Will Kinect finally make us respond to interactive advertisements?
Microsoft's Kinect 3D motion controller has hit a harmonious chord among both game consumers and interface developers, selling over 10 million units since it launched last November, and inspiring a whole movement of amateur developers to devise innovative new uses for the peripheral. Though Kinect is being applied to everything from Augmented Reality to education, one of the main areas where Microsoft is hoping to inspire developers, consumers and investors is interactive television.
Yesterday at the Cannes International Advertising Festival, Microsoft unveiled Kinect NUads, an advertising platform that adds voice and gesture control to advertisements.
Most of the things NUads can do are tried and true "interactive marketing" techniques: letting users access more information, share advertising, and use location data for more granularity, but they're all done by voice command with Kinect. In making these activities as natural and effortless as possible, users are more likely to interact with ads than we would be if we had to pick up a remote or use a keyboard with our TV.
For example, a user can say "Xbox, More" for additional information about a product in a rolling advertisement, or users can say "Xbox, Near Me" to locate retailers carrying the product in the advertisement. Additionally, for advertisements for TV shows, users can say "Xbox, Schedule," to receive an email reminder or calendar notification when that show airs.
"For all of its leading-edge innovation, NUads still focus on enabling proven and traditional marketing methods," said Mark Kroese, General Manager, Advertising Business Group, IEB. "The difference is that the audience can take part in these offerings without having to do anything that isn't inherently natural. A simple voice command or wave of the hand is all it takes. At the end of the day, people want to interact with content with a bowl of popcorn--not a clunky keyboard or remote--in their lap. With NuAds, they can."