According to this year’s dmexco motto: “Digital is everything… Not everything is digital.”
Dmexco, Germany’s Digital Marketing Exposition and Conference, has grown exponentially over the past few years. This is a truly international event welcoming 50,700 visitors and more than 1,000 exhibitors from around the world.
Christian Muche, dmexco’s founder and director of business development, defines the event as the global business and innovation platform, bringing the whole ecosystem together. All the relevant brands meet all the relevant decision makers in the media marketing and communications industry.
New immersive tech
The new tech innovations have increasingly impacted and transformed brand messages and consumer behaviour. More and more brands are trying to keep up with this disruption, exploring new ways of immersive branded experiences that go beyond digital and even beyond interactive. As the leading hub in marketing innovation, dmexco focused on this trend.
“This year we are adding a technology pod addressing everything around internet of things (IoT), virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR),” Christian Muche explained to Adweek. He added, “dmexco is not becoming a tech expo but it’s important to discuss the technological effects into marketing and communication.”
Two new conference stages were launched: The Motion Hall, a forum for video and moving images, and The Experience Hall, for hosting conversations around the future of customer experience in the context of new technologies.
Among the topics discussed at the Experience Hall were:
- What tech innovations are shaping the digital economy and keeping forward-thinking brands alert?
- What do they mean for Marketers and which are the success stories so far?
Augmented reality
What is it?
Augmented reality overlays moving visuals onto the user’s actual surroundings, when viewed through a screen or headset.
How is it used in marketing?
Ambarish Mitra, founder and CEO of Blippar, envisaged AR to be a massively horizontal disruptor that will affect every industry beyond the boundaries of brand and advertising. Understanding the visual world is as powerful for a car manufacturer as it is for a retailer or a publisher.
Augmented reality overlays a virtual content layer on top of reality, on top of physical products. This extra layer presents a huge opportunity for ecommerce as customers can just buy things on the go. You like someone’s outfit, you scan it, you buy it. In this way, AR will have a very big impact in transforming products into a very powerful pull-based media channel.
Who nailed it?
The movement has started already and the leader is PokémonGo – the first and fastest adopted mass-market AR game of all time with over 100m downloads since launch.
Combining a smartphone’s camera with GPS technology, the game overlays the famous creatures on top of familiar surroundings around the user. Brands are taking advantage of this phenomena gaining visibility in this virtual Pokémon space by offering opportunities for users to interact with their offerings while becoming PokéMasters.
Natanael Sijanta, marketing communications director at Mercedes-Benz, described how a 160 years old brand can make a trend its friend and embrace PokémonGo. What did they do? They attracted PokémonGo players near Mercedes-Benz dealer shops and created pop-up shows next to PokéStops while creating social buzz with branded hashtags such as #mbcatch.
Virtual reality (VR)
What is it?
Virtual Reality immerses the users in a totally different setting, where they can interact with their surroundings through a headset.
How is it used in marketing?
Through immersive VR experiences, consumers are becoming active participants in brand experiences instead of passively viewing advertising messages. It’s really impressive seeing how VR is introducing an entire new generation of marketing strategies where users can furnish a dream apartment with products they love or play selfie tennis against themselves in a virtual court.
According to Meredith Kopit Levien, executive vice-president and chief revenue officer at The New York Times, “VR is a huge leap forwards where you can completely concentrate on the user experience, it’s all about immersing them in the story, rather than just telling them it”.
Who nailed it?
Some of the more progressive digital brands and agencies at dmexco took advantage of this hype presenting demos and offering advice for those who want to try VR.
Walking at dmexco’s expo, one could see more and more headsets popping up, as Google introduced its Tilt Brush that lets you paint in 3d space with virtual reality.
Emotion tracking
What is it?
Emotion tracking technologies are recording thoughts, feelings and reactions of people through a webcam while they are faced with a stimulus. Their facial expressions are then analysed and used to measure engagement as well as positivity or negativity towards the trigger.
How is it used in marketing?
Emotion tracking enables brands to measure customers’ emotional engagement with branded content or ads and use this information to develop Marketing campaigns that resonate in great scale with their target audience.
“90% of all purchasing decisions are not made consciously, but are based on emotions”, explained Joerg Schneider, country manager Germany at Undertone. “Standard metrics such as clicks and engagement rates are vital but don’t tell the full story. Observing the customer’s emotional reaction, we can optimise an ad’s design, pace, content and control over the distribution” he continued.
Who nailed it?
There are already a number of services available for tracking the thoughts and feelings of people that have viewed an ad. Recently, video ad tech company Unruly has launched its ‘Unruly EQ’ product which aims to provide data on emotional triggers that can help drive an effective video distribution strategy. Dmexco attendees were invited to track their emotional reactions while watching a video ad campaign at Unruly’s stand.
Chatbots and artificial intelligence (AI)
What is it?
A chatbot is a software that can converse with users combining pre-set rules and artificial intelligence (AI). Chatbots live within messenger products such as Facebook Messenger, Kick and Slack and can mimic a regular chat while predicting real life responses.
How is it used in marketing?
“Instant messaging is one of the biggest opportunities in tech in the next 10 years” – David Marcus, VP messaging products at Facebook.
Smart brands and publishers are already embracing this new communication channel by seeking a more direct and friendly conversation with their customers or by adding value with an easily accessible always-on customer support service. Chatbots can offer a seamless experience, increase engagement while eliminating steps in the conversion/buying process.
Ecommerce, customer support and marketing are only a few of the areas that will be disrupted by chatbots within the next couple of years.
Earlier this year, Outbrain launched its chatbot offering for publishers partnering with CNN, which was presented at Facebook’s F8 conference. At an interview by Storytile just before his presentation at the Experience Hall, Matt Crenshaw, Outbrain’s VP of Product Marketing, gave his advices to companies that are interested in developing chatbot technologies.
Who nailed it?
dmexco had it’s own chatbot, built by Spectrm and GroupM. Max Koziolek, co-founder of Spectrm, presented a demo on stage in which a user was interested in finding out more about events happening at dmexco and are connected to a specific keyword, for example native advertising.
“Digital is everything… Not everything is digital”. Going back to this year’s dmexco motto – we must be confident that within the next few years “everything will be possible in digital”.
Curious and innovative marketers will be offered an array of valuable data on intent and behaviours while consumers will be presented with immersive, customised and irresistible brand experiences.
The original Outbrain article can be found here.
This advertisement feature is paid by Outbrain, supporters of the Guardian Media and Tech Network’s Publishing and Platforms hub.
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