Video of the Week: Reach Across The Aisle

JetBlue claims they’ve got something ‘historic’ going on down the aisle of one of their planes. In a microcosmic reflection of a voting system, 150 passengers were given the chance to decide upon their ideal holiday destination and, if a mutual decision was made unanimously, then all would win tickets to the agreed-upon location on a JetBlue flight.

In what was essentially a plane-based version of 12 Angry Men (150 Holiday-Craving Jetsetters?), JetBlue wanted to show how groupthink can lead to a homogenization of opinion and oppression of dissenting voices in favor of the most influential. A very fragile form of democracy, it seems.

Watch the advert here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=208&v=EPurzKVTlU4

 

Press: The Drum – Entertainment and AI

Published on The Drum on 26th February 2016.

We’re in the thick of awards season, the BAFTAs just behind us and the Oscars looming. While nominated films always receive plenty of attention, the hundreds of films released each year need to find equally powerful ways to generate interest and engagement from their audiences.

From Hal 9000 in 2001 Space Odyssey to C-3PO in Star Wars, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has always proved popular in the film industry, but it’s not always considered within an advertising context. In fact, it’s a highly effective way for entertainment brands to reach their audiences.

AI improves campaign results and works on an impression level, analysing data to determine the likelihood of a particular advert generating a desired outcome for each ad call. It then predicts which advert is most likely to deliver the strongest result and serves the ad.

Cinema audiences are often diverse, after all there’s no accounting for taste. It’s extremely important to target the right audiences with the right trailer if a campaign is going to be successful, and this is not always achieved with conventional targeting.

For example, an ad call comes through and is identified as being from a woman aged 18-34. With traditional targeting and prevailing gender stereotypes in place, she may be targeted with an ad for a rom-com as she fits a certain demographic. But what if the woman in question cannot stand rom-coms and is actually a fan of blood-curdling horror? She won’t interact with the ad served and the impression is wasted.

Read the rest of the article here.

Press: IAB UK – The Importance of Real Time

Published on the IAB UK Blog on the 25th February. 
Stephen Upstone, CEO & Founder of LoopMe, comments that instant feedback is one of the advantages of digital advertising & that artificial intelligence can help advertisers take insights to the next level with real time optimisation.

Digital advertising has many strengths, its ability to target specific audiences, to be interactive, to reach users at scale. But one key advantage which is often overlooked, and in the light of the IAB’s RTA Conference should be brought to the foreground, is its capacity to deliver advertisers real time insights into what works and, more importantly, what doesn’t.

With offline media, campaigns must be planned weeks and months in advance. The creative is sent out and fingers are crossed that it has some measurable effect on sales or brand metrics. Months later data showing campaign’s impact will arrive, but by that point the next execution will have been planned. Insights can only be put into practice for the following campaign, by which time the initial information is fast becoming out of date.

In comparison feedback from digital campaigns is fast, facilitating optimisation. With programmatic campaigns buyers can analyse the performance of a particular creative or provider and make the decision to push more budget towards those which show the best results. The time from campaign launch, to feedback, to optimisation has shrunk exponentially.

But even with programmatic, this optimisation still isn’t real-time. It’s down to the planner to check up on the campaign and make a decision on how to optimise it going forward. It’s also a blind decision – one creative may have performed better than another over the weekend, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it will continue to do so over the week. Planners have to take a shot in the dark.

Read the rest of the article at https://www.iabuk.net/blog/the-real-importance-of-real-time#JjPgsSLbGtohqWTS.99

 

Video of the Week: Making Love Letters With Scrabble

A,B,C baby, that’s how easy  love can be. Or so Scrabble want you to think with their 2015 advert celebrating all the best in random coincidence and wordplay.

Though it’s hard to tell just how romantic a game of Scrabble can be, Mattel have found a nice little novelty that makes the ad consistently watchable with its wordplay. The nice little near-sepia filter also gives the ad enough of a glamorous and premium finish.

