The tech I want to see at CES 2019
Our Futurist, Elena Corchero, highlights what she’s looking forward to seeing next month at CES 2019!
Every year the biggest and most innovative tech companies from across the globe descend on Las Vegas for CES. This global stage has hosted new tech breakthroughs for the past 50 years and CES 2019 is going to be no different.
I’ll be heading to Las Vegas with some of the Unruly team to investigate what’s happening, and hunt down those new technologies that are set to change consumer behaviour and disrupt the advertising industry.
Voices with screens, screens with voices
At CES 2019 I’m expecting to see the relationship between voice assistants and displays continue to grow. This is a trend that emerged in 2018 with the launch of the Google Home Hub, the next generation Echo Show and the growth of smart TVs that come with voice assistants.
A number of companies also threw their hat in the voice/display ring, with one of my favourites being Diageo’s ‘The Bar’. The bar asks you a number of questions based on a decision tree to determine which cocktail would suit you best. It then displays a list of ingredients, including a Diageo brand, and instructions on how to make it on-screen.
Brands will need to continue to think out of the box to reach consumers in this new world. I believe we will continue to see this voice/display trend in a number of new technologies at CES 2019. At CES Japanese companies will lead the focus on the human part of technology, and companies like Empath will showcase how they can analyse emotions simply via voice. We will also see this technology take off with the launch of a number of new smart glasses!
Smart glasses redux
Yes, you heard right, Smart Glasses are set to make a return with a number of companies ready to show off their versions at CES 2019. I’ve predicted this for a while, as if we think about the big technologies that have emerged over the past few years; AI, AR, Voice and IoT, the logical format for them all to fit into is Smart Glasses, or some variation of wearable tech. They are commanded via voice, they use Lens AI to identify what we are looking at, and AR to overlay information onto our reality.
Don’t get me wrong, smartphones won’t disappear anytime soon, however as people begin to see the advantages that Smart Glasses bring, and the issues that smartphones present us with (bad backs from leaning over, and not looking up to communicate with each other), we will start to see worldwide adoption of them. The impact this will have on advertisers and publishers is just a guessing game at the moment, but the industry should be ready to make giant leaps in a very short space of time!
What’s driving voice adoption?
Vehicle Technology has been highlighted as one of the big topics of CES 2019 and I believe voice tech will play a huge part in this. Over 2018, with the rise of assistants infiltrating our homes and phones, we began to use voice more than ever. I believe the next big area that voice will be used in is our cars. Just imagine hearing an ad on the radio and being able to ask your car to order the product or buy tickets, all on your morning commute! Voice is going to continue to shake up the ad industry in a big way and connected vehicles will be the next iteration of this.
At CES brands will also be showcasing what will be possible with driverless cars. This will be a huge opportunity for entertainment companies, and it looks like Disney will be one of the first to jump on this trend. Rumours are that they are working with Audi to create a new form of media designed especially for autonomous vehicles!
Full throttle data
I’m also really excited to find out about the progress of 5G. This will change the world as we know it, substantially increasing the power of everything from robotics, driverless cards and medical procedures, to our smartphones. Connected devices will be able to communicate a lot faster, and buffering videos will be a thing of the past. 5G is going to allow brands to use new technologies like VR and AR to communicate messages to consumers on the go, without having to worry about buffering or loading times.
Every year I also look forward to the wacky and crazy new tech inventions that arrive from around the world. I’ll leave you with the best one I’ve found so far…
I’ll be spending the week at CES in January, and will share my highlights in a follow up blog post. If you’d like to meet with me, or any of the Unruly team click here to book in a meeting, with us we’d love to catch up!
