Netsville presents our top 5 Best of the Week picks for Internet Marketing stories and developments from across the web.

If you see a story or feature that you’d like to suggest for Best of the Week, please include it in the comment section below!

 


Google Assistant takes center stage at I/O, search takes a back seat

“Google Assistant has fast become one of Google’s marquee products and a critical component of Google’s competitive strategy versus rivals Apple and Amazon. Today, at Google I/O, the company announced a long list of new features, capabilities and improvements.

First, the obligatory impressive numbers. The Google Assistant is now on 500 million devices globally, including TVs and cars, in 80 countries and 30 languages by the end of 2018. It also works with 5,000 connected home devices. Apple, Microsoft and Amazon all have large numbers they can cite, though other than Apple, not as much distribution.”

Read more at Search Engine Land.


Prediction, anticipation and influence: The importance of AI and machine learning in loyalty programs

Data is the foundation of every modern marketing plan. What distinguishes some marketing approaches from others is the way that data is collected, how it’s leveraged and how effectively it can drive desired outcomes.

The ability to nail these competencies, which can be optimized by the right technologies, can mean the difference between success and failure.

Read more at Martech Today.

 


Top 20 A/B Ecommerce Test Ideas

“There’s nothing that always works and pretty much nothing that never works either. Websites are highly contextual.

That being said, there are tests that tend to have a very high win rate. These are the test ideas that, while they don’t work 100% of the time, work more often than not.

Naturally, everything depends on the specific implementation — a good idea implemented poorly will not yield any results.

The following 20 testing ideas come from our own client-based research done over the years.”

Read more at Business 2 Community.

 


Two kinds of video ads help break through the dilemma of interruptive marketing

Two ad tech firms presented possible answers last week to advertising’s Dirty Little Secret.

That Secret, of course, is that few people actually watch content-interrupting ads.. At a breakfast hosted by the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) in New York City, Head of Market Development Frank Maguire from native ad platform Sharethrough highlighted the bad news.

Eighty-six percent of viewers skip TV ads these days, Sharethrough said, citing a YouGov study for Deloitte. Eighty-seven percent use a second screen while watching TV, particularly during commercials, per Accenture. Ninety percent skip pre-roll ads, says ORC International.

Read more at MarTech Today.


Researchers Show that Siri and Alexa can be exploited with “silent” commands hidden in Songs

“Researchers at UC Berkeley have shown they can embed stealthy commands for popular voice assistants inside songs that can prompt platforms like Siri  or Alexa to carry out actions without humans getting wise.

The research, reported earlier by The New York Times, is a more actionable evolution of something security researchers have been showing great interest in: fooling Siri…”

Read more at TechCrunch.

Check back next week for more Netsville Internet Marketing picks from across the web!
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