Want to catch up with what happened in the digital world this week? Our weekly cheat sheet will fill you in on everything you missed while you were scrambling to meet deadlines and put out fires.
Find out about L’Oreal’s new app for Xbox, Zeebox’s launch in the United States, how CW embedded a live Twitter feed inside Entertainment Weekly, Tumblr’s new analytics platform, and more!
1. L’Oreal launches a new beauty app on Xbox Live
This Wednesday, L’Oreal introduced “The Next Level” beauty app on Xbox Live. The app will feature how-to videos, product recommendations, content from Lucky magazine, a forum where users can interact with their peers and beauty experts, and much more. Users will gain reward points for interacting with the app and can redeem the points for prizes. More brands are realizing the potential of Xbox 360 as a platform that can be used to engage consumers. While some might consider a game console an unusual place to launch a beauty app, the fact is that 40 percent of the 20 million Xbox Live users are female, and users spend 33 percent of their time on Xbox doing something other than playing games.
2. Adidas store wants you to window shop
An adidas store in Nurenberg, Germany is letting its shoppers interact with its storefront display using their smartphones. The adidas NEO concept store, which features trendier items and targets a younger demographic, has built a storefront display that lets users dress a life-size, virtual mannequin with any of the items found in the store. Instead of going in and out of dressing rooms to see how different items look together, shoppers can put a whole outfit together within the virtual display. Shoppers can connect their smartphone with the display, and then drag and drop items from the display directly to their phone and then check out on the adidas NEO website. According to Neilsen, 75 percent of Americans between the ages of 25 and 34 own smartphones.
3. Zeebox launches in the United States
Backed by Comcast, NBCUniversal, and HBO, Zeebox officially launched in the United States last week. Since then, the second-screen app has already announced a new partnership with Viacom. Zeebox offers many of the same features that other second-screen apps do; Zeebox users can look at a programming guide, share their thoughts on what they’re watching, and post directly to their Facebook and Twitter accounts. The difference between Zeebox and other TV companion apps is that only Zeebox has the backing of this many broadcasters and will receive on-air promotion and access to exclusive content. 63 percent of tablet owners use their device while watching TV and 34 percent of users post to Facebook, Twitter, or another social network while watching TV.
4. The CW embeds a live Twitter feed inside Entertainment Weekly
There’s a fun surprise waiting inside the pages of one thousand copies of this week’s Entertainment Weekly. The CW has embedded a live twitter feed inside the magazine. At the center of the insert is a small screen (still attached to a working, custom-build, smartphone-like device) that shows a video promoting the new fall shows and then displays the last six tweets posted on @CW_Network. According to the CW, the focus of the campaign is not to get new Twitter followers. Instead, the network wants to raise awareness of its status as an innovative network. We’re definitely aware!
5. Tumblr announces analytics platform
On Thursday, Tumblr unveiled a new analytics platform that will make it possible for marketers to track and measure the success of branded posts on the site. Marketers can now quickly identify the most popular posts, the most popular types of content (photo, text, video, etc.), the most influential users, and much more. One thing the microblogging site does not offer, however, is targeted advertising, since the only personal information Tumblr collects is birth year. Instead, Tumblr is perfect for brands who want to take a broad-based approach to advertising. In September of this year, Tumblr surpassed Pinterest in number of unique visitors with 26.9 million to Pinterest’s 23 million visitors.
