Target shoppers looking for the perfectly sized artificial Christmas tree can now virtually place a tree in their home to select the right size.

Target’s “See It in Your Space” augmented reality feature in its mobile app now contains Christmas trees with an “AR” icon for customers to select.

The AR experience then uses the phone’s camera to show the product in true-to-life size, much like furniture shoppers use in apps from companies including Ikea, Overstock.com and Wayfair.

Target has added other items such as furniture and rugs to the tree-shopping experience. In addition, six holiday rooms in Target’s virtual 360-degree shopping feature have been added, showing holiday products in scale to be virtually placed in the shopper’s home.

A report released Friday found that consumers read an average of 10 reviews before trusting a business -- up from 7 in 2017 -- and 40% of consumers are only impacted by reviews written within the last two weeks.

In the report that BrightLocal released Friday, numbers suggest consumers increasingly search for local businesses and their online reviews. In fact, 27% of consumers look online daily for local businesses, up from 12% in 2017.

Only 5% of those ages 18 to 34 never read reviews. Quite difference from the 55 and older crowd, where just 6% always read consumer reviews and 69% regularly or occasionally reading them.

This is the first year since the initial publication of the annual report in 2010 that BrightLocal has analyzed the data, which includes 1,000 U.S.-based consumer responses across three age groups 18 to 34, 35 to 54, and 55 and older.

The report found consumers are most likely to look at reviews for restaurants and cafés, hotels and B&Bs, and medical businesses.

An increasing number of consumers also pay close attention to star ratings. Some 57% of consumers won’t use a business that has fewer than 4 stars, up from 48% in 2017. Some 11% won’t use businesses that don’t have a perfect star rating of five.

The report also found that consumers expect businesses to have an average of 40 online reviews before trusting that its star rating is accurate. Consumers will read 10 review, up from seven last year, before feeling able to trust a business.

And the younger the reader, the more they trust the review. In fact 91% of 18- to-34-year-olds trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations, yet 57% of consumers in this age group said they have read a lot of fake reviews in the past year.

Interestingly, 80% of PC or Mac users read reviews more often this year compared with 63% last year. Tablet readers are down to 40% this year, compared with 45% last year. Mobile internet browsers are the same. This group fell two percentage points to 55% in 2018. Mobile app users have remained steadfast with 32%.

Urban Airship and Vue Entertainment -- part of one of the largest cinema operators, Vue International -- this week will roll out the UK’s first platform that allows consumers to buy movie tickets and add them to their Google Pay account.  

Earlier this year, Urban Airship worked with Google Pay to create ticketing and a boarding pass options using its mobile wallet option for travel, hospitality and entertainment. Customers can receive personalized offers through their ticket, whether it is a VIP seat upgrade or special promotions for specific showings.

The option will become available at more than 30 of its paperless sites and is made possible through Urban Airship’s platform. Tickets are dropped into the mobile wallet, making them available at the time of the show.

For the past three years, Dan Green -- who is head of digital and CVM at Vue Entertainment for the UK and IE and oversees everything from rebuilding the web platform a few years back to all social channels -- has been working to bring the company into the digital age.

He started about three years ago with rebuilding the web site to introduce personalization. “Your propensity to watch a particular film based on specific criteria and data collected from the web site” becomes accustomed to target advertisements and promotions, Green said, adding that behavioral experiences also help infer they types of movies the consumer will want to watch.

In 2015, the company relied more on organic search, but that has changed. Now investments in paid search are up "10-fold." It's not about getting people to come to the web site through paid search, but rather a higher rate of conversions from paid versus organic search. 

“We’ve invested heavily in paid search during the past couple of years,” Green said, admitting that investments have been in the millions. “It’s contributed to an increase in web site traffic.”

In recent weeks, a few of Vue’s cinemas have begun to test the ability for consumers to purchase food and drinks electronically, Green said. “When you’re choosing your session, you can select from about 90% of the food and drink menu,” he said. “Once in the theater, you walk into an express lane, show your QR code or Google Wallet, and it gets processed at the point of sale.”

There’s also a 20% discount if the consumer books the sale of food and drinks in advance. During the test, between 5% and 10% of consumers transact this way without any promotion. Coca-Cola has been participating in the test as a marketing partner.  

