Cordial, an ESP and cross-channel marketing platform that can be used to send messages across email, SMS and mobile app, will be available in Amazon’s digital catalog AWS Marketplace.

The company claims this is the first time an ESP is being offered in the ASW Marketplace. It proves that AWS, "arguably the largest cloud software company on the planet, is recognizing the strategic importance of offering email marketing solutions to its customers and prioritizing it above other channels (eg, you don't see Attentive/SMS on there," a Cordial spokesperson says. 

The goal is to provide marketers with “a simpler way” of utilizing the software, states Jeremy Swift, founder and CEO of Cordial. 

"Cordial's marketing and data platform being available in AWS Marketplace accelerates time to market so its customers can continue to innovate faster,” states Mona Chadha, director of AWS Marketplace Category Management, AWS.

Amazon will doubtless add other ESPs, as it has added CDPs, in the future, the spokesperson adds. 

Cordial helps brands such as Revolve, 1-800 Contacts, and Backcountry collect all of their unstructured customer and business data from wherever it lives in the tech stack, use it for marketing, the company says.

The level of flexibility in Cordial's underlying architecture “has allowed us to scale our business quickly and with ease, states " Micah Evans, CTO at CREDO Mobile.

South Korea passed a law Tuesday that would require Apple and Google to allow competing payment systems in their respective app stores. The bill, passed by South Korea’s National Assembly, aims to disrupt the dominance of how apps on their platforms sell digital goods.

It will become law when signed by President Moon Jae-in, who reportedly strongly endorses the legislation.

The move digs into each of their 30% cut for in-app digital sales. Companies that fail to comply could be fined up to 3% of their South Korea revenue by the Korea Communications Commission, the country’s media regulator.

The “Anti-Google law,” nicknamed after the search giant, is the first in which a government passed a law that prevents a company from forcing developers to use their in-app billing system when building apps for each of the stores.

On Monday Reuters reported that Australia’s Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) is considering new laws to regulate the use of that Apple, Google, and WeChat digital payments systems.

The law amends South Korea’s Telecommunications Business Act, and could have a major impact on revenue for each company. The move reportedly digs into each respective company's 30% cut for in-app digital sales.

Last week, Apple in a statement told the Yonhapn News Agency that the “bill will put users who purchase digital goods from other sources at risk of fraud, undermine their privacy protections and make it difficult to manage their purchases.”

It also could “lead to fewer opportunities for the over 482,000 registered developers in Korea who have earned more than 8.5 trillion won to date.”

Revenue from the Google Play Store in South Korea was estimated at $4.3 billion in 2020, accounting for two-thirds of the country's total, compared with those from Apple's App Store at about $1.38 billion, according to the Yonhap News Agency, citing the Korea Mobile Internet Business Association.

In response to growing pressure, its rival Apple cut the 30% rate by half for app developers that earn up to $1 million annually at the beginning of 2021.

Consumers and marketers remain at odds about their channel preferences as they enter this year's peak shopping season, according to Celtra’s 2021 Holiday Marketing Survey, conducted by Dynata. 

Consumers prefer email for marketing communications — 35% say so. And 24% like social media, although only 6% say they would buy there. 

But 47% of marketers put social media out front (i.e., paid and influencer marketing), saying it will be the top channel to drive fourth-quarter revenue this year, followed by CRM marketing (34%) and display/programmatic (19%). 

One thing that seems clear is is the growth of digital in the mix: 62% of shoppers plan to buy both online and in-store. But only 21% will use the brick-and-mortar channel overall. 

For their part, 38% of marketers expect that over half of their holiday sales will come from digital. 

Of the consumers polled, 60% plan to purchase more on retailers' websites, and 35% on mobile. 

All that said, people are starting early — 27% in October and 30% in November. Only 11% are waiting until December to commence. 

Don’t expect huge growth overall — 40% of shoppers plan to spend the same amount as last year. 

But some brands will do better than others: 48% of shoppers want personalized products and offers, and 77% are more likely to purchase with brands that personalize content through the entire online journey, they say. 

Moreover, 55% are more loyal to brands that localize their content.

But be creative — 61% find holiday creative to be repetitive. And if you want to really reach them, 32% crave inspirational content for gift ideas. 

How are marketers scaling up? The study found that 51% are adopting new technology like automation. In addition, 66% plan to produce more creative assets, 47% will do so with the same resources they had in 2020. 

