Everyone has a favorite barista or retail associate who knows how to make the perfect recommendation. These essential workers we meet in our everyday lives are attentive to our needs and work with us to find the best solution. 

But while traditional advertising strives to anticipate how consumers are feeling, the one-size-fits makes it difficult to truly offer that level of helpfulness at scale. So, what if you could converse with an ad just like you would with a person? With AdLingo, you can.

Always-On Conversations at Scale

Developed in Area 120, Google’s in-house incubator, AdLingo enables brands to embed conversational assistants (like chatbots) within display ads. These ads are distributed on Google partner inventory by Google Display and Video 360, reaching users across the web and within web apps. The conversational platform offers brands a simple way to adopt an “always-on” customer acquisition model that engages users while they browse online, ready to meet their needs wherever your audience may find a display ad.

Quick to implement, they offer personalization at scale by asking users directly about their needs and preferences and dynamically providing relevant information based on the user’s inputs—making AdLingo a great way to qualify leads and gain insights on your target audience. This level of personalization also makes the format more engaging, with users spending about one minute and 17 seconds on average in conversation with the bot, according to January/December 2020 average results from AdLingo.

Continuously Improve Charisma—and Effectiveness

AdLingo ads are relatively quick to produce and scale up, going from idea to launch in only four to six weeks. But it’s important to understand that AdLingo campaigns are most effective when optimized over time, continuously enhancing the user experience. By measuring conversation, engagement, depth of outcome and more, brands can A/B test on the fly to identify how different copy or logic variations perform. Constant iteration makes it easier for users to find the best solution for their needs and take the intended action, like visiting a landing page or converting.

Best Practices for Your First AdLingo Experience

Because an AdLingo campaign should be continuously optimized to better meet consumers’ needs over time, it’s ideal to let one run for two or three months at minimum. This is critical to ensure your campaign has enough time (and engagement volume) to accurately assess performance and optimize. And due to the format’s always-on acquisition model, AdLingo should ideally support a larger campaign than stand on its own; apply measurable insights from AdLingo conversations to optimize the broader campaign.

As for the user experience, start the conversation off with a compelling hook that engages the user. Focus on empowering questions rather than taking a negative tone, and make it clear that the user is talking to a virtual assistant, not a real person. And while open dialogue is supported by the format, pre-written responses help direct the consumer and make it easier for users to answer quickly.

How Nespresso Brewed a High-Performance Bot

When Nespresso wanted to convince customers to consider Nespresso as a one-stop destination for holiday-season gifts, the coffee brand partnered with AdLingo and MediaMonks to build a display ad that would help consumers in the US and the UK discover the perfect gift. Much like a personality quiz, the chatbot asked users a series of questions that identified the best gift for their chosen recipient and budget, boosting the perception of Nespresso as a premium gifting option.

The brand lift study ran in the UK showed a 119% significant lift in ad recall and a 75% lift in brand consideration compared to top three competitors¹. 0.43% of impressions led to engaged conversations² in the UK, and 15% of engaged users across both countries answered all six criteria questions to receive their personalized recommendation. “The new AdLingo Ads proved a powerful solution to connect in a personalized way and at scale with consumers and position Nespresso as a great gifting option,” says Paulo R. Dias, Nespresso Global Brand Campaigns Manager. “Our global AdLingo pilot developed with MediaMonks has demonstrated strong results and impact on brand perception, that go beyond our existing channels.”

With AdLingo, brands can achieve great results from simple yet highly engaging experiences. By offering personalized and attentive service anytime, anywhere, the scalable format helps users quickly find the product or info they need—leaving them better equipped to convert. Likewise, AdLingo serves as another channel brands can draw from to capture insights that help them better understand their audience’s needs.

¹ Brand Lift Study run on mobile app among people who engaged with the ad.

² Users that engaged in the chat for 1+interaction

All sources; internal data AdLingo and Nespresso.

They’re on social feeds, collaborating with fashion brands and dabbling in politics. They’re starring in movies and performing for sold-out audiences. They’re live streaming on YouTube. And while you sit down to talk to one, they may be talking to dozens—if not hundreds or thousands—of other people at the same time.

