Author: Julie Campbell

Smartwatch partnership forms among Intel, Google, and TAG Heuer

| March 25, 2015

These companies have banded together to be able to launch luxury wearables before the year is done.

The Baselworld Watch and Jewellery Show in Basel, Switzerland was hyped with announcements about wearable technology, such as the luxury smartwatch that is expected to result from a new partnership among Google, Intel, and the TAG Heuer Swiss watch-making company.

The goal of the companies is to create a device that is both practical to the wearer, as well as luxurious.

The CEO of TAG Heuer, Jean-Claude Biver, said that “Silicon Valley is Switzerland, Switzerland is Silicon Valley.” He pointed out that the device that the partners would be designing would be “both luxurious, and seamlessly connected to its wearer’s daily life.” He closed his announcement with a ceremonial slicing into an 80+ pound wheel of cheese from his own farm.

Biver’s statement showed that the smartwatch is the latest component of watch-making innovation.

Smartwatch Partnership - Google, Tag Heuer & IntelHe explained that by bringing together the technology of Silicon Valley and the watch-making of Switzerland, it is a “marriage” of innovation and credibility. He expressed that “Our collaboration provides a rich host of synergies, forming a win-win partnership, and the potential for our three companies is enormous.”

The companies have yet to name the wearable technology device that they intend to launch, but they do know that a chipset designed by Intel will be powering it, it will operate on Android Wear (the modified version of the standard mobile operating system from Google), and TAG Heuer will be designing the actual watch that will be worn by the owner. The availability and pricing of these wearables was also not revealed, but Biver did state that it could be launched anywhere between October and December 2015.

While TAG Heuer will be designing the watch, because of the smartwatch components of the device and as a result of the international method of assembly and manufacturing, the smartwatch that these companies will be producing will not have an actual “Swiss-made” timepiece certification. That said, it will be enhancing the early entry of Google and Intel into the very promising wearable technology marketplace.

Facebook intends to change its social media marketing metrics

| March 23, 2015

This move will have a direct impact on app developers all around the world.

Facebook is preparing its announcement of a new measurement tool for social media marketing firms that may help the network to be able to offer better competition for Google and to allow the company to taken on a greater share of the smartphone based ad marketplace.

The announcement is expected to be made at the Facebook annual F8 developers conference on March 25.

The new measuring service will give brands using Facebook social media marketing a better ability to know whether or not an app was actually downloaded as a result of having been exposed to an ad on the social network. This, according to a recent report that was made by The Information. This tool will not be limited to measuring the performance of ads purchased through Facebook. It will also help to better understand the performance of ads that have been served on other mobile apps, as well.

Should Facebook encourage enough use of this social media marketing environment, the outcome could be massive.

Strong partnerships of this nature could end up presenting some initial challengesSocial Media Marketing - Facebook Changes to rivals such as Twitter, iAd at Apple, and Google, which are direct competition within the mobile advertising space and that are highly unlikely to want to give up any of their market share to Facebook. Overall, if this plays out the way that The Information has suggested, it could mean that Facebook could become a much more important advertising resource for brands, particularly when it comes to desktop and mobile ads.

This would also help to provide further explanation for the launch of Facebook Audience Network, in 2014, when it gave mobile marketing firms the ability to broaden their Facebook campaigns to reach other mobile apps by way of its targeting data.

This also helps to show why Facebook is adding support to its Atlas ad server, which provides social media marketing advertisers with the ability to use consumer data from Facebook in order to target them over non-Facebook ads and websites. It also underscores the importance of the “Topic Data” data analysis tool that it recently launched.