Trade Report 3.22.

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Amazon: A Rising Influencer Platform

• While Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Google are pivotal players for the influencer platform
space, there are other companies, like Amazon, that are up and coming platforms perfect for
influencers.

• Starting with Amazon’s Alexa, a recent Forrester Research study snapshotted the transition in
digital marketing away from traditional search ads and toward voice and voice activated
queries.

• Brands like Capital One, Domino’s, Humana, and L’Oréal have already began to incorporate
voice search into their marketing strategies.

• Diving into the Amazon platform itself, it is the most shopping friendly site that controls more
than 50% of the e-commerce in the United States.

• Consumers are beginning to research their purchases on Amazon rather than Google.

• More than a year ago, Amazon created its own influencer program.

• An exclusive version that is open only to high-end influencers, where the influencers get a
custom storefront and vanity URL, choose products they want to spotlight, and receive a
share of resulting sales revenue.

• If brands match their products with the right influencer, they can begin to connect with that
influencer’s most devoted fans in a way that Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Google
cannot match.

• Source: Forbes

“Stadia” Google’s New Cloud Gaming Platform

• Google just announced it’s cloud based game platform called “Stadia” where users will be
able to play instantly on computers and devices.

• Google also revealed that “Stadia” will include streaming features built for YouTubers:

• Crowd Play:

 • YouTube creators and their audiences will be able to play games together while creators
are live streaming.

• State Share:

• Creators who are playing a Stadia game can capture an exact moment of their gameplay
and let viewers drop directly into it, playing the scenario to see if they could make it
through themselves.

• “Stadia” is designed to bring creators and viewers together.

• Source: TubeFilter

Facebook “Living Room”

• On feed-based platforms, “it feels more like a town square than a more intimate space like a
living room” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained. 

• Zuckerburg is beginning to rethink Facebook as a more private living room where users can
be comfortable being themselves with out the fear of hackers, the government, and
embarrassment from old content.

• Here’s his plan to make it more of a living room:

• Facebook will let users opt in to the ability to send or receive messages across
Facebook, WhatsApp,  and Instagram

• Facebook wants to expand that interoperability to SMS on Android

• Zuckerberg wants to make ephemerality automatic on messaging threads, so chats

disappear by default after a month or year, with users able to control that or put timers on
individual messages.

• Facebook plans to limit how long it retains metadata on messages once it’s no longer
needed for spam or safety protections

• Facebook will extend end-to-end encryption across its messaging apps but use metadata
and other non-content signals to weed out criminals using privacy to hide their misdeeds.

• Facebook won’t store data in countries with a bad track record of privacy abuse such as
Russia, even if that means having to shut down or postpone operations in a country

• While this will put Facebook in a better PR spot, there is a concern of how it will change the
way financial value the current platform of Facebook generates.

• Source: TechCrunch