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The rise and rise of retail media: how brands can leverage its power

Leave a Comment / Adtech, Data, Technology / By Gini Bailey

Retail media first started to see signs of significant growth in 2016, and it only took five years to 2021 for the market to grow from $1bn to $30bn – less than half the time of social media and a third of the time of search to reach the same figures.

What drove this meteoric growth? There are four key factors that Econsultancy suggests created this opportunity for retail media:

Retailers facing mounting pressure to unearth new income streams and boost profit margins.
Brand leaders struggling to drive growth in fiercely competitive markets.
Brands needing to pivot their targeting approach with the crumbling of third-party cookies.
The evolution of online consumer behaviour impacting customer journeys and purchasing decisions.

Of course, retail media providers have benefited hugely from this revenue stream. However, it also provides opportunities for brands and agencies to effectively reach new and existing customers.

In this quick guide, we’ll cover what retail media is, its unique value proposition, best practices that brands and agencies can use to take advantage of this massive advertising channel, and examples of brands succeeding with retail media.

What is retail media?

Retail media is the ad space ecommerce retailers sell on their websites or apps to brands who want to influence buying decisions at the point of purchase. However, this can also apply to advertisements retailers place inside their physical stores.

According to Criteo, retail media “enables brands to boost their visibility on the digital shelf”, similar to an endcap or special in-aisle feature in a physical store.”

To manage this channel, retailers have created Retail Media Networks (RMNs), where they can manage their owned media promotional placements and third-party brand advertisements.

Although similar to PPC and Paid Search, the main difference with RMNs is where the ads appear (i.e. on a retailer’s site/app versus Google search results).

A unique value proposition for brands

According to the Skai State of Retail Media 2023, “96% of surveyed individuals confirmed that their retail media programs achieved desired brand impact.”

The primary benefit RMNs provide is access to the retailer’s first-party data for relevant and accurate targeting capabilities, which has gained significant importance with the coming demise of third-party cookies.

Another benefit is providing a brand-safe environment, giving brands the confidence that their ads won’t appear alongside misinformation, hate speech or other types of content they don’t want to associate with (a common downside of advertising in social walled gardens).

For agencies, retail media platforms create a streamlined media buying process to help track and manage campaigns across multiple retailers.

Key players in retail media

It’s no surprise that Amazon is currently dominating the market share of retail media globally, and in Europe specifically, it’s almost 640% ahead of its closest competitor, eBay.

In the US, Amazon is still at the top of the leader board as the most important RMN to marketers, but Walmart and Target are in close pursuit, with others such as Instacart, Kroger, Meijer, and Best Buy trailing behind.

In the UK, dominant RMNs include Tesco, which launched its RMN towards the end of 2021 and continually evolves its offering thanks to 21m Clubcard holders; and Sainsbury’s (powered by Nectar360), which boasts the UK’s largest coalition loyalty programme with over 20m members.

Retail media best practices for brands and agencies

While the benefits of including retail media in the marketing mix are clear, how can brands leverage its power?

Foster collaboration, not silos: Investing in retail media isn’t a one-department decision. It affects marketing, ecommerce, trade marketing, finance, and multiple key decision-makers within the business, particularly those developing brand strategies. To avoid missing critical information and conflicting interests, it’s best to create internal collaboration opportunities and data-sharing rather than operating in silos.

Invest in building expertise: Even if outsourcing advertising to agencies, it’s still best practice to develop internal expertise on retail media to provide overall strategy and better understand the impact of campaigns. Having internal data analysts and experience in performance marketing are great foundations for transitioning into a retail media strategy.

Be selective with RMN partners: Rather than relying on ‘spray and pray’, a better approach is to evaluate potential partners according to your most important criteria using a joint business planning strategy:

Does the retailer’s positioning and objectives align with the brand?
What are their strengths and weaknesses, and their short vs long-term goals?

Answering these questions can help narrow down potential RMN partners that would provide the best collaboration opportunities for the brand.

Identify the right metrics: Finally, when building a retail media strategy, it’s crucial to consider which KPIs should be tracked according to the brand’s goals. For example, if the goal of the campaign is to increase customer acquisition, brands can use the RMN to track product sales, sometimes even at the SKU level. However, if the goal is to increase brand awareness, the RMN should be able to report on the number of impressions the ads achieve.

If partnering with multiple RMNs, it’s important to understand there is no industry standard – each network will be working to its own methodology in terms of campaign execution and reporting.

