Public transportation is getting digital: good news for ecommerce!

Change is coming very fast regarding transportation today. Public transportation has to grown and change significantly to face the growing number of users and their new expectations. A bunch of carpool startups have been created in the last decade such as Uber, Lyft, Heetch making public transportation old-fashioned for a lot of people.

To take part in the smartest-cities of the world race, Paris announced this month that it plans to have the most digital metro in the world by 2025 with new innovative infrastructures such as optical fiber, data centers, telecom networks, Wi-fi and geolocation system. Parisian subway is getting digitalized in order to help people gain a lot of times when they have to go from a point A to a point B. But this is not the only issue.

Paris metro has always been an important place for advertisers. Indeed, there is almost 5 millions of users everyday. Those users are consumers and you can easily grab their attention : when their are in the metro they do not have much to do, people are waiting their train and then, they wait in the train to arrive at their destination. Well... that was before. Today, everybody is on its smartphone. That’s why bringing wifi, geolocation and big datas where millions of consumers pass everyday  will revolutionize ads in public transportation.

Users experience will be improved and users will be able to buy anything during their journey : 1 online purchase out of 4 is made with a smartphone today and this figure keeps on increasing. Today, it is complicated to buy while you are in the metro because you do not want to take the risk to see your connection shut down. With big data analyse, retargeting and Wifi, you’ll find that your journey in the metro will probably become the right place and time for you to do your shopping.

Be able to track people on public transportation will have a big impact on digital marketing. Indeed, public transportation says a lot about you: where you live, where you work, at what time, where you go for shopping. It means that we can deduce your social background, define your favorite brands, push ads for you that matches your preferences, inform you to go out at a certain station for a special event etc… But who can gather all those data? Well, on the road, companies such as Waze already deals with a huge amount of datas and has an important impact on advertising. An other app, Moovit could become the Waze of the metro.

Actually, startups like Waze and Moovit (an israelian app created in 2014) had the idea that the most efficient way to simplify rides does not lie into high technology object but definetly onto people who are using those transportation system every day. They are creating a network where everyone can be a stakeholder. Waze’s business model is based on advertising using CPM and it has been bought by Google for 1.15 billion $ two years ago. 

Moovit works directly with the parisian public transportation company RATP to help it improve their service in cities and in return the RATP is promoting the company. Nowadays, every companies are looking for this kind of win-win situation.

 To attract people using the app, they provide virtual reward to users who are helping improve the service. They main interest is to create a community.

Will Moovit know the same success story as Waze ? If it expends to other big cities metros, we can bet that Google will look closely at their activities. 

Marine Esposito 

Julia Ibrahim - Ouali 

Sources : 

http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/le-grand-paris-veut-se-doter-du-metro-le-plus-digital-du-monde.N453497

https://dataparis.io/

https://siecledigital.fr/2016/08/01/waze-accelere-monetisation/

http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/moovit-s-appuie-sur-les-usagers-des-transports-pour-construire-l-appli-de-mobilite-ultime.N456477

Will Google Win the Presidential Election?

Presently, we are but a few days before the US Presidential Election, a time when candidates Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are pulling out final cards to win the White House. As the tensions have risen with the campaign, accusations have gotten progressively more absurd. Last September, Donald Trump made another dramatic statement against the Hillary Clinton campaign, this time accusing Google of deleting negative search results about Clinton. Trump said at a rally that "A new post-debate poll, the Google poll, has us leading Hillary Clinton by two points nationwide …. and that's despite the fact that Google search engine was suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton. How about that." He has also accused via Twitter that the tech companies - as Google - are trying to stifle the new revelations about the FBI investigation into the case of Clinton emails.

Similar claims have even been made by less politically affiliated sources, such as the popular video-news blog SourceFed, which stated in June that Google in particular has been “burying potential sources that could hurt Hillary in the Primary Elections by manipulating recommendations on their site”. Common negative search terms did not appear in the automatic fill-in bar as compared to other search engines. (For instance, “hillary clinton criminal” - while a more popular term did not appear in the automatic results, while the less popular “hillary clinton crime reform” did).

Considering the Threat

Rather serious accusations! If true, what are the consequences?  Internet users around the world rely on search engines as a fast means of being informed. There is a conception that the top results are most relevant and trustworthy and can be believed. This means that the first results and words seen by a viewer can have serious consequences on what they think about a subject. Robert Epstein, psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology, conducted a study regarding the “Search Engine Manipulation Effect”.  In a study in which subjects were shown search engine results of two candidates. The results greatly impacted the opinions due to the subjects making instantaneous judgements based on what they saw first. Regarding the US Election, Epstein ‘s study estimates that “based on win margins in national elections around the world that Google could determine the outcome of upwards of 25 percent of all national elections.”

