Artificial Intelligence

More retailers are investing in biometrics, including behavioral tracking and facial and voice recognition to not only improve store security—and potentially catch shoplifters—but to also target consumers with promotional content.

eMarketer principal analyst Victoria Petrock explains what life will look like when voice assistants are everywhere: How will driving to work change? How will retailers and advertisers communicate with you? How would you like the voice of Samuel L. Jackson telling you what you have planned for the day?

Though most are loath to admit it, retailers already make extensive, behind-the-scenes use of biometrics to track employees, nab shoplifters and improve store security.

eMarketer executive editor Rimma Kats and principal analyst Andrew Lipsman explain how grocery stores will evolve, how many people could replace in-store shopping with voice commerce, a partnership between Alphabet’s drone arm Wing, FedEx and Walgreens and more.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom explores our smart speaker usage figures for Canada and the Canadian French language rollout on Amazon’s Alexa.

eMarketer forecasting director Shelleen Shum shares our smart speaker usage estimates for the UK vs. the US.

eMarketer principal analyst Nicole Perrin discusses Facebook’s plan to give publishers more curation control over how their articles look on the platform. She also talks about the implications of letting Yelp users personalize their homepage experience and how effective the BBC’s new voice assistant can be in a competitive digital market.

According to an August 2019 survey conducted by eMarketer and Bizrate Insights, 58% of US internet users have neither used nor are interested in using smart speakers to make purchases. While 4% of respondents said they have made a purchase using a smart speaker at least once, just 2% did so regularly.

eMarketer principal analyst Victoria Petrock explains how much you can learn from someone's voice, British Airways's VR in-flight entertainment headsets and a recent facial recognition ruling against Facebook.

In just a few short years, Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant have gone from being virtual unknowns to familiar household names. As these voice assistants—and others—continue to gain traction on smartphones and smart speakers, the market is expanding quickly. Voice-control technology has officially moved out the early-adopter phase and into the mainstream.

Retailers can’t always rely on customer feedback to measure the success of their ecommerce platforms. Small technical issues, which often go unnoticed by the business itself, can significantly hinder the customer experience.

Straddling the analogue and digital divide, Xers are readily reachable by marketers, but they can be picky when it comes to where and how they want to interact with ads. We spoke with demographics thought-leaders about this generation’s device and media usage.