“When consumers have a good experience, the propensity to participate again is much higher,” he said.

Green also pointed to one missing piece to the company’s digital strategy, an Android app, despite its concentration in mobile. The company continues to rely mostly on its iOS app. And until it’s built and distributed later in 2019, the platform build with Urban Airship to run across Google Play should carry the weight.

Next week, Vue also will launch the ability to split the ticket bill at checkout among the person paying and their friends.

There was a lot of attention given to yesterday's announcement that the big gambling companies will no longer advertise during live sports events. A lot of the coverage was correct -- but I'm not so sure it told the full story.

The self-imposed "whistle to whistle" ban was rightly flagged up as an example of the industry deciding to self-regulate before it risked being made to do so. There has been a lot of pressure on the gambling companies, which are seen by opponents as normalising betting on sports through their blanket dominance of ad breaks before and during an event. So, yes -- that bit is correct, but it is only half the story. 

To begin with, "whistle to whistle" only really affects one ad break -- the one at half time. I'm talking about football here because, outside of horse racing, that where's where the big money is. Speaking of horse racing, it's exempt from the voluntary ban on gambling ads during the action because it's the gambling that keeps the sport going. 

So, to recap, the bookmakers' biggest, most reliable, year-round sport is not affected. The main impact will fall on football, and yet only during the ad break at half time.

Bookmakers are effectively dropping those generic ads that come with a screen over which the latest odds for the second half are overlain -- such as player x to score next 10-1. Ads will still be running as usual up until kickoff.

The angle that I have not seen written about anywhere is the insider story when you speak to marketers within gambling companies. I have known a couple well enough to have informal talks over the years, and a common theme emerges.

At the crux of all gambling companies' business issues is that people tend to be gamblers or they tend not to be gamblers. It's very hard to change behaviour and attitudes, and so all the gambling companies can really do is fight over the same customers.

This has set them up in an advertising spending spree that is becoming unsustainable. They lit the green light on campaigns to coincide with the rise of mobile and they have not been able to bring spend down -- they have had to keep pumping more and more money into never-ending campaigns.

That's why I think the gambling companies will be satisfied with their moment of self-regulation. It takes away competition for live-betting ad spots that dominate half-time breaks on televised football, so it can only be good for clawing back some budget while also appearing to be an altruistic moment of self-regulation.

Don't get me wrong -- there's an element of that in there too, but for me, there's also a big dose of the gambling companies causing a partial ceasefire on half-time ad slots to save a lot of cash. 

Don't forget that these new ads -- the new wave of never-ending attempts to get us to "get on" a team or a player to score next -- have been brought about by a rush to get people on a particular betting company's app.

That means they have had years of spending big bucks getting gamblers to download those apps, and I would be very surprised if activity during a match now doesn't shift to app notifications and perhaps a bit of social to targeted lists of known gamblers. The mega money campaigns have taken place for years and given winning brands a direct route to a user's mobile screen.

What we are now likely to see is a de-escalation of this arms race and a shift to mobile marketing during games. 

Today’s consumers increasingly prioritize their exercise needs and leisure activities when traveling. Doing so doesn’t come without inconveniences, however, especially for sports that require special equipment, like outdoor cycling.

Roula is a bicycle rental brand that aims to change this, enabling cyclists to rent premium bikes when they travel, thereby eliminating the need for them to transport their own or spend time searching for a quality ride. Ahead of New York Retail Innovation Week this coming January, when Roula will be hosting a site visit, PSFK CEO and founder Piers Fawkes spoke to Mark Voysey, founder of Roula, to learn about how his mobility business is letting travelers click, rent and ride in a consumer climate of on-demand retail as a service.

Piers Fawkes: Could you explain Roula’s concept of a high-end bike rental program?

Mark Voysey: It is exactly that, with all the necessary biking bells and whistles, such as concierge delivery that we’ve amped up starting in New York and a custom-designed Vespa delivery service that is already turning heads. We’re also pursuing unique partnerships, such as putting Roula’s Brompton bikes in the hotel rooms of NYC travelers.

We host regular free weekly rides for all levels of ability as well as custom-tailored rides, corporate partnership events, a drive-through bike wash and at our NYC headquarters have one of the best views in Manhattan over the Hudson River right on the Bike Path.

