by Chuck Martin , Staff Writer, June 5, 2017

Back in July 2015, I wrote about how the Internet of Things was about connections, in kicking off the first edition of the MediaPost IoT Daily.

The journey continues today, with the official inclusion of additional relevant and future technologies, as the IoT Daily broadens to become the AI & IoT Daily.

As might be expected, the market has evolved over the last two years, most notably with the level of sophistication of technologies used to connect consumers with brands in new and innovative ways.

Two years ago, Amazon’s Alexa was barely out of the gate and initially only available by invitation to Amazon Prime members. Google Home was not even introduced.

IBM’s Watson had won at Jeopardy but was very early on the road to becoming a major AI engine for companies like 1-800-Flowers, Toyota and H&R Block, among others.

During that time, virtual reality finally migrated from gaming to mass use by consumers. While Google Cardboard was introduced a few years back, there now are more than 10 million Cardboard viewers in the market and more than 150 million Cardboard app downloads. Last year, Google introduced Daydream, an enhanced VR platform as the VR and AR worlds evolved.

Major brands, older and newer, from Ford to Google and Toyota to Uber, are pushing ahead in the development of autonomous vehicles while brands including Disney and Intel tap large fleets of drones to entertain consumers.

These and other future technologies will impact the world of marketing and advertising as new forms of messaging ride along with the new technologies.

The connections we focus on here are twofold.

There are those innovations that allow the connections of smart objects to other smart objects, providing an underlying platform that creates a flow of massive amounts of data and information.

Then there are the other connections, of how brands and marketers can tap into this platform to connect with consumers in new ways that benefit them.

The emphasis here will be on the latter, since that is where the brand-consumer impact resides.

In many ways, the AI & IoT Daily is still about connections, with many more of them coming in multiple new ways.

MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily

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