Considering the Facts

So was Google really manipulating search results? And now to explain what really happens.

Both the Trump campaign and SourceFed have accused Google of human-made modifications. However, Google’s massive functions are carried out via automatic operations.  Trump’s statements about “suppressed bad news stories” are the result of PageRank, the link analysis algorithm which makes Google’s search engine so successful. PageRank’s automatic  operation is quite simple; the more an article is mentioned by hyperlinks, the higher it will likely be displayed in the top results of Google searches. This arguably makes the results even more relevant than competing search engines.  Google’s Privacy Policy  explains that this algorithm is based upon "the search frequency of a term by users in order to reflect the diversity of the information on the Web. This diversity, the proposed search terms can therefore sometimes seem strange or surprising”. 

Regarding the SourceFed accusations, Google released a statement saying that “autocomplete predictions are produced based on a number of factors including the popularity of search terms … Our systems are periodically updated to improve search, and our user’s search activity varies, so the terms that may appear in autocomplete may change overtime. Additionally, our systems filter a small set of offensive or inappropriate content from autocomplete predictions”. SourceFed’s accusations likely point to the results filtered due to the latter part of this statement. This  shows that many elements are considered in the search autocomplete bar and Google was not biased.

In short, there is no evidence that Google has human-caused manipulation of results. Both accusations have simply noticed the results of an automatic process.

Conclusions to be made for Digital Marketing

The concern and denial over this subject shows us that, political alliance aside, there are concepts here to be taken seriously, because potential “manipulation” of search results can lead to dramatic opinion change.  It is interesting to apply this to a Digital Marketing perspective since the US Presidential Election is effectively the Trump “Brand” and Hillary “Brand” fighting for “Positive Consumer Brand Equity” . This case shows us that accusing the Google of result manipulation is not accurate and that all non-paid results are subjected to the same algorithms. Therefore, understanding how the PageRank and AutoComplete can give us a practical lesson in SEO for firms which want to have a successful e-marketing strategy.  Marketing teams should be aware of the various factors that produce different autocomplete text and search engine results. There are differences depending on geographic-interests and the personal profiles Google has created for each account. Results of your product will appear is varying priority as a result - this should be considered when targeting specific markets. Potential “offensive” text content most also be considered, as this will lead to a filtering of this content from this results. Furthermore, the case reminds that viewers of online media pass instant judgement based on what they see first - this applies to not only search engine results, but social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. A single post can tarnish the brand image or cause lasting support in an instant.

Source: Donald Trump says Google proves he’s winning — and is trying to make sure he loses
By Nadiya Kutishcheva & Staël Anicet

https://www.wired.com/2015/08/googles-search-algorithm-steal-presidency/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFxFRqNmXKg)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/29/donald-trump-says-google-proves-hes-winning-is-trying-to-make-sure-he-loses/

REAL TIME MARKETING: A NEW DIGITAL ENGINE

What is this new tool companies are using to optimize customer relationship and complement their e-commerce strategy?

RTM, which stands for Real Time Marketing, is a new concept of marketing based on customer’s behaviour and actions on their website in order to provide better services and push more pertinent advertisement in real time. Clearly, it consist in using all the data regarding the actions of the customers of the website, to immediately send triggered emails, to entertain a discussion through social medias, to promote live events and even propose location based deals according to the customer’s location.

By undertaking these different activities in real time, companies have different goals:

When successfully done, RTM can make people interact with your company of social media, by liking, sharing or retweeting: so by focusing on technology and improving the customer relationship and engagement, you then can collect huge amount of data about customer behaviour to push him the right product/service, at the right time and at the good price.

“RTM enables companies to a 16% lift in customer sentiment, a increase of 14% in purchase intent and 18% in interest (…) LeadSift’s data reveals that consumers are 22% more likely to consider a brand as a result of real-time marketing.”

With all these benefits listed, why not all brand and company are developing an efficient real-time marketing strategy?

Today, many companies are limited in the use of real-time marketing, for those main reasons: Limited budget and resources, staff can’t respond quickly enough, lack of search analytics tools, lack of real-time data and knowledge.

Real-time marketing is very efficient tool, with impressive results, when of course it can be afforded. For the moment only prestigious brands and important companies are able to develop a profitable RTM strategy.

http://digitalmarketingmagazine.co.uk/articles/the-increasing-importance-of-real-time-marketing

http://www.ngdata.com/what-is-real-time-marketing/