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Google Wants To Create Promotions That Aren't Ads For Its Voice-Controlled Assistant (businessinsider.in)
Earlier this month, some Google Home users noticed what appeared to be audio ads for Disney's "Beauty and the Beast" movie. After some intense backlash, the company released a statement claiming that the ad was not an ad, but that it was simply "timely content" that Disney didn't pay for. Google's UK director of agencies, Matt Bush, has since spoken out about the company's plans with advertising via the voice-controlled Assistant. Business Insider reports: Bush explained Google isn't looking to offer brand integrations in voice for the time being, since it didn't have enough data to come up with an ad product that adds value for consumers. "We want businesses to have a phenomenal mobile experience and then building on that have a phenomenal voice experience," Bush told Business Insider at Advertising Week Europe. "That might not be, in the early instances, anything that has to do with commercials at all. It might just be something something that adds value to the consumer without needing to be commercialized." Bush explained that the consumer experience with voice is very different from that of text search because the use cases for voice navigation differ depending on the device the function is used on and the context the user finds themselves in. "We don't want to start putting in commercial opportunities that we think users don't want to interact with," Bush said "We don't want anything to come in-between the user and their access to the information they're actually looking for. If a brand can add value in that space, fantastic." Bush cited mobile search ads as successful executions of using context and personal user insights, but voice promotions are unlikely to take the same form. "It's unlikely to be what you see from search as it currently stands, where you might have three or four ads as the top results of a search," he said.
An Ad by any other name is still an Ad.
So Google wants to add paid audio clips that don't sound like Ads but are descriptions of timely partner products?
So Google is trying to tech word of mouth advertising to it's home device and then charge the maker of those products for those ads?
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
I've tried them; they are useless and just gimmicky.
Google can't make direct revenue from the Home. Amazon's Alexa is there to support consumption of products and media from Amazon (and various partners I suppose.)
Good grief, what a load of horse manure. The whole POINT of something like Google Home is to analyze and profit from one's day to day interaction with the Web. I really do like and use Google's services, especially with respect to synchronizing data among my various devices: BUT it is quite true that we, its users, *are* the product. I have a very nice Google Home Christmas present which has been sitting in its box since December, and the more I think about it, the less inclined I am to activate it. Google may very well be living up to its credo, "Don't Be Evil," but there is a whole galaxy of things third parties can do in their own best interest (and not in yours) that, while not technically "evil," are not necessarily in *your* best interest. Don't be paranoid, but don't be a fool either.
TANSTAAFL
And I want a supply of square circles. Those should be about as easy to come by as 'promotions that are not ads'.
Can't wait for Amazon's delivery b/c Alexa overheard that we are out of beer...
"We don't want to start putting in commercial opportunities that we think users don't want to interact with,"
You know what people call "commercial opportunities that users do want to interact with"? They call them ads.
And I have no problem with ads like this in the proper context "Alexa, I need toilet paper." "Ok, you can buy the same brand you bought the last time, but Charmin is on sale today and is $2.37 less expensive"
That's the kind of ad I'm happy to have, but I don't want to hear "Today's weather is sunny and 63 degrees. Today is clean-your-butt day and we have Charmin on sale!"
Make the new "not ads" opt-in. If users want them, they can flip a switch.
If they're not purely for Google profit, they should have no problem with this approach.
A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
"We don't want to start putting in commercial opportunities that we think users don't want to interact with,"
If that were true, you wouldn't be talking about ads at all. Because your users don't want any ads in the product they bought.
"the company released a statement claiming that the ad was not an ad, but that it was simply "timely content" that Disney didn't pay for."
It's an ad, and I don't give a fuck what kind of alternative hand-waving horseshit they call it. Shut the fuck up unless I summon you or unless there's a genuine emergency you need to warn me about. And no, a sale on pickles or Pampers or $PRODUCT is not an "emergency". No, no, fuck NO.
This right here is enough to convince me to never, EVER try Google Assistant or whatever the fuck it's called.
