Consumer Connie is constantly multi-tasking—juggling between work, raising her three children, attending PTA meetings and taking care of her elderly parents. On a daily basis, Connie’s connected car helps enhance her busy life, making some repetitive tasks more effortless. For example, Connie pre-orders a latte from her vehicle during the morning commute. Her car also sends reminders to pick up diapers and milk on the way home from work. Furthermore, this smart vehicle ensures those same diapers and milk are paid for and placed into her trunk upon arrival at the grocery store. All of these things occur without Connie even lifting a finger.
It is difficult to say how close the car industry is to this imagined scenario, but as technology embeds itself deeper inside automobiles, some of the things that used to be visionary conveniences will quickly morph into reality. What’s more, busy consumers are ready to get onboard. According to an eMarketer study from September 2016, U.S. adults 18 and older identified a connected car as their second most desired holiday gift, just after the smart TV when prompted to select a device connected to the internet. Though they are not the only ones who are excited.
Read MoreConsumer Connie is constantly multi-tasking—juggling between work, raising her three children, attending PTA meetings and taking care of her elderly parents. On a daily basis, Connie’s connected car helps enhance her busy life, making some repetitive tasks more effortless. For example, Connie pre-orders a latte from her vehicle during the morning commute. Her car also sends reminders to pick up diapers and milk on the way home from work. Furthermore, this smart vehicle ensures those same diapers and milk are paid for and placed into her trunk upon arrival at the grocery store. All of these things occur without Connie even lifting a finger.
It is difficult to say how close the car industry is to this imagined scenario, but as technology embeds itself deeper inside automobiles, some of the things that used to be visionary conveniences will quickly morph into reality. What’s more, busy consumers are ready to get onboard. According to an eMarketer study from September 2016, U.S. adults 18 and older identified a connected car as their second most desired holiday gift, just after the smart TV when prompted to select a device connected to the internet. Though they are not the only ones who are excited. Marketers are also knocking at the door of what will soon become an automotive revolution.
In January 2017, General Motors (GM) and IBM announced a new cognitive mobility platform partnership with OnStar that will deliver personalized content directly to consumers via their automotive dashboards. GM drivers will conveniently connect and interact with their favorite brands while advertisers will have the ability to provide those users with custom, relevant messaging. Sponsors such as ExxonMobil, Glympse, iHeartRadio, Mastercard and Parkopedia are aligned with the partnership. The Cleveland Plain Dealer reports, “ExxonMobil will use the cognitive mobility platform to help drivers quickly locate Exxon and Mobil refuel stations, recommend the best fuel and lubricant for their vehicle and authorize fuel payment from inside their vehicle.” Paying for a car wash without exiting the car, being notified instantaneously whenever teenage drivers are running low on gas or receiving diagnostic and driving reports are just a few of the other interesting capabilities that this technology will provide.
Fortune reports that Ford is expanding the use of Amazon’s Alexa by adding the technology to 10 million North American and 20 million global vehicles by the end of 2020. Initially intended as a personal assistant specifically for the home, Alexa connectivity in vehicles allows drivers to control various aspects of their lives vocally, whether at home or in transit. Ford will communicate with Alexa through a mobile app connected to SmartDeviceLink, which is an open-source platform that allows developers to create apps compatible with all automakers in their system. It was announced at the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show in January that SmartDeviceLink automotive and technology partners include Ford, Toyota, Peugeot, Mazda, Suzuki, Electrobit, Luxoft and Xevo. Additionally, Amazon was recently awarded a patent for autonomous cars that would allow a fleet of vehicles to adjust dynamically to changing traffic patterns and ease congestion by making use of reversible lane concepts. According to Recode, “Amazon is rumored to be working on creating self-driving delivery vehicles out of its drone division, Prime Air.”
While technology companies pioneered connected cars, media companies and auto manufacturers closely followed, blurring the lines between these industries and making it tough to predict who will become the market leader in autonomous driving. From an advertising revenue standpoint, KSM’s analysts predict that Waymo by Alphabet, formerly known as Google Self Driving Car Project, will inevitably take the lead position. Waymo is Alphabet’s self-driving car technology which exists in Alphabet’s prototype vehicle, the Lexus RX 450h, and will soon exist in one hundred 2017 Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid minivans. Waymo vehicles have sensors and software designed to detect pedestrians, cyclists, vehicles, roadwork and more from a distance up to two football fields away in all directions.
The good news for brands is that advertising is at the base of virtually everything Alphabet does. This means that marketers can be fairly certain ad opportunities will be fully integrated into all Waymo vehicles. In fact, when Google’s former CEO Eric Schmidt was asked at Google’s last I/O conference how the company makes money, he replied, “I have been at Google for 15 years, and it has always been advertising and I suspect it will always be advertising.” Schmidt went on to say that machine learning and artificial intelligence is helping Alphabet create more targeted, personalized ads across all of their products. KSM’s analysts have long held the view that personalization will be essential to a quality experience with autonomous cars, so this development is definitely a step in the right direction.
Further bolstering support for Google’s offering is the fact that the technology giant already has years of experience partnering with the advertising community to perfect their search engine, smartphones and apps, cross platform software, advertising supported cable TV product, Wi-Fi service and YouTube products. This experience positioned Google as the advertising market leader well before they entered the Waymo space in 2009, so an additional product rollout of this nature should be a fairly smooth one for marketers, all things considered.
As of January 2017, Waymo vehicles self-drove across two million miles, mostly on city streets, which is equivalent to 300 years of human driving experience. According to a study commissioned by Bosch (named the world’s number one auto supplier with electronics expertise by Bloomberg BusinessWeek), highly automated driving will save frequent drivers roughly 100 hours per year by 2025 in the U.S., Germany and China. The study goes on to indicate that between highly automated driving and simultaneous internet connection, this translates to 80 percent more free time behind the wheel. Drivers will be able to watch movies, read, email, videoconference and nap, all while reclined in the drivers’ seat. While mass adaptation of autonomous vehicles is far from here, the shift to a world of autonomous vehicles has certainly begun in earnest. Marketers should prepare for the revolution by considering the ways they can serve valuable, contextually relevant and personalized messages in a driverless world.
So what’s next with autonomous vehicles?
The ad industry is just scratching the surface of opportunities that will exist in fully autonomous vehicles. As data collected by connected cars rapidly expands, interactions with vehicles and the messages served by them must be highly personalized to provide useful, relevant information without provoking irritation or other negative reactions from consumers. KSM predicts there will soon be a heated debate around how consumer advertising will integrate with those systems, since disruptive or irrelevant advertising will not fit into the automotive environment.
Publishers and media companies will need to think about yet another screen while seamlessly integrating text with images, audio, video and location based-content, providing a compelling mix of entertainment and ads for passengers of the future. To make matters even more complex, advertisers have to explore methods for combining user-generated data, such as search and browser history from today’s advertising landscape with facial and voice recognition of tomorrow’s media landscape, in order for message personalization to truly meet consumers’ increasingly demanding expectations. All of these evolving elements are things that both brands and markets will need to watch in the coming years if they expect to properly capitalize on this budding industry.