Remember when Google introduced an unsubtle ‘plug’ for the Beauty and the Beast live action film to Google Home devices, and was met with widespread outcry?
At the time, the company back-pedalled and claimed that the product placement was not intended as an ad, insisting that it was “continuing to experiment with new ways to surface unique content for users”. However, the incident has gone down in history as possibly the first and – until now – only example of voice advertising on smart speakers.
Leave it to Amazon to outdo its rival. Earlier today, Pete Trainor, AI lead and co-founder at Us AI Ltd and owner of multiple smart home devices tweeted in outrage after noticing that his Amazon Echo device responded to the question, “Alexa, how are you today?” with what seems like an advertisement for the video game Fortnite.
“I’m fired up for battle. I’ve been playing Fortnite. If you’re also aboard the battle bus, ask me, ‘Where should I drop in Fortnite?’ to hear my recommended landing spots,” Alexa says.
Today’s cynical sales and advertising ploy of the day… @amazon selling popular phrases to brands trying to infiltrate our lives. So that’s me removing all Echoes from my house BECAUSE I HAVE YOUNG CHILDREN! pic.twitter.com/7hZY3ZWGUz
— Pete TrΛinor (@petetrainor) March 15, 2019
As of yet, few users seem to have stumbled across the content or commented on it online, but Econsultancy Editor Ben Davis was able to replicate the exchange on his own Echo, using the phrase, “Alexa, how’s it going?” Asking, “Alexa, are you okay?” also triggers the ad.
Davis also noted that if users ask a follow-up query related to Fortnite, such as “Alexa, do you like Fortnite?” the AI’s response is wildly inconsistent (Alexa claims to have never played the game) – suggesting a lack of joined-up thinking by Amazon’s team when it comes to other, related questions that users might ask and how they would tally with the ad.
This ad is horrible (HT @petetrainor) but also interesting that Alexa can’t get its story straight when I ask a follow-up question. pic.twitter.com/XAvrVmuV7s
— Ben Davis (@herrhuld) March 15, 2019
As any marketer who has looked into designing a chatbot will know, this flies in the face of best practice for conversational UX – not to mention the overall intrusive experience of hearing the ad in the first place.
The future of voice advertising?
As smart speakers continue to explode in popularity, with one in five people aged 18+ in the US alone owning a smart speaker, and the number of smart speakers in US households growing by 78% in a single year, according to a report by NPR and Edison Research, many have asked the question of how and when voice ads will come to smart speakers.
I’ve previously written about the possibilities for paid search ads coming to voice, but had imagined that companies like Google and Amazon would try to design the least intrusive experience possible in order to avoid the same backlash that greeted Beauty and the Beast. Indeed, Digiday reported in January last year that Amazon was “going slow on voice ads” due to concerns about user experience and intrusiveness.
Could it be that caution has now gone out of the window?
It remains to be seen how long the Fortnite response will last for, and whether it is an experiment or the first of many. At the time of writing, Amazon has not issued a comment of any kind. Twitter user Amber Scanlan has pointed out that the timing of is extremely poor given the recent news about a mass shooting in New Zealand, and if more people start to associate the content (and Fortnite) with recent events, it may well be pulled.
However, if this really is Amazon’s model for voice advertising, it’s safe to say that the future of voice advertising is uniquely horrible. Pete Trainor stated on Twitter that he unplugged and put away his Echo devices after hearing the ad, as he has young children that he does not want to hear an ad “without explicit consent”.
Personally, I am slightly horrified that Amazon could choose to “monetise” such generic greetings – but then, all the better to reach the widest audience possible. The Echo is Amazon’s own ecosystem, and as of yet, there are no regulations or laws that say it can’t do exactly that.
Welcome to the reality of voice first advertising.