Four big reasons brands are embracing augmented and virtual reality

While Pokemon Go gamers enjoy wandering their neighborhoods to level up and collect creatures, and millenials and kids across the world are becoming more accustomed viewing the real world through the “lens” of the mobile device or app, companies are realizing the opportunity to leverage technology to build and expand brand experiences. Here are four reasons I’ve found that brands are attracted to augmented and virtual reality as an option in-stores or via mobile apps:

1. As commerce increases, taking a share from in-store retail transactions, brands are looking for activities and experiences that will draw users into the store for an enhanced experience.
2. These types of experiences can provide a more immersive, detailed experience with the product, more so than images or video.
3. Some brands, like Lowes, are finding ways that VR can actually increase their conversion rate and reduce time to purchase.
4. Virtual and augmented reality experiences are inclined to attract millennial shoppers, who are technologically-savvy and more inclined to do most of their buying online

Lowes determined that one of the largest hurdles to purchasing home interior products was visualizing what remodeled or new appliances and fixtures would look like in their own home space. The answer? Virtual reality in the form of the Lowes “Holoroom.”

“With virtual reality, people can get a much more “holistic” and immersive view of how a slab of marble or different paint color can change an entire room — drastically increasing the likelihood that they will go with Lowe’s for their project.”
– Kyle Nel, executive director of Lowe’s Innovation Labs in the LA Times

Virtual reality is known for giving purchasers are more realistic experience with the product or brand. When shoppers don a VR headset in Toms shoes stores, they get to experience an immersive video of kids in Peru receiving donations of shoes from Toms.
Founder of Toms, Blake Mycoskie, said that virtual reality trumps photographs and traditional videos

“It just touches more of your senses. It gives you a more immersive experience — you really get the feel of motion. There is so much e-commerce today, you have to come up with a new reason to go to stores.”
– Toms founder, Blake Mycoskie

And because virtual reality has that extensive quality of taking the brand or product experience beyond what photo or video can do, and even, as in the case of Toms, extending the brand experience even further than the product can, I think virtual reality experiences are here to stay.

SLIDESHOW: Top Brands and Retailers Using Augmented and Virtual Reality

Sources:

• Pokémon Go, explained, Vox Magazine, German Lopez, July 11, 2016

• How retail stores are using virtual reality to make shopping more fun, Los Angeles Times, Shan Li, April 10, 2016

• Super Bowl fans get hit of virtual reality future, USA Today, Marco della Cava, February 6, 2016

• A Marketer’s Guide to Pokémon Go, Advertising Age, David Berkowitz, July 11, 2016

The marketer’s tool box is big and growing even larger each year. We have all heard the Capital One  “What’s in your Wallet?” commercial.  The implication is that this credit card is the one and only card you need.  During a presentation, it was mentioned that, on average, a marketer uses at least seven marketing platforms or tools –  and I was asked what’s in my marketing wallet? If I quickly list off the ones I use, from email marketing and the basic design tools to web content, CRM and analytics tools, I listed up to 15 or 20 tools that we use regularly.

2016 Marketing Technology Landscape courtesy of chiefmartec.com

• We need to be the strategists, creatives, writers, technologists and data scientists to be at the forefront of customer engagement.
• We need to be savvy and understand how our infrastructure works with the backbone platforms.
• We need to understand and be able to analyze the vast amount of data and reporting that comes from these systems.
• We need to show customer engagement and ROI metrics and feed what we learn back into our marketing plans and programs to drive sales.
• And, finally we need to report this back to the leaders at our companies.

That’s a lot of things we need to be…and, it’s supported by more than one tool in your marketing wallet. It requires a transformation that involves realigning technology and business models to more effectively engage digital customers throughout the customer experience life-cycle. To do that, a well-integrated set of scalable tools are essential for meeting your digital transformation goals. These tools not only touch every point in the life-cycle, but also assist in driving a company forward. Whether you use an Adobe, Sitecore or an open-source marketing platform, the message is the same — know your technology and how it can support your business.
The recent introduction of Perficient Digital allows us to offer full-service capabilities designed to adapt to your digital transformation and CX challenges. With the strategic imagination of an agency, unleashed by the deep technical know-how of a consultancy, we are the ideal partner to lead your organization on its digital transformation journey. For proof of this conviction, look no further than our six core disciplines:

• Strategy and Planning
• Experience Design
• Content Studio
• Digital Marketing
• Mobile and Emerging Technologies
• Experience Platforms

You can read more about the marketing technology landscape, architecture, integration tips and strategies by downloading the guide:

Summit Sneaks is one of the most highly-anticipated sessions of the conference. Dan Klco, Senior Solutions Architect and our SME on the street in Vegas, picks the top three technologies featured and describes how they will improve the lives of consumers and marketers.

1. Ad Wearout – prevent consumers from hitting “unsubscribe”
2. X Attribution – track conversions throughout the journey
3. Adaptive Store – personal shopping that integrates mobile & retail

What technologies did you see at Summit this week that impressed you?