Brands doing it right: examples of retail media campaigns

There are a number of brands seeing overwhelming success with retail media. Here are just a few we’ve handpicked from Amazon case studies:

Solo Fresh Coffee

The Japanese coffee brand Solo Fresh Coffee saw a noticeable decline in product page visits, and their sales had seemingly peaked, so they reevaluated their strategy to focus on brand awareness. They hired Barriz, an Amazon Ads advanced partner, and using Amazon’s media planning suite and Amazon’s DSP, achieved their goals:

They increased the volume of the audience browsing Solo Fresh Coffee’s product detail pages by 209% YoY in January to March 2023.
Compared with sales goals, actual sales increased by 14.4%, while YoY sales went up 35%.

Jameson

The best-selling Irish whiskey in the world, Jameson wanted to drive awareness of its Black Barrel product and credentials during a key, yet fiercely competitive selling period in the alcoholic beverage industry: Christmas.

Jameson developed full-funnel activation with Amazon Ads with an omnichannel measurement strategy (which included an offline sales study with Circana Lift). The results of their campaign were impressive:

Streaming TV ads delivered a 98% completion rate, exceeding the Amazon Ads internal benchmark.
The campaign also drove a strong ROI across offline and online sales, with a 31% uplift vs Circana benchmarks, while offline sales specifically saw an 81% uplift vs Circana benchmarks.

Milk-Bone

For dog lovers worldwide, Milk-Bone is a household brand of dog treats that cater to every dog’s age, dietary needs, and palate. What’s particularly interesting about this case study was the use of Alexa interactive audio ads to create a branded audio experience.

The success Milk-Bone found in this case study shows great promise for voice-activated devices and advertisements:

Amazon’s first-party insights showed a new-to-brand rate of 31% among customers who asked Alexa to add Milk-Bone products to their basket, outperforming the category benchmark rate by 1.4X.
The results from a campaign-specific brand lift from a third-party measurement vendor, Kantar, showed a 1.7X consideration lift due to the exposure from branded experiences with Alexa.
Over 11K users engaged with the More Dog branded experience, with almost 86% of sessions lasting more than 30 seconds.

Now is the time to diversify with retail media

Data shows the growth of retail media will not slow down anytime soon, especially in a world where brands must reevaluate their approach to reaching their target audience without third-party cookies. Adding a retail media strategy to the marketing mix can help this obstacle into an opportunity while reaching brand new audiences.
If you need help articulating your thoughts on retail media or digital marketing, we can help. Chat with us todayto learn more.

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What is an NFT and why does it matter?

Leave a Comment / Data, Technology / By Carolyn McMurray

NBA, Gucci, Nyan Cat, and even Taco Bell have taken a slice of the NFT pie. But what exactly an NFT, and how much is it worth?

Everywhere you look. there’s an NFT for this or an NFT for that. It’s a buzzword that has been making waves not just in the tech space but also in the art scene over the past couple of years.

What is an NFT?

Born out of Terra Nullius, a Redditor’s interactive Ethereum creation in 2015, NFTs are non-fungible tokens, which simply means that an asset can’t be replaced or copied – it’s completely unique. Take the example of the Mona Lisa.

Sure, you could buy a poster or print out a picture of the painting, but it could never replace Da Vinci’s original masterpiece.

NFTs work in the same way. They’re essentially bits of data created on the blockchain that enable users to verify and authenticate ownership of digital goods. These goods could be in the form of digital artwork, music, or even GIFs. The point is, they’re unique and unlike anything else on the market.

Though they’ve been around for a while, NFTs only really started to gain momentum in late 2020. According to the Wall Street Journal, the market cap of NFTs soared from just under $50m in 2018 to $338m by 2020 – a pretty large jump. A jump that has excited and sparked interest in the digital token.

While some have marvelled over NFTs – seeing them as clever investments or cool pieces of art – others are a little skeptical – after all, why would you buy something that you can just take a snapshot of?

Why do they even matter?

After seeing the explosion of the Nyan Cat NFT (selling for just over $690k) we thought we’d do a little digging. If a rainbow-trailing cat made of Pop-Tarts can gain that much traction, then NFTs must be doing something right.

Here’s what we found:

NFTs have transformed the art market

When you think of art-collecting, you think of auctions and rich men in suits. You don’t necessarily think of university students or Gen Z, but NFTs have opened up the art market to a much wider crowd.

What once was shrouded in mystery has now become super-accessible to all. Everyone from your 21-year-old sister to your 30-year-old bus driver can deal in crypto-art. The only difference is that this ‘art’ is digital.

By removing physical barriers, NFTs have not only made it easier for people to buy art – they’ve also given artists and creators more opportunities to profit. Those who display their digital work on platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest now have the chance to get their creations into the limelight. Even those who don’t have a large following have a chance to break into the industry and profit from their designs.

Once an artist has sold an NFT, they’ll continue to receive a percentage of the sales made from future purchases – something which doesn’t happen in the traditional art market.

