The digital advertising landscape is evolving as marketers compete for consumers' attention. Omnivirt is a 360-degree VR advertising platform for brands and publishers looking to gain an edge. The company's CEO and COO, Brad Phaisan and Michael Rucker, joined us to chat about virtual reality's full potential for advertisers.
We are in the early stages of VR technology, and some doubt whether it'll ever live up to high expectations. Phaisan compares the skepticism towards VR today to the way people viewed smartphones in the 1990s. The former Google software engineer is confident VR could end up being just as big.
The advertising space is extremely cluttered, and marketers are looking for ways to jump off the page, says Rucker. Omnivirt's 360 VR ads are offering advertisers and publishers the chance to do just that. When asked about Snap's place in virtual reality advertising, Rucker adds that he sees the social media platform as complementary to the solutions offered by Omnivirt.
The electric vehicle industry got a jolt this week as Harley-Davidson introduced its new LiveWire electric motorcycle at the 2019 Consumer Electronics Show. "We're the leader in the category, so we're going to lead the electrification of the sport," Heather Malenshek, senior vice president of marketing and brand at Harley-Davidson, told Cheddar at CES.
This year, CES marked a new partnership between gaming hardware maker Alienware and "League of Legends" developer Riot Games, a union that was a year in the making, according to the general manager at Dell's gaming arm, Alienware. "It actually started here a year ago," Azor told Cheddar at the Las Vegas conference on Wednesday. "That's where we first met."
Among the attendees at this year's CES was Aurora, a startup building autonomous driving technology, backed by some of the top talent in the field. Aurora CEO Chris Urmson, who co-founded the company with a former Tesla engineer and robotics expert, told Cheddar's Hope King that Aurora was "building the driver" for driverless cars.
Flying taxis are closer to liftoff than you might think. Dr. Tom Prevot, a former NASA aerospace engineer who now runs the engineering division at Elevate, Uber's airspace unit, told Cheddar's Hope King that the nascent industry is reaching a point at which "a lot of things come together."
Procter & Gamble is the world's biggest advertiser and the company is looking to the future to upgrade common products people use everyday. Cheddar's Hope King talked to Marc Pritchard, the Chief Brand Officer of Procter & Gamble, about how the company is integrating tech into everything from razors to toothbrushes.
Influencer marketing company IZEA Worldwide is expanding into Latin America with the acquisition of FLUVIP. FLUVIP is a Latin American-focused influencer marketing company with more than 100,000 influencers. Companies are projected to spend between $5 billion and $10 billion in influencer marketing by 2022.
Apple is planning to slash production for its newer iPhone models by 10 percent this quarter, according to a report in the Nikkei. However, CEO Tim Cook continues to say that the iPhone XR is the best-selling phone in company history. Trade talks between China and the U.S. wrapped up Wednesday after an unscheduled third day of negotiations. Both sides expressed optimism over the progress made during these talks. Plus, Hope King sits down with Bridget Karlin, chief technology officer for IBM Global Technology Services, to talk about the future of blockchain and much more.
Computing behemoth IBM is using blockchain technology to ensure the food we eat is safe and properly sourced. "We're basically leveraging the blockchain technology to track each item of food as it travels through its trajectory and its transportation from the field all the way to the retailer," Bridget Karlin, chief technology officer for IBM Global Technology Services, told Cheddar's Hope King at CES.
Affirm is making good on its commitment to become a full-service bank. The lending startup led by PayPal co-founder Max Levchin is introducing fee-free savings accounts through a bank partner, initially with a 2 percent annual percentage yield and no minimum balance, Cheddar has learned.
Nothing says CES like a robot dog powered by powerful sensors ー and that's exactly what Sony brought this year. Sony's robot dog Aibo came back from the dead last year, and now, the robo-pup is getting some cool new upgrades, Sony Electronics President Mike Fasulo told Cheddar's Hope King on Tuesday.
