Amazon will reportedly monetize its site and Alexa channels in 2018 using advertising. Global Web Index, a London-based research company, reports that grocery shoppers seem to love voice speakers. Of 78,000 respondents to a survey, 56 percent are using or plan to buy a speaker in the next six months. But will those consumers love advertising? That’s the important question for marketers considering how to deploy budget effectively.
Advertising isn’t the only customer interface in local. Human relationships, storefronts, out-of-home media, and many other investments are necessary. Adding advertising to an Alexa skill may backfire. As The Economist points out, there is an uncanny valley problem with voice. When a smart speaker acts too human, the user can become uncomfortable. In short, consumer expectations are tightly linked to what they will tolerate comfortably when dealing with bots.
Adding advertising experience in a bot may violate the consumer’s expectations. Like streaming users, who feel they have paid for media out of their pocket and, consequently, do not welcome advertising, Alexa users are likely to object to the insertion of advertising. IBM Cloud Video found that 72.3 percent of streaming users “felt any type of ad reduced the viewing experience.” Alexa buyers have paid for a channel that promises to do tasks. Advertising remains an interruption to the consumer; it may be a mistake to impose in the smart speaker environment.
Marketers have seen an explosion of channels, in addition to myriad new sales tools to use to distribute experience to the edge of the network. Why revert to advertising, except to create more revenue for the smart speaker vendor? It does not necessarily add to the customer experience. In the local market, in particular, voice ads fail to replace the human connection consumers expect from a device/service they purchased. Perhaps the better move is to augment local salespeople using AI, instead.
The smartest speaker will know when to connect a potential customer to the human who can close the deal and build trust.