Page 10 - AeM_January_2019

RESEARCH, ANALYSIS & TRENDS

Voice technology is driving brands to

adopt a new strategy for search

The rising importance of voice technology, survey cited voice as the emerging technology they
improvements to measurement, and the emergence of most expect to be important in 2019, an increase of 12
Amazon as an ad platform is driving growth and change percentage points on the result from a year ago.
in search marketing, concludes WARC, the global
authority on advertising and media effectiveness, in its When asked about the application of voice technology
Marketer's Toolkit 2019. in marketing plans, 40% selected voice-optimized
search, ahead of content (25%), commerce (20%) and
While information-seeking, transactions and navigation advertising (11%).
remain the three core activities of search, the landscape
is changing fast. "The more pronounced trend is around voice. In 2018,
iProspect conducted research on voice adoption in six
Advertising spend for paid search has trebled over the key markets across APAC: China, Japan, India,
past decade and is expected to account for over a fifth Indonesia, Singapore and Australia. The results were
(21.9%) of the total in 2018. Across WARC's 12 key eye-opening. Our research found that 82% smartphone
markets - Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, France, users in India, 77% in China, and 62% in Indonesia are
Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, UK, US - spend for currently using voice-activated technology", Nate
paid search is forecast to rise 11% in the last year, Shurilla, APAC Head of Innovation and North Asia
topping $100bn. Commerce, iProspect, says.

This growth is driven, in part, by the confidence with Visual search, meanwhile - defined as anything using
which brands can measure the outcomes of search an image, rather than text, as the search input - is
marketing. In WARC's Marketers Toolkit survey, 36% of growing facilitated by smartphones and is already
respondents claimed they can measure the changing the search landscape, particularly among
effectiveness of online search "very accurately", more younger audiences, leading to a shorter path to
than any other media channel. However, there is also a purchase for brands.
growing realization that search can now play a valuable
role in delivering brand experience and inspiration. Key findings around search from WARC's Marketer's
Brands are especially enthused by the potential for voice Toolkit 2019 survey reveal that:
search. Some 29% of clients taking part in the Toolkit

10 January 2019 - Digital Business Trends Predictions