NFTs could be a precursor to Web3

A lot of the driving force behind blockchain has been the push to decentralise data and give creators greater power and ownership. In essence, blockchain is already decentralised – no information or data is stored in one single location. It’s all spread out across different networks and servers.

With the rising popularity of cryptocurrency and digitised tokens like NFTs, some believe that it’s only a matter of time before a completely decentralised internet is created (Web3).

If this were to happen, NFTs will have been at the forefront of a major historical shift. And it would be major. If Web3 did happen, governments and major corporations might find themselves struggling to maintain the power they have today. All of our data would be ours alone – not available for third-party organisations like Facebook or Instagram to profit (or profiteer) from.

There’s no saying this will actually happen (it would take huge buy-in from millions of individuals across the world). However, the fact that NFTs, alongside other digitised systems, are even able to inspire such a big movement, is impressive.

NFTs make ownership transparent

Before NFTs were a thing, digital art always had a slight problem with ownership and protection. As a fungible item, it could easily be copied and shared across the web – all without any reference to the original owner. Traditional art, on the other hand, is a little easier to verify. Take the example of Van Gogh’s ‘Starry Night.’ It’s non-fungible, meaning even if you did photocopy it, it would be pretty clear that it wasn’t the original.

NFTs give digital artists more security and make ownership super-transparent. Even as a fungible item, an NFT can’t be copied or reused – and that’s all thanks to its makeup. Since all NFTs are stored on individual blockchain ledgers, they’re essentially incorruptible and can’t be copied or stolen by rogue internet users.

The nature of blockchain itself means that collectors and buyers can see how much a piece is worth – a level of transparency that’s not often seen in the physical art market.

The future of NFTs

With more and more brands leveraging NFTs to boost customer engagement and sales, digitised tokens have slowly started to make their way into the marketing realm. Some brands, like CryptoKitties, have even used NFTs in their games, making them part of the player’s journey as they progress through different levels. This hints at the possibility of NFTs playing a major role in the metaverse in the future. Brands such as MoveStreets have even started investing in ‘virtual real estate’ using digital land tokens.

There’s no knowing for certain the extent to which NFTs will play a role digital marketing or our day-to-day lives, but it’s clear they’re already popular in certain real-world – or should that be virtual – applications today.

What is an NFT and why does it matter? Read More »

Are we ready to enter the metaverse?

Leave a Comment / Data, Technology / By Alex Baggott

At Facebook’s Connect 2021 conference, Mark Zuckerberg made some ostensibly major proclamations.

First, a corporate restructuring: Facebook will join Instagram and WhatsApp under a new parent company called ‘Meta Platforms’, just as Google did when it became Alphabet back in 2015. Second, Zuckerberg spent most of his arguably cringey keynote outlining his vision of the next generation of the web, the ‘metaverse’.

What is the metaverse?

The term metaverse is a portmanteau of ‘meta’ (beyond) and ‘universe’. Today, the concept represents an embodied internet comprising a network of shared computer-generated environments, where avatars interact in a 3D virtual space. But the term was originally coined in the popular 1992 cyberpunk novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson, and has since expanded to include XR.

Zuckerberg sees the metaverse as the natural successor to the mobile web, where you’re immersed in the digital experience, instead of merely viewing it on a video screen. Since 2D screens can’t fully convey body language and facial expressions, the idea is to accurately recreate the feeling of being physically present, to make virtual interactions with others seem more natural.

While romping through cyberspace à la Ready Player One may sound intriguing, how exactly will it become part of our lives? Here are just five use cases which could become daily activities in the metaverse.

Gaming

Video games have a tendency to drive advances in computing tech, so it’s no surprise that gaming is how most of us will first enter the metaverse. There are now hundreds of VR games using headsets (e.g. Valve Index, HTC Vive Pro 2 and PlayStation VR), as well as countless AR games using smartphone camera systems. While gaming may drive most of the fundamental technology advances, it can’t provide anything near a working metaverse. VR experiences almost always take place in closed environments, rather than connected spaces, and AR games are bound to small 2D screens, instead of immersing the player’s senses. For his part, Zuckerberg predicts that gaming in the metaverse will require continual evolution, with live service games offering regular updates and downloadable content.

Work

With some element of remote working here to stay, the focus now is on hybrid working. However, this makes the workplace more complex. In-person meetings – which have evolved to include some or all of the team joining via videoconferencing – could evolve further. For instance, holographic avatars could provide a virtual presence in the workplace without the commute, while enabling you to “share” physical space and interact with others.

Employees can use their own individual space for minimising distractions, and can also join shared spaces with other team members for activities such as presentations. Facebook’s own Oculus Quest 2 launched Horizon Workrooms in August 2021, and is set to introduce room customisations and new developer frameworks, which will enable this virtual space to integrate with existing internet services and 2D websites.

