Fans have been waiting since the summer of 2017 to learn more about VR180.
Lenovo, along with Yi Technology are bringing VR180 to a headset known as the new “Daydream.” It will contain two virtual reality cameras.
This new headset is the Mirage Solo with Daydream. These headsets won’t need to dock a smartphone.
The Mirage Solo will utilize motion tracking from Google’s “WorldSense.” It allows you to enjoy high quality Virtual Reality anywhere without the need for cables, phone or PC. It can understand your movements anywhere so you don’t need any external sensors.
CES is fully in gear at the Las Vegas Convention Center in Las Vegas, Nevada. They are showcasing all the best, brightest, and sometimes downright odd new gadgets to bring into the tech world. As you might imagine, voice assistants, and voice commands are quite popular right now with the frontrunners of Alexa from Amazon and OK Google from Google Home. Over the last few years, voice commands and voice assistants have become more advanced, understanding more words and overall lifestyle commands. That is not slowing down.
A number of different companies brought their ideas of voice assistants to the table. One notable copycat appears to be that of the Amazon Show. If you are unfamiliar with this product, it is a display screen with a speaker. The original versions of Amazon Echo are simple standalone speaker units. Now the screen is a big part of what sets it aside from the standalone speaker. Now you can speak to your assistant and it won’t only talk to you or provide you with information or music, but it can display information on the screen. Think of it as a voice assistant computer without the need for a keyboard.
If you need directions the display will show the map, if you need a recipe, the display will show that also. While Amazon Show is the first to market with this type of device, Google also jumped into the arena. They don’t create their own screens though. Instead, they work with third party vendors to create the display portion. The Google Home Assistant then does the voice work. The display screens integrate with Google suite of products including Gmail and Google Maps.
The Lenovo display is bulky however and must be plugged in, in order to work. For those concerned about privacy, there are two buttons on the device which can turn off the camera and microphone within the device whenever the user wants to do so.
LG stepped into the voice industry with “Cloi” (pronounced Chloe). This AI (artificial intelligence) will connect to other smart devices in your home. Cloi can remind you of your schedule for the day and if you’re going to the gym it will connect to your smart washing machine so the machine knows to clean on the “Sportswear” cycle. It can also connect to your Smart TV to choose your programming, connect to the soundbar to monitor the audio, and even to other products such as the vacuum or air conditioner. By speaking to Cloi, all of these items can be turned on or off and to different settings.
Watch below as the representative from LG speaks about and to Cloi.
Samsung isn’t holding back either. They presented their “Bixby” digital assistant. With this digital assistant and app through your smartphone, you can control your smart TV, house lights, songs on Spotify, and so much more. If you have “Smartthings” home appliances, Bixby can control the entire house from the screen of your phone. Watch below as Samsung demonstrates Bixby.
Amazon in the Bathroom?
Yes, it’s happening, Amazon is making its way into the bathroom too with smart devices inside. There is a Smart Toilet, we know, a little too close for comfort. You can control your toilet from your phone. Need to flush it? There’s a button on the screen for that. Want the seat warmed? A button on the screen for that too. Amazon can be in your faucet too. If you want a certain amount of water to come out of the faucet, just tell Alexa and it will be done for you.
Voice is growing in its application all over. This is most likely only the beginning. The world of the Jetsons? Here it comes!
There are some very important social media networks that you need your business to be on but you may be missing.
What are these super important networks?
Let’s not waste another minute they are Google+ and Pinterest.
That’s right Google+ . Let me tell you Google pretty much owns the Internet and if you want favor on the biggest search engine on the entire Internet, you need to have a Google+ page for your business.
Google will actually give you a little bit more favor in search listing results if you have a Google+ page definitely start it, it’s free.
Next up, Pinterest. This is especially important for anyone in the design or fashion beauty industries or any artistic industry for that matter
Females love this social site and they are always looking for new ideas. Us included.
Blogs can have true power, whether you build a blog as a business or as a way to express yourself, they can definitely leave a footprint on the internet.
In case you were interested in the business side of blogs, let’s take a look at some of the highly successful blog businesses.
Did you know the Huffington Post started as a blog in 2005? Today it makes $2,500,000 per month.
Tech Crunch is a blog all about technology founded in 2005 and makes $800,000 per month.
Mashable – Another pop culture / technology blog founded in 2005, and today makes $600,000 per month
Smashing Magazine is a magazine or blog for web designers and developers. Started in 2006, the site now takes in $190,000 per month.
The founders of all of these blogs had a love for certain topics. They started writing about it and found many others also had an interest in these topics.
Convinced? Start Setting Up Your Blog Now – It’s Quick (7 minutes!) and Easy.
Get the webhosting in this video and follow along step by step!
Not Convinced? Keep reading..
How to Make a Blog Work for You?
Stay Consistent with Your Blog Content
Choose a posting schedule, whether it’s everyday, a few times a week, or once per week, pick what works for you and stick with it.
Where to Get the Content for Your Blog?
Watch the news – there are headlines everyday, probably every hour online. Use the stories and put them into your blog content, relate it to your topic. Put your own spin on it.
Go on social media! People put out their thoughts on a lot of current events and stories. Know where to look and then use that content in your blog.
These are just a few reasons why you need to have a blog today. Want to get started? We have a FREE video for you to learn exactly STEP BY STEP how to setup a blog.