They’re like people, but they’re not: they’re digital humans, and they may transform the way we think about how we connect to brands, each other and our own selves. “Digital humans” is a broad term that includes any realistic digital representation of a human, fictional or otherwise. That can include digital body doubles (like CGI actors), fictional CGI influencers, chatbots with bodies, 3D avatars and more. And while they can elicit excitement or unease—the uncanny valley continues to be a concern as technologies evolve—they have the power to connect people in unique ways.

Bringing Communities Together

One of the most appealing things about digital humans is that they can fulfill a sense of connection. Virtual influencers like Lil Miquela may feel like a novelty at first, but they’ve also built real communities around shared values and aesthetics. Hatsune Miku, the virtual Japanese pop idol, is essentially a crowdsourced brand: her songs, costumes and music videos are shaped by a community of creative, dedicated and collaborative fans. Both characters rose to prominence because digital audiences felt empowered to connect with them—and similarly, Riot Games created Seraphine, a digital influencer who appears in the massively popular game League of Legends, as a steward of the game’s community.

“Those kinds of virtual humans are selling feelings and experiences,” says Geert Eichhorn, Director of Innovation at MediaMonks. And that ability to create meaningful exchanges is what makes digital humans attractive to brands—for example, giving a branded chatbot a face. Text-based chatbots are ubiquitous on websites and apps all over, but businesses like Uneeq and Soul Machines have developed incredibly realistic, animated digital humans that engage with customers both online and within physical locations, like at a lobby’s check-in desk. Unlike their faceless chatbot counterparts, digital humans are able to communicate through body language and nonverbal cues—like eye contact—eliciting stronger emotional responses in people and enabling more meaningful experiences.

Enabling Self-Expression in New Ways

More than just fictional conversation partners or branded virtual assistants, the “virtual human” category can also include avatars controlled by humans, and this is where Eichhorn sees great potential for the tech: fulfilling people’s desire to better represent themselves as they spend increasing amounts of time online. “Avatars are really about self-expression,” says Eichhorn. “Maybe it helps you express the gender identity that you identify with, for example. In that way, avatars can be very liberating.”

On Fortnite, the massively popular online game developed by Epic Games, players have the chance to become some of their favorite characters—or even real-world people, like Travis Scott, Major Lazer and esports star Ninja—and these avatars have played a big part in shaping perception that the platform is more than just a game, but a virtual social world in its own right.

On that note, Eichhorn believes the next big social platform could be based around avatars that connect across digital experiences—a bit like how Bitmoji not only connects to social apps, but also video games to let people play as cartoonish, 3D representations of themselves. “Think of an API connected to platforms like Fortnite, or retailers that let you try on and fit clothing on a body double,” says Eichhorn. “I see there being some kind of overarching platform that could integrate it into everything else.”

Ethical Considerations for Building Virtual Humans

Avatars and digital doubles could certainly be useful for shopping and socializing, as discussed above—but they also invite ethical considerations to keep in mind. Deceased celebrities have returned to screens as CGI actors or hologram performers, and the creation of digital doubles may call into question who owns the likeness and what they’re authorized to do with them.

Conversations around ethics haven’t kept up with the pace of the technology’s evolution. “There are some whitepapers from 2012 or 2014 on how to deal with the ethics of avatars, but they’re already so outdated,” says Eichhorn. “There isn’t really a common ground on this yet.”

Regardless, he and other Monks have already explored these questions when collaborating with Standard Chartered and Liverpool FC to celebrate what would have been the 100th birthday of Bob Paisley, the club’s legendary manager. In a series of meticulously created films and an AR experience, fans got the rare chance to engage directly with Paisley once again. “Our first consideration was if we could make the experience something genuine,” says Eichhorn. “We got the blessing of the Paisley family and brought them onboard as stakeholders to discuss any concerns of theirs before the project even began, ensuring everything was done responsibly.”

Throughout the past year, people have come to rely on digital more than ever, whether socializing in video games, shopping more online or even working in VR. As we grow more accustomed to these virtual environments, the presence of virtual humans may only become more ubiquitous. From activating communities and enabling self-expression like never before, “this technology will affect culture and society by changing our idea of what being human means,” says Eichhorn.

Facebook hosted its annual F8 conference this week, announcing several new features on the horizon both big and small. With a focus on more responsible uses of tech and a rejuvenated focus on fostering communication between friends and loved ones, this year’s event felt a bit like the start of a new era—helped by the surprise release of an entirely new mobile app design.