What’s Roula’s brand ethos?

Roula’s mission is to make life easier for the traveling cyclist. It’s a rapidly growing sport and lifestyle brand that aims to address the challenges of traveling with your own bike or dealing with the logistics and hassle of finding a high-end bike to rent while on the go.

Could you describe your target market and consumer trends that are driving a need for your service?

Our main demographic is currently aged 35-60, mainly working professionals and male-skewed, with the female sector offering an enormous growth opportunity, and we offer weekly women’s rides.

Many of our customers are weekend warriors, individuals who see the bike as their outlet. Roula appeals to them because we’re serving a need amongst a community (or passionate traveling cyclists who who like to perform at their peak, in a market where service and efficiency to fulfill their need means everything.

There are a number of aspects at play in their lives that generate demand for the Roula service: One is bicycling becoming the new golf. Old, stuffy, white-male dominated golf clubs are being questioned by society and culture, as well as seen as too time-consuming—spending 5-6 hours on the course.

Second, there’s the largest and growing over-50 population on record that is looking to stay fitter and healthier later on in life. Low-impact cardiovascular social sports are top of their list, with cycling being prominent.

What do you think is driving this change in high-end consumption, shifting the focus onto fitness and spending time in the outdoors?

Cultural and lifestyle choices have shifted to emphasize health and well-being, leading to a decline in foot traffic in pubs and bars as well as new silos in the travel sector such as Equinox Gyms launching its own hotel brand and Marriott Hotels’ holistic well-being platform within its Westin brand.

People are increasingly integrating health and well-being into their leisure and business travel to maintain their routine. Corporations have also adopted a more proactive approach to the well-being space, knowing that a healthier workforce is more motivated and productive, and over time even saves cost on their health insurance premiums.

Could you explain the importance of community within this space?

The community is highly viral through the lens of the equipment, gadgets, apparel and brand factors within the category that’s been harmonized at a digital level by platforms like Strava, the ‘Facebook for athletes.’ Other platforms such as MapmyRun are extensions of this, and Apple is also pushing its health and wellness integration via its watch range.

Senator Mark Warner (D-Va.) on Thursday sent a letter to Federal Trade Commission chairman Joseph Simons, asking the agency to crack down on digital advertising fraud — and to take a particularly close look at Google, which dominates the search and mobile ad markets.

“As long as Google stands to profit from the sale of additional advertisements, the financial incentive for it to voluntarily root out and address fraud remains minimal,” Warner wrote in the letter to Simons.

Warner suggests Google’s dominance in digital advertising means an FTC crackdown on the company could result in less fraud across the board.

“The digital advertising market has come to be largely dominated by one company, in part because of enforcement decisions by the FTC,” Warner wrote. “The FTC’s failure to act has had the effect of allowing Google to structure its own market; through a series of transactions, the company has accomplished a level of vertical integration that allows it, in effect, to act as the equivalent of market-maker, commodities broker, and commodities exchange for digital advertising – in the process creating a range of conflicts of interest.

“While the company controls each link in the supply chain and therefore maintains the power to monitor activity in the digital advertising market from start to finish, it has continued to be caught flat-footed in identifying and addressing digital ad fraud,” Warner continued.

Warner, who serves as vice chairman, he Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and a member of the Banking Committee, previously sent a letter to the FTC in October, after news reports found substantial ad fraud in Google’s Android platform. 

Since that letter was sent, multiple new reports have emerged about ad fraud, including a scheme that saw indictments handed down by the Department of Justice in November. That scheme was uncovered by Google and the cybersecurity firm WhiteOps.

Simons responded to Warner’s October letter by suggesting the agency does not have the necessary authority to battle this type of fraud. A few weeks ago, during congressional testimony, Simons asked Congress to explicitly give the agency more authority to tackle digital fraud concerns.

“Increasingly, I am not convinced the Commission is adequately utilizing the authority it already has to crack down on fraud and other misbehavior,” Warner wrote. “Since 1938, Congress has given your agency broad enforcement authority to protect consumers and expects you to use it.”

Considering how messy home hair coloring can be, it’s astonishing it’s taken this long: Coty is introducing the Clairol Color Expert for Google Assistant. 

