Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Philips Tests a GPS System for Your Shopping Cart” plus 1 more |  |
| Philips Tests a GPS System for Your Shopping Cart Posted: 17 Feb 2014 02:52 PM PST
In 3 feet, turn left. In 2 feet turn left. In 2 feet make a U-turn. Arriving at destination on your right. Phillips is working on a smart lighting system for stores that will help consumers locate what they need while gathering all sorts of shopper intel. Apple has been testing a similar concept with their iBeacon system which detects consumers as they move past a display. The system can send out a coupon or a recipe or other related information to encourage the consumer to stop and shop. Phillips’ system takes that concept to a new level by placing those sensors in the ceiling lights giving the system an overview of shoppers as they move around the store. (The image of a mouse in a maze comes to mind.) The system is designed to communicate with the customer at a variety of stages.
When he arrives at the avocados, the app gives him a coupon for 50% off then suggests a companion dish – churros for dessert. He accepts the idea and the app then leads him to the bakery department for churros. I love this example because the shopper is a guy named Dave and he’s looking for Mexican food. The test market for this program is Düsseldorf. Do they eat a lot of churros there? I live in California, so I get it but half the people I know back home don’t know what churros are. None of this is relevant to the project, I just thought it was funny. Back to the point. You can betcha that while David is finding his way to the churros, the app is collecting information about his shopping habits. The store will use this information to send him more relevant deals the next time he visits and they can share that data with their product partners. Pound for pound, good consumer data is worth more prime rib, so it’s a win-win-win except for one thing. . . . . . shopping with your mobile phone in your hand is a nuisance. I use my phone to access digital coupons so I have to continuously pull it out of my purse, unlock the screen, find the coupon, click to save, put phone back in pocket and start over two minutes later. Cart manufacturers need to install mobile phone holders so you can roam hands free. What do you think of Phillips’ smart store lighting system? A helpful tool or too much information for shoppers.        |
| Amazon and Others Turn Images into Advertisements Posted: 17 Feb 2014 02:14 PM PST
What it does is turn your website / blog images into affiliate links for related products with a small “Shop now” button in the corner. This example is from my TV site. To make it work, I had to install a special toolbar (not so thrilled about that). You also have “enable” the toolbar – another pain. Apparently clearing my cache, which I do regularly, turns off the toolbar so I have to go back to Amazon every time to turn it back on. You do the actual linking on your posted page, not in the admin. You can work in Page or Theater mode. Page mode pops you options as you scroll over images on the page. Theater mode gathers all of your images into a gallery so you can easily code each one. The roll over pops a search box, type in your key word – in my case The Following – and you’re given a list of products to choose from. The search engine did a good job of offering appropriate links. Make the connection and you’re done. When readers scroll over the button they get this:
As much as I dislike the toolbar fuss, this is far easier than creating text links by hand. I know there are plugins to help with that but I’ve never had much luck with those. The big story here isn’t the affiliate linking – that’s old news. What’s newish is the concept of converting your images into ads. Images are the trend nowadays, so why not squeeze everything you can out of them? They make your text pages more inviting. There are SEO benefits if you label them correctly and now they can act as mini-salesmen. One caveat: it’s easy to get carried away. Resist the urge to link all your photos or your site will look like one of those old school hyperlink farms. Yikes. Just after my test run with Amazon, I found a New York Times article about a company called Kiosked. They’re tool monetizes images and video in a very similar way. They’re tool is even more sophisticated because you can use it to add multiple links to an image.
Their more traditional ad is a scroll of options that opens down the side of an image. You can also easily embed either type of ad in YouTube and BrightCove videos.
I’m sure Amazon and Kiosked aren’t the first or only people to monetize images but both companies are making the process very easy and very mainstream. The fear is that it will become so easy and mainstream that 90% of the images on the web will be screaming SHOP NOW when all I really want to do is read the article. As of right now, I think it’s a neat way of both monetizing and making your videos and images more interactive. We’ll see if I’m still using Amazon’s tool a month from now. Have you tried image monetization? I’d like to hear about your experience. Join the Marketing Pilgrim Facebook Community    |
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