Facebook’s vision has always been to bring people together, and at this year’s F8 conference the company placed its focus away from the News Feed and toward more genuine forms of communication, like Groups, Messenger and Stories. These features not only help friends and loved ones connect in new and more engaging ways, but can help brands engage more directly as well.

Offering More Direct Forms of Communication

Let’s start with Groups: Facebook killed its standalone Groups app nearly two years ago, but this week unveiled a new core app design that places Groups at the forefront, promoting them in different areas of the platform. This means users might find buy and sell groups promoted when exploring the Marketplace section of the app, for example. In addition to providing better visibility, Facebook is also enabling features specific to group types, like a template for employers to easily list job openings in groups for job seekers.

Facebook has also showed off more one-to-one types of interaction designed for smoother socializing and forming new relationships. Its Meet New Friends feature introduces users within shared communities, while its Dating feature offers a Tinder-like system that brings together people who share romantic interest in one another. Over on Messenger, meanwhile, friends can hang out virtually by watching videos together or even work together with a desktop app that allows for multitasking.

What’s interesting with these announcements is that the role of the News Feed—or at least broadcasting updates to it—becomes downplayed as Facebook explores other ways to bring people together through more direct forms of communication.

Chatbots are Invading Instagram

Chatbots aren’t new—Facebook popularized the medium at its 2016 F8 conference—but they’re about to get a lot better on Messenger. The most notable new feature is integration into Instagram ad units. Brands can include CTA’s in their Instagram ads that encourage users to swipe up to chat with an associate. A bot can handle the earlier stages of the conversation to qualify leads, then pass those leads along to a live agent. “It’s the perfect balance of scaling conversations for more basic interactions, while ensuring that qualified leads and complex customer service interactions are handled by real people,” says Nick Fuller, SVP of Growth at MediaMonks.

Another interesting thing about this functionality is how it brings different platforms in the Facebook family together: users may initiate a chat on Instagram, but the conversation happens within Messenger. “What’s important here is that Facebook is discovering more and more integration points of customer data and experience across their platforms,” says Fuller. “This means brands have the opportunity to target on one platform but easily retarget on another.”

The integration with Instagram ads highlights the success that brands have been having with its Stories format. “Stories is a really high-performing ad space for Facebook,” says Fuller. “With this chatbot integration into Instagram ads, brands can take users through the funnel with targeting, lead qualifying and conversion happening in one seamless flow—which is incredible,” said Fuller.

Bring Offline Spaces to Life

Facebook Camera Effects are cool and all—we wrote the book on it—but Facebook is looking beyond photo sharing to explore other opportunities where AR provides value. For example, users could scan a poster that transforms it into a three-dimensional scene or model, whether it be a portal that looks inward or an object that spills out of the surface, beyond physical constraint.

Fuller sees endless creative possibilities for brands that want to digitally engage with their customers within a physical environment. “This will be a killer feature for brands to reach users in retail or event spaces, for example” he says. This can range from fun moments (digital scavenger hunts that encourage you to explore an amusement park) to practical (a tutorial, viewed from multiple angles, showing how to put furniture together).

“From a product education standpoint, having the ability to aim your camera at a sign to achieve this is going to be a really helpful next-level AR capability.” We’ve seen how harnessing emerging technology can have huge benefits to getting customers to explore brick and mortar retail, so we’re excited to see how new leaps in accessible, scalable AR will further transform the physical shopping experience.

In addition to the features mentioned above, Facebook reiterated a couple key themes of the F8 conference: responsible use of technology (by combating fake news, making AI more inclusive and more) and a shift away from being a “social network” to a “social platform.” The new era for Facebook looks perfectly structured for enabling direct communication between brands and their fans, and we can’t wait to see how the platform further shapes up in the next year.

Can’t wait to dazzle Facebook users with SparkAR?

Today’s consumers demand relevant, personalized content and instantaneous access to information at all hours of the day. With closer access to brands through social and messaging channels, chatbots have proven to be an effective way for organizations to strike a deeper connection with users, whether they be consumers or employees.

There are several different use cases for a chatbot; it can help you provide always-on customer service, provide personalized content to users in regular intervals, help your organization proactively screen job applicants and do much more. In essence, the main benefit that chatbots provide is the automation of routine, repetitive and simple tasks to make processes more efficient. They’re also an excellent source of user behavioral data, including finding patterns in terms used, most popular queries, user demographics and more. All these benefits help brands maintain a more direct, constant connection with consumers—if they’re designed with some key considerations in mind.