The hands-free option provides advice on every step of the process. A simple “Hey, Google, talk to Clairol” activates advice on everything from picking the right shade to the final rinse.

Coty claims it’s the first such innovation for hair color, and says it worked with Google to identify category challenges, then combined them with insights about how and where people use voice assistants. 

Marketing for the new feature “will be rolled out more broadly in January, when you will hear a lot of our creators and influencers talking about it, and more socialization at shelf,” says Fred Gerantabee, Coty’s vice president of digital innovation. 

He tells Marketing Daily that the beauty company decided to work with Google Assistant on the project because it “offered us a unique opportunity to bring a service across several touchpoints of the user journey, from mobile phones at shelf to smart speakers at home, and eventually build on more devices, such as smart TVs, as those continue to proliferate. We have done great work on the Alexa platform as well, but …they are distinctively different platforms that suit themselves to different approaches.”

Coty built the Clairol’s Color Expert with Beamly, its in-house marketing tech agency, and agency Voxly Digital. It says Google Assistant is available on more than 500 million devices, and is a particular favorite of the 18- to 34-year-old women who color their hair at home. 

Clairol knows a little about offering a lifeline for hair color — it established its 1-800 Clairol helpline back in 1970. 

By comparison, Butterball, which launched a voice-activation partnership with Amazon’s Alexa this year, didn’t introduce its helpline for turkey cooks until 1981.

Marketers like Clairol and Butterball are just beginning to use voice as a content-marketing and customer-engagement tool. 

A report from Capgemini, based on a survey of some 5,000 people in the U.S., U.K., France and Germany, estimated that voice assistants are likely to become a dominant mode of consumer interaction within three years. Streaming music and seeking information remain the most popular requests for voice assistants, but 35% of survey respondents say they’ve used assistants to buy something. Overall, 71% find the experience to be positive.

“Brands who provide good voice-assistant experiences will generate more business and positive word-of-mouth communication,”  Capgemini says, with 37% of users saying they would share a positive experience with friends and family.

Marketers are still experimenting to find the right mix. “The voice assistant is part of a larger ecosystem of Clairol solutions,” along with video tutorials, augmented reality and messaging, says Gerantabee. “Google Home addressed a very specific real-time need that other channels could not in the same way,” he adds. 

But all the company’s tech offerings are designed to “accommodate different parts of the consumer journey and collectively address the needs that we know are inherent in the category.”

Despite Coty’s tech innovations, including ambitious AR experiences with its CoverGirl brand and an AI-driven anti-bullying effort, the company is currently navigating choppy waters. Moody’s recently downgraded Coty’s debt rating, citing “meaningful operational challenges” as it continues to wrestle with supply chain issues and the integration of Clairol, CoverGirl and other brands acquired from Procter & Gamble back in 2016. 

Considerable executive turnover hasn’t helped, either. “The company's profitability will also be adversely affected by high promotional activity needed to support sales during the holiday season,” Moody’s says in its report.

Marriott is partnering with PepsiCo premium bottled water company Lifewtr for an art project that uses augmented reality experiences. 

The AR project will be featured at a pop-up event taking place at The Oculus at the Westfield World Trade Center in New York on Dec. 5 and 6, and will continue to roll out for guests in Marriott Hotels nationwide throughout 2019.

Marriott Stanton South Beach will be among the first hotels to debut the new experience for guests. To further celebrate this launch at the local level, Lifewtr will have a presence at Miami Art Week from Dec. 6-9, featuring various curated events and product sampling experiences.

Guests can customize rooms virtually with an augmented reality gallery of artwork from emerging artists available on mobile devices.

To start, guests scan a custom bottle tag on the Lifewtr bottles found in participating Marriott hotels, and then open the Facebook in-app camera. After choosing the artwork, they drag it onto the virtual walls. They can also color the artwork for an added level of personalization, and share the experience on social media within the app.

“We are always looking for ways to engage and inspire our guests through innovative travel offerings, from the thoughtful design of our guest rooms to the enriching experiences we create with partners like Lifewtr,” said Matthew Carroll, vice president, global brand management for Marriott Hotels, in a release. 

Marriott International’s recently renewed its partnership with PepsiCo as the hotel chain’s soda-fountain supplier. The two partnered in 1991 after Marriott ended a 20-year relationship with Coca-Cola.

