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.

Comments

To ad or not to ad

[peragrin]

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?

Re:To ad or not to ad

[stephanruby]

So Google wants to add paid audio clips that don't sound like Ads but are descriptions of timely partner products?

Yes, basically.

Their main argument is that no one actually paid for that ad. But most likely, it was just an A/B test designed to see how far they could push the line (without receiving backlash for it) and then measure its success rate so that they could convince Disney (or similar big brands) to buy more ads like it.

It's a bit like a cook trying to boil a frog by starting to turn on the heat really slowly, but then doing it too quickly and so the frog freaks out. And now the cook is doing everything it can to reassure the frog that the heat was for its own good and that it should just think of the water pot as its own personal relaxing jacuzzi.

Absolute 100% Horse Manure

[mkoenecke]

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.

How nice.

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

And I want a supply of square circles. Those should be about as easy to come by as 'promotions that are not ads'.

They are still ads

[hawguy]

"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!"

Typical marketspeak bullshit

[taustin]

"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.

Fuck off, Google

[JustAnotherOldGuy]

"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.

FUCK Newspeak

[houghi]

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?