How to Keep Your Smart Assistant Voice Recordings Private

After months of revelations and apologies, all the major smart assistant makers have revamped how they handle human review of audio snippets. Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, Apple Siri, and Microsoft Cortana were all using third-party contractors to transcribe and vet recorded snippets, adding some human brain power to underlying machine-learning algorithms. But the backlash over the lack of transparency spurred new customer controls. And with the release of Apple’s iOS 13.2 on Monday, you now have one more way to rein that data collection in. Full Story: WIRED

Alexa, Does My Business Need A Voice Search Strategy?

With voice search dominating the realm of SEO and business news, Jimmy McCann, head of digital strategy at international digital marketing agency, Search Laboratory, discusses how voice search is becoming the default search method for consumers worldwide and why it shouldn’t be overlooked as part of an SMEs business strategy. Full Story: Bdaily

5 Ways to Perfect Your Brand’s Sonic Strategy

Our world has never sounded better. The synchronous mass adoption of digital assistants, podcasts and streaming music services has put audio in an omnipresent consumer engagement role, bringing a new challenge to creative agencies that will be compelled to develop sonic branding of the same breadth, rigor and detail that has been historically reserved for visual design. Full Story: Adweek

Voice search: what can brands do now to prepare for this revolution?

By 2020 there will be 1.6 billion digital assistants, more than there are people in China. Steve Jobs famously said his ambition was to get rid of the keyboard and it now seems his vision is being realised, but what can brands do now to prepare for this coming sea change? Full Story: The Drum

Spotify’s podcast strategy is starting to pay off

Spotify’s strategy of owning a chunk of the podcast game appears to be paying off, at least according to its latest financial report. In the third quarter of 2019, Spotify says it saw “exponential growth” in podcasts, with a 39 percent increase in listens in just three months. The US is the biggest consumer of the format, but Spotify is also seeing bumps in a number of European countries. And those people who come to Spotify for podcasts are, according to the company, more likely to sign up for premium than others. Full Story: Engadget

Voice technology is here. Now what?

One of the major draws of emerging and creative technology for brands is the ‘new factor’; the opportunity to be the first company to launch on a new platform – to boldly go where no brand has gone before. Full Story: The Drum

Why voice search is where the puck is going for digital

Continually riding the wave of the next ‘big thing’ in social media is certainly a roller coaster ride, and we are now on the cusp of another major change. Voice search has been growing in popularity and is starting to have a transformational impact on the way marketers can influence people to know, like, trust, and eventually buy from a specific brand. Full Story: Marketing Tech

Amazon to support utility-bill payments with Alexa

The e-commerce giant said during a Sunday keynote at the Money 20/20 financial technology conference that it would be partnering with fintech company Paymentus to add the feature, which will allow customers to pay online or else by voice using Amazon’s AMZN, -1.09%  Alexa voice assistant. Full Story: MarketWatch

Have Amazon Echo privacy fears? Here’s what you can do

Security researchers have recently found malicious apps that can eavesdrop through your Echo speaker. And this isn’t the first privacy case — since we were first introduced to Amazon’s Echo devices, the company has been challenged by consumers who have privacy concerns over the microphones that always listen for your command. Full Story: CNET

How Retailers Can Optimize For The Growth Of Voice Search

In SEO terms, voice search is a type of Internet behavior made by users who verbally state their queries and questions, in natural language, to a “smart device.” Voice search is growing, and the amount of high-intent traffic it drives to web sites is hard to ignore. Full Story: Retail TouchPoints