Bit by bit, it’s all happening. Everything in Messenger, in-home assistants, self-driving cars and beer at the touch of a button. Blasé about this rapid pace of innovation? Then don’t listen to the a16z podcast on the new iPhone, they’ll (rightly) tell you off for failing to appreciate the astonishing developments packed inside the latest models.
HEADLINES
- Facebook adds new functionality to Messenger that includes payments and linking ads to Messenger. The latter could help this platform take off for brands
- Snapchat – now at 150 million daily users, 50 million in Europe – introduced new ad targeting, including email and mobile device matching
- The Amazon Echo is coming to the UK, Germany and Austria this Autumn.
INSIGHTS
- Google say their app install ads have generated a billion installs for developers in the past four months– a significant jump on the previous period
- An IAB Europe report on the Programmatic Market
- Forrester report says that robots will eliminate 6% of all US jobs by 2021.
COOL
- Uber launches a limited public trial of its self-driving car technology in Pittsburgh
- Carling releases its own ‘Amazon Dash style’ beer button
- Twitter live streams its first NFL game and the experience receives some great reviews.
DEEP READS
- This really is a deep read: Deepmind’s latest project looks to improve machines’ ability to understand and generate speech.
- On Netflix: ‘Why Hollywood fears a content monopoly‘.
- Think the new iPhone lacks innovation? You’re wrong, so says the latest a16z podcast.