Companies are continuously looking at new ways to engage consumers’ attention. Now, Microsoft too has joined this bandwagon with its introduction of Kinect-enabled interactive advertising platform. They have named it NUAds, an abbreviation for Natural User Interface Ads and as the name suggests the ads respond to the users gestures and voices. “This means that users will now be able to share ads with friends by means of voice and motion commands”, reports NYTimes.
A socialtimes report report explained, “The new ads will use the Kinect’s built-in voice and motion controls and will enable users to send out messages about an ad to Twitter by saying “Xbox Tweet.” Similarly, if a user wants to share more information, he/she can say “Xbox More” and the system would send out an e-mail with all the information that the user wants to send out.”
An engadget report illustrates, “Think the latest Snuggie spot is super cool? Just say “Xbox, Tweet,” and all your friends will know it. Want to know more about Mariah Carey’s latest fragrance? Say “Xbox, More,” and the info is all yours. Wondering where you can pick up a box of Nad’s edible hair remover? Say “Xbox, Near Me,” and you’ll get a text with the location of the closest Nad’s retailer. Want to vote on the hottest new Bratz doll? Give your girl a thumbs up.”
And, as is to be expected, advertisers are already excited about using these new and more interactive ad formats. A quoted John M. Lisko, the executive communications director of Saatchi & Saatchi Los Angeles, part of the Publicis Groupe as saying, “The new ad units really epitomized the level of engagement that everyone is working towards. You can text, you can tweet, you can vote. That’s phenomenal.” Mr Lisko further said that his agency is absolutely considering using the new capabilities.
Microsoft presented the new advertising options on Wednedsay at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity, an annual conference for advertisers and marketers. Microsoft engaged a host of respectable partners, namely Adidas, NBC, and Coca Cola, for its demo of the voice and gesture-enabled advertising platform .
SocialTimes voiced its doubts on the new product, “Although the NUads technology is extremely promising, the new features still face a few challenges. The gesture recognition technology in Kinect for example could at times be slow to respond to gestures. Similarly, some analysts have raised questions about potential privacy issues based on images recorded by the Kinect camera during the game play. Needless to mention that these and other issues with gesture recognition would definitely spill over into the ad domain as well.”
Yet, it has to be acknowledged that Microsoft is trying to tranform users into marketers for big companies. If successful, this could herald an era of crowd-sourced advertising.