Will Advertisers Ever Learn To Truly Invest In Mobile?
This year on advertising’s biggest stage, Shazam was showing off technology that some say will change television forever. Shazam is a mobile application that can recognize audio and serve up information about that audio–or in the case of last night’s Super Bowl ads, a branded experience. About 30% of the ads during the big game were Shazam-enabled. But my biggest fear for Shazam is that it will become a marketing malpractice channel just like QR codes.
The Shazam advertisement experience works like this:
- User “listens” to the commercial with the Shazam app.
- Shazam recognizes the audio, which takes about 10 seconds.
- Shazam directs the user to a landing page that links to polls, contests, Facebook, Twitter or whatever the advertiser wants. It looks like this:
QR all over again
All in all, I was very disappointed in the Shazam experience during the big game. I’m sure Shazam set all kinds of internal records from all of the exposure, but I still see it as a failure. The commercial features in Shazam are still very new, so when a little bit of sloppy HTML slipped into the interface last night, I was forgiving. The real heart of the Shazam failure was with the advertisers.
What’s so wrong with QR codes? Marketers have taken the “slap a QR code on it” approach to print ads and brochureware for the last couple years because of low barriers of entry into the technology. It’s cheap and easy to make a QR code. That’s the problem. Marketers don’t need to invest much in QR media, so they don’t end up investing anything in the post-scan experience. Most QR codes lead to a non-mobile friendly web page, which only frustrates consumers.
It’s happening with Shazam already. Advertisers need to focus as much on their post Shazam experience as they do on their commercials. They need to give consumers a reason to engage with their ads. “Just trying it out,” without a commitment to the experience is going to train people not to use Shazam!
Winners and Losers?
From what I saw, there were two commercials from last night that were successful in creating value for their audiences through Shazam. Best Buy offered a $50 discount when you buy your next smartphone.
Toyota allowed you to enter into a sweepstakes to win a Camry. Both were smart, exciting, and helped build email lists and CRM databases.
Other advertisers were too obsessed with their own ads. Pepsi’s Shazam experience directed you to a page where you could buy the song in the ad. Chevy sent you to a mobile website where you would watch more commercials on your phone, even though they are currently campaigning for a completely different social site in the commercial at LetsDoThis.com! But Chevy didn’t invest in making that site mobile, so they took the easy way out.
In other ads, the Shazam logo didn’t appear until the middle of the commercial! That leaves hardly any time for someone to take out their phone, open the app, wait for it to load, hit the button to make the app listen…by the time they even get that far, the commercial is over! Clearly, best practices are yet to be defined as advertisers use this technology more over time.
The Future
I can see Shazam solving for all of the problems from Super Bowl Sunday. The Shazam sales team needs to consult with advertisers about best practices and have the courage to say, “No, that doesn’t create enough value for your audience, we’re not going to support your commercial.”
From the technology side, I think Shazam needs to rely a lot less on the mobile web. Tagging audio is an unnatural behavior, and the app needs to make the experience a lot smoother in order for people to want to use it.
Of course the ideal use for Shazam is when it becomes passive. It’s unlikely that passive listening will happen through the mobile device, however, because of the strain it would put on mobile phone batteries. I think it’s likely very Shazam’s technology will someday execute passive listening through smart TVs. When a Shazam commercial airs on a smart TV, Shazam sends a notification to your phone that gives you a chance to engage with branded content or some kind of bonus experience.
The convergence of screens in the living room is happening, and Shazam is at the forefront. Keep an eye on how this technology evolves. I’m hopeful that someday it will tie broadcast, interruption-based advertising to conversions in ways marketers never could before.