Marketers face several hurdles — for 38%, a top challenge is having assets ready on time, and 38% are concerned about having more personalized content. 

And, 38% of marketers say their biggest holiday goal is consistent creative and design across channels. 

"This holiday season, it's crucial for marketers to tell brand stories at every moment," concludes Eli Chapman, CMO of Celtra. 

Chapman continues, "In many instances, paid impressions are the only touchpoint you have with your audience — so staying on-brand at scale will either make or break your brand."

Dynata surveyed 1,000 U.S. consumers on August 4-5. In addition, Celtra surveyed 47% staffers in brand, creative and content departments in July.

As the writer of a weekly post that tends to look at the intersection between human behavior and technology, I’ve found the past 18 months interesting. And by interesting, I mean a twisted ride through gut-wrenching change unlike anything I have ever seen before.

I can’t even narrow it down to 18 months. Before that, there was plenty more that was “unprecedented” -- to berry-pick a word from my post from a few weeks back. I have now been writing for MediaPost in one place or another for 17 years. My very first post was on Aug. 19, 2004. That was 829 posts ago. If you add the additional posts I’ve done for my own blog -- outofmygord.com -- I’ve just ticked over 1,100 on my odometer.  That’s a lot of soul-searching about technology. And the last several months have still been in a class by themselves.

Now, part of this might be where my own head is. Believe it or not, I do sometimes try to write something positive. But as soon as my fingers hit the keyboard, things seem to spiral downwards. Every path I take seems to take me somewhere dark. Precious little has sparked optimism in my soul.

Today, for example, prior to writing this, I took three passes at writing something else. Each quickly took a swerve towards impending doom.

I’m getting very tired of this. I can only imagine how you feel, reading it.

So I finally decided to try a thought experiment. “What if,” I wondered, “we had gone through the past 18 months without the technology we take for granted? What if there were no Internet, no computers, no mobile devices? What if we had lived through the pandemic with only the technology we had, say, a hundred years ago, during the global pandemic of the Spanish Flu starting in 1918? Perhaps the best way to determine the sum total contribution of technology is to do it by process of elimination.”

The Cons

Let’s get the negatives out of the way. First, you might say that technology enabled the flood of misinformation and conspiracy theorizing that has been so top-of-mind for us. Well, yes -- and no.

Distrust in authority is nothing new. It’s always been there, at one end of a bell curve that spans the attitudes of our society. And nothing brings the outliers of society into global focus faster than a crisis that affects all of us.

There was public pushback against the very first vaccine ever invented, the smallpox vaccine. Now granted, the early method was to rub pus from a cowpox blister into a cut in your skin and hope for the best. But it worked. Smallpox is now a thing of the past.

And, if we are talking about pushback against public health measures, that’s nothing new either. Exactly the same thing happened during the 1918-1919 pandemic. Here’s one eerily familiar excerpt from a journal article looking at the issue: “Public-gathering bans also exposed tensions about what constituted essential vs. unessential activities. Those forced to close their facilities complained about those allowed to stay open. For example, in New Orleans, municipal public health authorities closed churches but not stores, prompting a protest from one of the city's Roman Catholic priests.”

What is different, thanks to technology, is that public resistance is so much more apparent than it’s ever been before. And that resistance is coming attached to faces and names we know. People are posting opinions on social media that they would probably never say to you in a face-to-face setting, especially if they knew you disagreed with them.

Our public and private discourse is now held at arm’s length by technology. Gone are all the moderating effects that come with sharing the same physical space.

The Pros

Try as I might, I couldn’t think of another “con” that technology has brought to the past 18 months. The “pro” list, however, is far too long to cover in this post, so I’ll just mention a few that come immediately to mind.

Let’s begin with the counterpoint to the before-mentioned con: the misinformation factor. While misinformation was definitely spread over the past year and a half, so was reliable, factual information. Those of us willing to pay attention to the facts were able to find out what we needed in order to practice public health measures at a speed previously unimagined. Without technology, we would have been slower to act, and -- perhaps -- fewer of us would have acted at all. At worst, in this case technology probably nets out to zero.

But technology also enabled the world to keep functioning, even if it was in a different form. Working from home would have been impossible without technology. Commercial engines kept chugging along. Business meetings switched to online platforms. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, as of the writing of this, is over 20% higher than it was before the pandemic.

In contrast, if you look at stock market performance over the 1918-1919 pandemic, the stock market was almost 32% lower at the end of the third wave than it was at the start of the first. Of course, there are other factors to consider, but I suspect we can thank technology for at least some of that.