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With 3.5 billion searches per day on Google (internetlivestats.com), knowing what the general public searches for can give us an insight into their interests, needs, and wants. As a quick overview of some of the more popular searches were the discovery of the secrets of slime, how to locate solar eclipse glasses, how to help hurricane victims and how to support the city of Las Vegas.
Without waiting any longer, we have a more specific list of the “how to’s” and “what is” searches of 2017.
How to..
How to make slime
How to make solar eclipse glasses
How to watch Mayweather vs. McGregor
How to buy Bitcoin
What is..
What is DACA?
What is covfefe?
What is Paris Climate Agreement?
What is net neutrality?
It has become apparent, the searches are not general nor simple, people are expecting answers to their very specific how to questions like “how to make fluffy slime,” “how to make butter slime,” and “how to make slime without Borax.”
What types of places are people searching for in the major cities of the United States?
Take a look at the list below:
San Francisco, Ca – Post office near me
Los Angeles, Ca – Dispensary near me
Houston, Tx – Tattoo shop near me
Chicago – Fireworks near me tonight
New York, NY – Solar eclipse glasses near me
Philadelphia, Pa – Laundromat near me
Washington DC – Chinese restaurants near me
Atlanta, Ga – Italian restaurants near me
Bonus tip – People have become so used to utilizing their GPS in their mobile devices that many are dropping the phrase “near me” but still expecting local results.
With the large number of destructive hurricanes and other problems, people wanted to go beyond typical news coverage. The searches all surrounded “How to help Puerto Rico,” “How to help Houston,” and “How to help Hurricane Harvey” amongst a number of others.
Search Trends for 2018
Seeing that people are becoming more accustomed to specific types of searches with relevant answers, this will only expand in 2018. People are asking detailed questions and want more personally relevant answers, quickly. Plan to use this in your marketing for 2018.
It’s pretty much been a secret for a while now. Google is front and center when people think of paid search ads. They point right to the biggest search engine in the world. Google makes no secret of it, that they dominate in the search world and are busy expanding in numerous other areas. However, this is another player, a player which until now has been the underdog.
A new kid on the block has been named a vital channel for paid search. Seeing 896 million monthly searches lead this search engine to a huge 43% growth from 2016 to 2017.
MediaVision
Bing is Microsoft’s search engine and apparently has been building in popularity. Once taking only a small slice of the pie, now is a viable advertising option.
It gets better. According to a MediaVision study, Bing Ads, when compared to Google AdWords see the following:
29% lower costs per lead
30% higher ROI
97% increase in revenue
The numbers are outstanding. Bing Ads could very well be a more cost-effective and scalable option over AdWords.
You’ve probably seen a banner ad multiple times per day whenever you happen to be on the internet. Whether you are on a desktop or a mobile device, a banner ad probably popped up.
The banner ads are targeted towards you in some capacity whether it is based off your interests or even purchase behavior.
In the study by IAB, nine brands were tested across desktop and mobile sites. The purchasing behavior comparison was made between those who saw the ads vs those who didn’t.
The results are in!
For every $1 spent on online display ads, $1.94 in sales was received for all supermarkets. One brand even saw a 3X return at $3.38 per $1.
While the main point of banner ads is to click through to a website, they are known as a branding play as well. Banner ads reach a wide number of individuals and by seeing the brand as you surf the internet, it helps you begin to recognize or remember a brand.
The study said the biggest takeaway was the largest majority of sales attributable to banner ads were from offline and in-store shopping.
Bottom line, if you have a brick and mortar business or you have a new brand, or you want more people to know about your branding to give you a leg up on the competition, think about running online banner advertising.
Get the Big Display Banner Advertising Cheat Sheet for Free
Adobe Insights now has the full data on Cyber Monday 2017 and the revenue the day created. The sales tally came to a whopping $6.59 billion. It was the largest online sales day in history in the United States.
The increase seen for Cyber Monday from 2016 was at 16.8% more! Web traffic also increased by nearly 12% to retail sites.
As you may have guessed, Amazon was by far the biggest winner. When looking at the top 50 retailers, Amazon captured 55% of the transactions on Black Friday.
You must be questioning how many transactions Amazon put through on Thanksgiving Day and Black Friday. The number is 12.8 million!
The figures put out by Amazon far eclipsed the second and third top online sellers. Those retailers were Walmart and Best Buy. Walmart accounted for 13.9% and Best Buy accounted for 8.3% transactions on Thanksgiving Day. For Black Friday it was 8.8% and 5% respectively.
While Amazon by far had the highest amount of transactions, they were actually in fourth place in the conversion rate battle. The top three for conversion rate were Old Navy, Shutterfly, and LL Bean.
The high conversion rate for Old Navy was mostly due to the Black Friday pricing at 50% discounts.
In the 3rd video of the eCommerce series we discuss cart abandonment rates. With the average being at 70%, you must watch this video if you have an eCommerce store. Any optimizations to lower that rate can mean big things for your bottom line.
Watch the third video of three in the eCommerce Series below!
As mentioned many times throughout the digital marketing world, mobile is growing like crazy. In this edition of Digital Marketing Minute – we get serious and give you actionable steps to take to make your mobile experience a winning one.
Don’t delay, get the details below and watch the video!