Firefly on Thursday began rolling out an advertising network intended to boost revenue for ride-share drivers from Uber, Lyft and other companies, and to help local city governments to inform consumers about these services. The platform serves digital advertisements on smart screens mounted to ride-share vehicles.

The car-top digital out-of-home (DOOH) business model also attracted several Silicon Valley venture capitalists and angel investors. Firefly also announced a $21.5 million seed fund investment led by NFX; Pelion Venture Partners; Decent Capital, Tencent founders; and Jeffrey Housenbold, a SOFTBANK Vision Fund.

Firefly works directly with these drivers to install its displays on top of their vehicles, turning them into geotargeted, programmable DOOH advertising networks. The company estimates the average driver on Firefly’s network generates an additional $300 per month, adding about 20% profit to their drive time.

Worldwide DOOH spend should reach $14.6 billion in 2018, according to WARC estimates.

Firefly has been quietly increasing the number of drivers in the beta program who install the platform during the past year. In aggregate, the drivers have logged more than 110,000 hours, delivering about 50 advertising campaigns for a variety of businesses and government agencies.

Some of the beta advertisers include Brex, Hotel Tonight, and Sam’s Club, said Kaan Gunay, co-founder & CEO of Firefly, which guarantees impressions similar to OOH inventory.

The majority are brand advertisers, but the company will integrate with programmatic ad networks to expand from California into additional cities such as New York.

“Currently we have 30 people, but we’ll be doubling the size of our company within the next few months with the funding,” Gunay said.

Because Firefly geofences off locations, integration with search queries from nearby smartphones or tablets is possible, but is not a focus for now, said Gunay.

A minimum of 10% of all inventory goes to promote and advertise local not-for-profit organizations, public sector public service announcements and other non-commercial organizations such as charities, advocacy groups, and community organizations.

In partnership with the Coalition of Clean Air, it executed a hybrid campaign around California Clean Air Day. A program built on the idea that shared experiences unite people to action to improve community health, Clean Air Day is a statewide effort to make conscious and environmentally minded choices.

The four-week campaign found that the geofenced content was popular in neighborhoods like Downtown LA, Santa Monica, and Hollywood.

The campaign ran only on displays in the hybrid ride-share vehicles and highlighted the environmental benefits of shared rides over solo rides, ultimately received 2.9 million impressions and over 1,000 hours of exposure.

To shore up its mobile future, digital news and photo provider United Press International (UPI) partnered with Mobile Posse, using its Firstly Mobile platform to drive traffic to its digital properties. 

UPI has been around for over a century — founded in 1907 as the United Press news agency. It has high brand recognition among the 45-to-54+ demographic, but it wanted to attract younger consumers.

The strategy worked. Firstly Mobile, a content discovery platform distributed through wireless carriers and smartphone OEMs, allowed UPI to see dramatic changes to its engagement, including an average increase of 30 seconds in time on site, an 86% increase in click-through rate, a 26% decrease in bounce rate and double the mobile CPMs.

Firstly Mobile works by using a consumer’s phone to deliver content as they transition between mobile activities, like opening a new browser or swiping to find recent apps, driving numbers via mobile-based content but not tied to social or web-based traffic.

According to Franco Fernandez, director of digital business, UPI, digital traffic among users 25 to 44 has skyrocketed since the companies began working together.

“It’s safe to say more news consumers are familiar with the UPI brand than two years ago,” he told Publishers Daily. 

The partnership has also led to deepened revenue. By doubling its mobile inventory, UPI has been able to partner with new demand partners that were previously unavailable because of the company’s low impression threshold.

According to Fernandez, UPI’s traffic is split evenly between direct, search and referral traffic. “Unlike many digital news organizations, we've avoided buying traffic through social media and focused more on building and maintaining sustainable sources of organic traffic,” he said.

Through Firstly Mobile, UPI has been able to deliver its headlines to 4 million users daily. And while UPI’s licensing business has remained strong and it has continued to see growth in its B2C operation, the partnership with Firstly Mobile has allowed UPI to exceed its traffic goals for the year.

Moving forward, UPI will continue to work with Firstly Mobile to review analytics and identify content verticals audience engage with most.