It’s easy to point to the negatives that technology brings. But if you consider it as a whole, technology is overwhelmingly a blessing.

What was interesting to me in this thought experiment was how apparent it was that technology keeps the cogs of our society functioning more effectively -- but if there is a price to be paid, it typically comes at the cost of our social bonds.

A new survey finds 87% of Gen Zs confirm that they have been using more mobile apps with built-in interactive video streaming or video-calling features over the past year. 

The survey examined Gen Z preferences for real-time engagement (RTE) — digital experiences that are interactive, collaborative and shared through technology including live video, live audio, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR).   

The survey was conducted earlier this month among 1,000 Gen Z consumers, for RTE platform company Agora. 

Nearly two-thirds (62%) of respondents said they had tried interactive live audio streaming apps over the past year, and 70% said that in light of COVID -19, they would prefer retailers to offer AR and VR tech in their apps to test and try products at home before buying. 

Nearly half (46%) said that interactive video or audio are important for their gaming apps, and 23% deemed them extremely important (chart above). 

In addition, 63% agreed that front-facing AR filters are key to keeping them interested in a social media app or service. 

While commissioned by a tech vendor in the space, this survey’s results echo other research pointing to the Gen Z cohort’s craving for online interaction, including intimate connections made via “digital campfires.”

Major sports booking operations have been ramping up national TV marketing efforts -- paid-advertising and promotional -- in August, in large part to promote sportsbook operations for the fall.

In total, some $2.8 million in national TV advertising was spent from July 31 through August 29 by the casino/gambling category, according to iSpot.tv.

A year ago over the same month period, a total of $129,429 was spent on national TV by the gaming/casino industry. In August 2019, it was $234,497.

Much of this came in large part from Casears Entertainment to promote its sportsbook activities, luring users to download the app. Fall TV sports betting focuses on high volume NFL game action, and to a lesser extent, Major League Baseball and the NBA.

Caesars placed some 146 airings, totaling 407.9 million impressions from $2.4 million in national TV spend in August.

After Caesars, BetMGM earned 64 million impressions — 53.9 million from local TV stations ad time. Fox Bet had 54.5 million impressions, during the month -- 34% from local TV; 61% from national TV networks.

Fox Bet, which has Fox Corp. as a co-owner, has seen the bulk of its national TV impressions coming from Fox TV networks/channels.

Caesars, along with BetMGM and Fox Bet, are three of seven approved NFL league sports betting operations for the upcoming season. Each will get special access to NFL advertising TV inventory. This season, NFL games will run on Fox, CBS, NBC, ABC/ESPN, The NFL Network, and Amazon.

To date, 22 U.S. states have now allow legalized sports betting in some form -- through any combination of physical location, online, and/or mobile platforms.

In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a federal ban on sports betting.

Last week, at the 36th annual Space Symposium, Dentsu and its creative agencies –– dentsuMB, Isobar, and Merkle –– launched an immersive AR experience showcasing clients’ Northrop Grumman's “first-of-its-kind” space technology.

“Portals to Space” invites anyone with a smartphone to experience two Northrop Grumman spacecrafts ––  the Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) and Mission Extension Pod (MEP) –– as they repair and refuel dying satellites in orbit.

One’s immersive AR journey begins with a full view of Earth's glowing surface and the twinkling of nearby satellites.

A spacecraft soars by at 17,000 miles per hour, dropping off the MRV with its expanding antennas and solar panels. While floating 22,000 miles above Earth, the mission itself is described in detail by a voiceover.

With a full 360-degree view, there is little limitation to what a user can virtually see. Depending on where one turns, the Milky Way and Atmos 360 are fully visible.

“By using AR, we're telling Northrop Grumman's story in a tech-forward way by allowing viewers to ‘step in’ to space,” said Craig Cimmino, executive creative director at dentsuMB. This emphasizes “the importance and difficulty of the mission, while giving users a sense of awe and wonder.”

While the commercial space industry makes waves with expeditions by billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson, Grumman is focused on more practical issues. Like servicing and expanding the lives of dying satellites, a sure-fire way to cut down on future “space junk.”

According to Grumman, this is a key component in “making space exploration sustainable and effective.”

However, less “flashy” news sometimes demands more creative coverage, which is now more possible than ever before. 