Given how romantic Scrabble makes their adverts, we here at LoopMe are thinking there could be an entire miniseries about board games and romantic entanglements – is it worth taking a Risk over a Trivial Pursuit? There’s no point asking us to Guess Who you’ll end up with. We don’t have a Clue.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nOgcEykrdXI

 

Video of the Week: General Electric Feels the Heat

Be it the swooping score, the near-cinematic cinematography, or the earthy voiceover, there’s something profoundly epic about General Electric’s new series of ads titled ‘Unimpossible Missions’. The concept is easy enough – GE use their cutting edge and highly durable technology to subvert our expectations of impossibility.

Considering the climax of the two minute advert is dunking a snowball in a pile of molten metal, ‘A Snowball’s Chance in Hell’ does a fantastic job in keeping its audiences watching and waiting. A lot of this is down to a rather spectacular musical accompaniment, which ramps up the tension to 11.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIZHBzvgfGk

General Electric have a history of creating some fantastic mobile video content – most recently through their highly interactive and interesting Vine channel.  Encouraging aspiring and accomplished scientists to share their favourite experiments, GE has succeeded in creating a communal and collaborative experience for all.

Mobile at the Movies – A LoopMe Educational Breakfast

LoopMe had a fantastic time at their Mobile at the Movies event last week at the Ham Yard Hotel. With an emphasis on the entertainment industry, our panel of expert speakers were able to deliver important and insightful comments on current issues and opportunities facing mobile video consumption. Topics such as data application, ad blocking, ad quality and the future of mobile advertising were all dissected and explored with a fantastic range of opinions being given to (and from) the audience.

Many thanks to everyone who attended the event, please check out our highlights video here!

We look forward to seeing you at even more events in the future, and feel free to contact us at contact@loopme.com for any follow-up questions you may have about the event or for any materials we used on the day.

Press: DMM – AI and the Future of Digital

Published on 15th February 2016 in the Digital Marketing Magazine.

As we press ahead into 2016 it strikes me that we are moving into an exciting new phase of digital advertising.

Today the industry embraces mobile as an integral part of the marketing mix. There is no doubting the medium’s importance and it’s set to surpass TV in terms of ad spend by next year. To uncover the next industry trend we have to look to something new in the mobile space, something which really offers to transform the way the industry works.

From robots to self-driving cars, artificial intelligence (AI) is making waves across the tech world and a splash in the newspapers. Just this week at the World Economics Forum in Davos, AI was heralded as the ‘fourth industrial revolution’ with the technology predicted to radically transform a whole host of work forces and industries.

Advertising is no exception. AI technology began to crop up in ad campaigns in 2015; the opportunities the technology presents, and its problem-solving potential, are far-reaching. While it might be some time before driverless cars hit our streets, artificial intelligence campaign optimisation is ready for adoption by the wider advertising community.

This is because artificial intelligence supercharges data and targeting. While most digital campaigns implement data to some extent, many will use this information in a blunt manner. A brand will outline their demographic and target audience. Take for example, a sports brand looking to target 18-34 year-old males with an interest in sports in order to sell the latest football boots. First and third party data will be used to identify users which fit this profile and the advert will be delivered accordingly.

While this approach is better than attempting to serve the ad to a 90-year-old woman, it lacks finesse. There are many sports fans who will never actually play football and so have no need for boots, but they will be targeted anyway because they fit the profile.

The solution

By implementing artificial intelligence, it is possible to teach the technology not to target users who have never interacted with this type of advertisement. Each time a similar campaign is run it will know who is likely to engage and who isn’t, only targeting the most relevant users.

Read the rest of the film here.

When Sparks Fly: Artificial Intelligence and Valentine’s Day

With the success of recent films like Her, Ex Machina or Chappie, Artificial Intelligence has grabbed cultural attention not simply because it is a science fiction phenomenon, but also because filmmakers and theorists have started analysing the social impacts of artificial intelligence in everyday life.

