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Pssst! Buy This! No, Buy This! (That Ad Is 'Speaking' to You)

Are mobile shoppers about to hear from their phones as they shop?

Voice pioneer Nuance Communications today introduced a new mobile advertising format that lets people have two-way conversations with brands.

I’m not sure why a company would issue such an announcement on April Fools’ Day, but in any case, Nuance says the new Voice Ads are designed to “transform traditional mobile advertising into an engaging and entertaining conversational experience.”

The idea is that an ad would appear and prompt the consumer to participate by speaking to it, which starts the interactive experience.

“Voice has already changed the mobile interface, making it faster and easier for consumers to discover and access information, and find people and content,” said Michael Thompson, executive vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile. “Mobile advertising shouldn’t be any different, and should be designed specifically around the unique capabilities of the mobile device.”

Since Voice Ads are optimized for location awareness, mobility and voice input, I can easily imagine extending the technology into the aisle in an attempt to reach the mobile shopper.

Consumers already are being driven to specific stores by location-based deals and incented to check out certain products, such as scanning specific items for credit through apps like shopkick.

Mobile phone users are getting used to speaking to their phones in addition to people. One can ask Google Navigation for directions or Siri for factoids and advice. The online travel agency CheapAir now allows travelers to get flight deals by speaking the request rather than typing.

If consumers can verbally interact with brands through ads, they just as easily could interact with them at the product level as they pass the items in a store.

While it is one thing to verbally ask for product information via mobile, do you think shoppers are quite ready for the products to talk back to them?

 

3 comments about "Pssst! Buy This! No, Buy This! (That Ad Is 'Speaking' to You)".
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  1. Pete Austin from Fresh Relevance, April 2, 2013 at 4:31 a.m.

    How about starting with the alarm clock? "Good morning Chuck! This is your wake-up call sponsored by Kellogs." Not so silly!

  2. Chuck Martin from Chuck Martin, April 2, 2013 at 11:19 a.m.

    That is one way to look at it, Paula.

  3. Chuck Martin from Chuck Martin, April 2, 2013 at 11:20 a.m.

    Or that paired with a deal-of-the-day, Pete?

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