Due to an increase in 5G networking, with revenue forecasted to grow 39% in 2021, augmented reality has become an actual reality for advertisers, brands, and users. Faster networks mean less lag time for mobile. Which means more accessibility to successful AR experiences. Like “Portals to Space.” 

Between Google’s popular 3D animal AR, a dramatic uptick in sales of AR glasses, and Apple’s inclusion of LiDAR scanners in their top-tier iPhones, not to mention their massive AR platform, augmented reality is something advertisers may want to seriously consider.  

“As a technology leader, Northrop Grumman is creating incredible innovations in space,” said Cimmino. “It is sometimes hard for people to understand the breadth and depth of their space technologies without a compelling visual. So ‘Portals to Space’ is a way to give the audiences a chance to not only see, but experience, the next generation of solutions in space.”

Sean Wilson, director of media and public relations at Northrop Grumman, agrees, hoping the AR experience -- with its precision, scale and speed -- helps viewers understand the reality and importance of MRV and MEP’s mission. 

“No one else has demonstrated this capability in space,” said Wilson. “It is truly a first-of-its-kind technology.”

Apple search for onsite and in apps has become an important feature for the company.

Google could pay more than $15 billion to Apple this year to keep its search engine the default on Safari -- up from $10 billion in fiscal-year 2020.

A Bernstein analyst estimated the latest deal with Google could contribute to the growth of Apple’s services about 850 basis points (BPS) -- a common unit of measurement for interest rates and other percentages in finance -- and amount to about 9% of the company’s gross profits.

In 2017, it’s estimated that Google paid Apple about $3 billion to remain the default search engine on iOS devices, but search for Apple has become so much more.

There are two potential risks to Google’s payments to Apple. The first points to regulatory risk. They are real, but likely years away. There’s also a potential impact of between 4% and 5% to Apple’s gross profits from an adverse ruling.

The other challenge is that Google decided to stop paying Apple to be the default search engine, or is looking to renegotiate terms and pay less. In prior research, the analyst notes that Google likely does this.

Safari holds 53% of mobile browser market share and 18% of desktop browser market share in the U.S.

In 2020, the companies reported that Apple began stepping up efforts to increase the development of its own search technology.

Apple recruited several search experts in recent years. It hired Google’s head of search, John Giannandrea, in April 2018, and now has several job openings related to search -- from software engineer and senior machine learning engineer in search science to senior machine-learning engineer.

Those efforts could point to other search capabilities.

On Monday the company announced the acquisition of Primephonic, a classical music-streaming service that offers a listening experience with search and browse functions optimized for classical, premium-quality audio, handpicked expert recommendations, and extensive contextual details on repertoire and recordings.

Apple Music subscribers, with the addition of Primephonic, gain an improved classical music experience, beginning with Primephonic playlists and exclusive audio content.

In the coming months, Apple Music Classical fans will get a dedicated experience with the best features of Primephonic, including better browsing and search capabilities by composer and by repertoire, detailed displays of classical music metadata, plus new features and benefits.

Primephonic is no longer available for new subscribers.

Apple will take the company offline beginning September 7, and then plans to launch a dedicated classical music app next year that combines Primephonic’s classical user interface with added features.

In a new tactic to help boost its streaming subscriptions, Netflix has released its first in-app games: two “Stranger Things”-themed offerings now accessible by its members in Poland.

Netflix Polska members “can try Netflix mobile gaming on Android with two games, Stranger Things: 1984 and Stranger Things 3,” Netflix Geeked posted. “It’s very, very early days and we’ve got a lot of work to do in the months ahead, but this is the first step.”

Netflix announced its intention to enter gaming in July, after hiring Mike Verdu, a former Facebook Reality Labs and Electronic Arts executive.

“This is a natural extension of [Netflix’s] content strategy, allowing it to mine intellectual property from popular shows like ‘Stranger Things,’” BI media analyst Geetha Ranganathan told Bloomberg at the time. “Though it may not generate much additional revenue, it will help deepen engagement and increase the service’s appeal and pricing power. Don’t expect this to be a turning point, but it shows that the company will explore new formats to increase time spent on the platform.” 

Both games had already been developed by BonusXP, with the “1984” version released in 2017 for iOS and Android devices, and the “3” version released in 2019 for Nintendo Switch.

Now, the games — being provided as a no-additional-cost value-add for Netflix subscribers — can be downloaded through in-app links that redirect users to the Google Play Store.

The games do not include ads or promotions for additional in-app software or products.

Subscribers can now access the games via in-app links that redirect them to the Google Play Store for downloading.