But, as we approach Valentine’s Day, headlines have started asking, can you fall in love with a Computer? Will the Turing Test become the biggest test in a relationship? If a computer can drive a car, drive a train, or land a plane, surely it knows exactly how to become an emotionally engaging and reassuring presence.

What sort of place does AI have in love and romance? Films like Spike Jonze’s Her deal with this question in beautifully accessible and heartbreaking ways (so too does his fantastic 2010 short film, I’m Here), showing how even machine learning can bring about wondrous and meaningful relationships.  This isn’t too far away from reality– already there are moves to let robots create art and fall in love. TV shows like Humans on Channel 4 show where this may logically end up, with Artificial Intelligence getting to a cognitive stage of dissecting ideas of morality and ethics.

Looking towards more real-world impacts, AI has already had software applications that have helped us fall in love. The Blinq Dating App for example has started using Artificial Intelligence to judge ‘hotness’: no longer will people be able to use deception and carefully crafted photos to bag a date, now the machine will decide how attractive they are. Of course, the subjective nature of beauty has seemingly gone out the window. How far can this go? How long will it be before Artificial Intelligence be able to predict not only compatibility, but also relationship longevity? Number of potential children? Economic prospects of couples? It seems that with the right data any prediction is possible.

LoopMe Gears up for Mobile World Congress!

With only twelve days to go, the LoopMe team are getting ready for a fantastic time at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. We’ll be there throughout the event  to entertain, inform and revel in the Spanish sun, while offering deeper insight into LoopMe’s latest developments and services. If you are around the city, why not drop by or book a meeting for a chat about mobile video, data, and artificial intelligence?

Want to find out more about MWC? Check out this handy preview video on their website.

If you’d like to organise a meeting with LoopMe at any time over the next six days, do not hesitate to contact us on contact@loopme.com

 

 

 

The Future in the Palm of Your Hand – Mobile and the 2016 Election

Every day brings new analysis, new interpretations and fresh perspectives on what is sure to be a titanic and exciting battle between Republican and Democrat candidates. But what does this have to do with mobile?

In terms of social media, Barack Obama’s masterful online campaigns in both 2008 and 2012 are certainly a model that will be imitated – the outgoing President posted on Instagram five times more than rival Mitt Romney, driving engagement for the Democrats not seen by the Republicans.

But what about mobile advertising? Recent commentary in AdWeek suggests that mobile ads will be instrumental in the race for the White House this year. 67% of Hispanics and 60% of black voters visit political websites on their mobile – significantly higher than the average figure of 49%. In 2016, the electorate will be formed of around 30% non-white voters – a huge portion of the overall votes. This will be all the more important in swing-states with a far greater ethnic variety.

For campaigners, mobile is a pivotal route to potential voters. Now more than ever, location targeting can be used to make sure that mobile ads are being seen by the right people in the right places. This is no gimmick – as far back as 2014 AdExchanger was emphasising how important the contextual and geographic relevance of ads can be on mobile. Delivering important and regional messages to citizens can show a level of investment not possible when ads are presented on a national scale.GOP_Bush_110515 (1)

This can be taken one step further. Using machine learning and data, it is possible for experts to optimize these campaigns – delivering the right adverts to the right demographic at the right time of the day. It’s an incredible prospect, but a glimpse of the future – artificial intelligence may be able to predict how voters might vote before they have even decided. One machine has predicted an outcome for the 2016 election, though it will be interesting to see how close it is to the final result.

Another important element in all of this is video. Video has been instrumental in articulating key campaign messages – a huge amount is expected to be spent on digital adspend in the 2016 election. These videos are heavy hitting and powerful tools for articulating candidate messages – the backlash to Donald Trump’s campaign video reflect this. Looking forward to 2020, the growth of social media and digital video could mean $3.3 billion will be spent on digital, trebling the figure in 2016. Mobile, in all its forms, is the latest battleground for campaigners, and may produce exciting and unexpected results come November.