Before Building, Balance Benefits and Demand

Unlike a human, a chatbot is available at a moment’s notice, 24/7. Think of bots as modern, more interactive and relevant FAQ lists at its simplest level, but be aware that they are capable of doing much more, like engaging with users based on their surroundings. Whether it be providing entertainment or self-service troubleshooting, chatbots allow brands to provide services without the need for human intervention (though in some cases a human takeover is recommended, like solving more complex tasks or providing support in emotionally charged scenarios).

That said, chatbots aren’t the right fit for everyone. Before you invest in building one for your brand, consider your target demographic and the value you wish for the bot to provide. A lack of desire for automation can cause frustration for users who must use a chatbot. There may also be a learning curve to adapt to a new technology depending on your demographic, which can lead to more problems than solutions overall. A good method for determining whether a chatbot is right for your organization is to weigh the potential benefits with user desire or demand.

Know How to Set the Tone

A chatbot serves as a notable channel for representing a brand voice. Far from a frivolous thing, an attractive voice and personality can be incredibly beneficial for brands. Microsoft’s Xiaoice chatbot, for example, employs advanced emotional intelligence to carry humanlike, nuanced conversations with users. With the persona of a teenage girl, the AI is so popular in China that she has achieved celebrity status, according to Microsoft.

But Xiaoice is just one fraction of a larger AI framework, and her underlying mechanisms power branded, third-party characters as well. So, what’s the value in these bots’ trademark small talk and chit-chat that has made them so popular with Eastern users—and what does it mean for chatbots that are designed to accomplish a specific task or organizational goal? The value lies in providing social capital by keeping users engaged, allowing for deeper emotional connections.

Given the power of a good voice, brands interested in the technology should consider the tone of voice and identity that fits their brand. While a consumer-facing bot has the freedom and flexibility to speak in a more casual tone, one that’s intended for employee use should take on a more professional persona. Will your bot speak to users in gifs? Will it offer emoji-based button responses? Is it lazy, or energetic? These are some questions you can ask to envision the personality your bot can take. Have fun with it!

Earn Users’ Trust

Chatbots are excellent at providing relevancy and personalization in their messaging to users—and they accomplish that by leveraging data gathered across the course of conversation or even through external sources (more on that below). For users to feel comfortable sharing their data with organizations, the value that data provides must be clear.  Chatbots are ideal for this because they can walk users through an onboarding process that asks permissions for data, clearly explaining why it’s necessary at each step.

As users interact with a chatbot, they get instant feedback about how that data informs the user experience. For example, a bot with knowledge of a user’s home and work addresses can prove lifesaving for finding one’s way at rush hour when transit services change. While users might find most data collection and practices to be esoteric and opaque, the question-and-answer approach (not to mention the personality) of chatbots makes this process more transparent. And once that data is in their hands, organizations can also use it to discover new trends or forecast emerging user needs, thereby improving the experience even more.

Architecture and Maintenance

Speaking of data collection, an effective chatbot requires an architecture that plugs into one or several data sources. This might include data you already have about the user (for example, a retailer pulling from a user’s purchasing history), knowledge bases that troubleshoot common questions, partner data or other sources. Whatever data sources you pull from, you must ensure your chatbot’s architecture supports it—and be prepared to add more if and when it becomes necessary. When in doubt, consider partnering with a developer who can audit your data sources and build an architecture equipped to plug into these forms of data.

On that note, to develop a chatbot is to commit to the long haul: it’s important to iterate and optimize the bot for a better user experience based on the feedback collected, whether it be explicit comments from users or implicit usage data. One major example of this is expanding your market and localizing chatbot content to match. Brands must be sure they’re ready to scale up the growing capabilities of a chatbot to accommodate emerging user behaviors—though if they don’t have the resources, a creative partner experienced in tooling assets at scale for a global audience can be of help.

A chatbot can make for a valuable service to your audience, whether its focus is on consumers or employees. But conversation is an artform, and just like any artist, you need a vision and tools in place to deliver the experience you seek for your users. Having established that, your brand is ready to say “Hello” to deeper, closer relationships with your audience.