Good morning marketers, why aren’t smart speakers a marketing channel, yet?
Is it an excess of caution or a lack of imagination? Or maybe both? In 2019, smart speaker sales reached 147 million units globally, reflecting 70% growth over 2018, according to new data from Strategy Analytics. The firm said that Amazon retained the market share crown with 26.2%, down from 33.7% in 2018. That was followed by Google with 20.3%, which was down from 26% last year.
With more brands creeping into the smart speaker space to share the market with Amazon and Google, it’s still wildly unclear why we’re not seeing any good data or case studies around monetizing smart speakers — other than device sales. Marketers and brands are likely aware that they need to create voice/smart speaker experiences that aren’t purely about novelty and actually do something useful. Perhaps that’s holding many of them back. But there’s a major opportunity here that’s not being developed, and it’s not entirely clear why.
Google has removed more than 500 malicious advertising (aka “malvertising”) Chrome extensions from its Web Store following a two-month investigation by Cisco’s Duo Security team. The harmful malvertising extensions were active for at least eight months or longer, and were responsible for redirecting millions of users to malicious sites. The extensions are no longer available and existing users will see them marked as malware on their devices, but marketers should be concerned that our reputation suffers when breaches occur and bad advertising gives millions of users bad experiences.
Keep scrolling for more, including a look at Instagram’s reverse-chronological feed test, and Facebook’s new app.
Taylor Peterson,
Deputy Editor