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
For the confused: OP likely had a > in the title, and it should have been "This is why Alexa > Google Home".
Google fucked you in the ass.
No.
Seriously, No.
Failing to create a wall between content and structure in this environment is Evil. The kind of Evil you have previously talked about not doing.
Don't do it.
Yours,
People who would prefer not to have to deal with the disruption of you no longer existing.
My servile coworkers didn't seem to think the Disney thing was an ad when I ran that story by them in passing, and in fact seemed pretty okay with getting such "informative alerts", to paraphrase whatever it was exactly that they said.
A general dislike of my place of work has been starting to manifest for a while...
I should grow a pair and look for other places to work, but how I loath that process.
And who can say whether another place would be any better.
Bullshit. Google can make direct revenue from pushing ads on Home. That is what they are doing, no matter what the lying exec says.
Yeah and that's why people are pissed. They don't want the injection of ads. Alexa doesn't inject ads, so given a parity of functions which are people going to choose?
Yeah, that's exactly what happened, and there was no way to re-edit the posting or do a delete and re-add.
It's still trying to sell us some product in exchange for the one eating our precious bandwidth getting paid while we get nothing for our loss.
I'm coming to believe that none of this crap is going to get any better until decapitations start once more. Only way to get a sense of ethics back it seems.
What the meaning of "is" is?
If not, citation is necessary.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Can I get some food that gives me lots of energy and no calories? perhaps you could sell it using your not-ad promotions?
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
nor will google ever get money for timely content... right?
They'll choose muh dik.
Disney is litigous to the point where putting three coffee cups on a table could end in a lawsuit. Do you expect me to believe that Google would dare to use anything relating to them without permission in triplicate signed in front of a priest?
It was an ad, it was intended to be an ad, it IS an ad and Google is telling bald-faced lies.
Uber is a taxi company. Hurting people is not a prank. Alternate truth is lies. And these are ads.
I realy would like to walk up to them and put my knee with force into their balls and place my fist on their face several times with force and place my boot in their liver when they are on the ground.
It is not an assault, it is a valuable life lesson. Why won't they see the difference?
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
What if they want a satisfying choice?
"We don't want anything to come in-between the user and their access to the information they're actually looking for. If a brand can add value in that space, fantastic."
That sounds an awful lot like advertising to me. Let me phrase it differently, the absolute last thing I want out of google home is for some hipster working deep inside google to be able to say, "hey, this is cool, let's spam google home users with it." As of now, Google Home is a non-starter in my household.
Please, Amazon, don't let Alexa do this to us. You're our only hope.
Kriston
Yeah, it wasn't a paid advertisement. It was an experiment to gauge how users would react to advertisements like this.
Nice way to spin it.
Don't be evil. Most of the time.
Kriston
This has absolutely nothing to do with Google then getting correlations of how it's free "mentions" work with increased product demands so that next year they can go to advertisers and say, "You know what would boost your product sales? A mention on our lovely Alexa." And then after that those paid mentions intermingle with her free mentions in a way you cannot differentiate.
you know, kind of like how they incorporated ads into search those long years ago... then promised that we'd be able to tell when things were ads... then it became a little box next to the weblink that your eye passes over on those top three results and you've clicked one before you can figure out it was an ad.
No, Google isn't interested in making money from this at all! And really, folks, you'll *want* your system making unsolicited suggestions to you! Look how everyone loves the Windows 10 start screen!
"Would you like some toast? Some nice hot crisp brown buttered toast. No? How about a muffin then? Nothing? You know the last time you had toast. 18 days ago, 11.36, Tuesday 3rd, two rounds. I mean, what's the point in buying a toaster with artificial intelligence if you don't like toast. I mean, this is my job. This is cruel, just cruel." I was surprised when I heard that they pushed an advertisement out, and shocked when they tried to defend it. Now they're saying it's not an ad because they didn't get money (note the weaseling) for it? That's Don Draper-esque level hubris.
"You might as well get your son a ticket to hell as give him a five string banjo." -unknown minister