Welcome to ‘What Happened in Search’.
Packed full of the week’s digital search news each Friday, this week’s edition features Apple Watch, video’s impact on sales and Brightoll targeting from Yahoo.
THE FIRST SMARTWATCH THAT MATTERS?
Apple CEO Tim Cook believes the upcoming Apple Watch will be the only smartwatch of significance.
The claims were made in a wide-ranging interview he gave to the Fast Company, where the Apple boss stated that just because the Cupertino company wasn’t the first to create a smartwatch, it doesn’t mean it won’t be the best.
“We weren’t first on the MP3 player; we weren’t first on the tablet; we weren’t first on the smartphone. But we were arguably the first modern smartphone, and we will be the first modern smartwatch – the first one that matters.”
RETAIL ON FILM
Videos are not only winning all the buzz in digital lately, but are also directly impacting online sales, according to a new report from video marketing platform Invodo.
Based on video data from retail clients, which span a variety of industries, the Video Commerce Benchmarks Report found online shoppers who viewed a video were, on average, 1.6x more likely to make a purchase.
YOUTUBE’S MOBILE “CARDS”
YouTube rolled out new “cards” this week, offering what it calls the “evolution” of its annotations.
Now capable of displaying on mobile devices, the cards include customized images, titles and call-to-action text, and are available in six different categories, including: merchandise, fundraising, video, playlist, associated website and fan funding.
“Our goal is to have these eventually replace annotations”, wrote YouTube product manager Muli Salem.
BRIGHTROLL TARGETING
Yahoo is bringing its extensive audience data and targeting capabilities to video advertising.
On Wednesday, Yahoo announced that Audience Ads are now available on the Brightroll Demand Side Platform (DSP), claiming to have behaviour and interest data from more than a billion users globally. Audience Ads allow advertisers to target users based on demographic and behavioural data.
MEERKAT EXPLODES AT SXSW
It’s been a long time since the app world saw a breakout hit rise out of SXSW. It’s where Twitter blew up in 2007, and Foursquare replicated the feat two years later. It’s only natural that mobile social networks would get their start at SXSW: half a decade ago, the annual music and culture festival was one of the few places you could find a large concentration of smartphone owners.
This year, Meerkat, the live-streaming app built from the ashes of a stagnant app named Yevvo took Austin by storm.