Ecommerce

Many retail brands have already seen success using AR tools. As far back as 2017, IKEA launched their Place app, allowing customers to render furniture inside their home and assess how it looks on their smartphone. Trying on clothes virtually is also on the horizon, with future shopping potentially involving putting on smartglasses rather than driving to a store. Zuckerberg predicts that digital purchases (items which only exist in virtual space) will become more valuable as the metaverse takes off, with transferability and authentication technologies, such as NFTs, becoming more important.

Education

While learning certainly involves the study of information, many fields naturally require extensive practical (in-person) training. However, the metaverse has the potential to assimilate some of this physical activity. For example, trainee mechanics could use a combined AR schematic and service manual to repair a vehicle. Zuckerberg points to Osso VR which simulates surgery, and the Alchemy Immersive course which allows marine biologist students to virtually swim through the Great Barrier Reef (whilst listening to the dulcet tones of David Attenborough). Meta is also assigning $150 million to train educational content developers and establish a professional curriculum with a certification process for those building it using Spark AR (Facebook’s AR toolkit).

Fitness

With most of us already sold on the idea of exercising at home, a round of convincing virtual boxing, sword fighting, or dancing could be a welcome enhancement. Facebook is releasing a fitness accessory pack for Quest 2, including controller grips and a wipe-clean facial interface.

Facebook’s sleight of (haptic) hand?

Facebook currently faces criticism amid leaked documents (dubbed the “Facebook Papers”) and exposure by former product manager, Francs Haugen, who claimed the company prioritises its profits over the wellbeing of its users. And these are just two events in a string of governmental and privacy investigations. Sceptics might say the timing of Zuckerberg’s Meta announcements is a way of distracting the public from PR issues (and perhaps redirecting those pesky federal fines), rather than heralding an imminent technological shift.

Of course, XR environments have failed before – think Second Life and Google Glass. But were they simply too early? Zuckerberg himself admits the metaverse is a way off. But as building-block technologies improve, and are adopted by younger generations, perhaps it’s only a matter of time before the metaverse is upon us.

In part two, we’ll look at the technologies which need to be built before the metaverse can materialise.

Are we ready to enter the metaverse? Read More »

Where’s the data party right now?

Leave a Comment / Adtech, Data, Technology / By Alex Baggott

The difference between zero-, first-, second-, and third-party data

Data is incredibly valuable to marketers, agencies, and publishers, since it is used to power advertising models and generate revenue. And the amount of data we produce is accelerating. The global volume of data reached 64.2 zettabytes in 2020, and this is predicted to double by 2025.

However, privacy regulations, such as GDPR and CCPA, have made data an increasingly difficult resource to tap. In response, the online advertising industry has developed different classifications of data to help with the handling process. So, what do the terms zero-, first-, second-, and third-party data mean?

Four-party state

The ad tech industry uses four different classifications of data, depending on the degree of separation from the source of information.

Zero-party data

This relatively new term describes data which is willingly shared directly with the recipient, e.g., a customer who bought a sneaker submitting a survey to the brand. Arguably, this is a type of first-party data, the distinction being that it’s intentionally handed over rather than automatically collected.

Zero-party data also refers to edge computing ad solutions, where data is processed on-device rather than transmitted elsewhere online. This protects user privacy by minimising the data collected, while still allowing behavioural targeting and personalised ads, thereby circumventing legal restrictions on the amount of data allowed to be sent to the bidstream.

First-party data

Data which is gathered directly, for instance from customers, visitors, or social media followers. This includes information from email interactions and behaviours on a website or app. First-party data differs from second- or third-party data in that there is no intermediary between the supplier and the recipient of the information.

First-party data includes first-party cookies and advertising IDs which identify individual visitors, such as GAID, IDFA, and UID. Identity solutions use these IDs to track user behaviour while they interact with a website or app, in order to serve behavioural and contextual ads. However, targeted ads relying on first-party data alone can be sub-optimal, since their reach is limited to information from a single platform or site.

Second-party data

This refers to data collected from a partner who has in turn gathered it directly from visitors or customers. Although the data is supplied by another agent, the distinction made from its close third-party relative is that second-party data is sourced from a trusted partner, with whom there is a direct agreement on how the information is to be exchanged and used. The transaction takes place in a closed environment, such as a data cooperative, or a data “clean room” which provides the utmost security and privacy. Second-party data is usually used to periodically enrich first-party data to gain insights.

As with zero-party, there is some contention over the term ‘second-party data’, and the disagreement makes its definition a little woolly. In fact, when the Winterberry Group asked industry experts for the definition, responses ranged from “someone else’s first-party data”, to “there is no such thing”. After pinning down some specifics, the researchers proposed that any commercialisation or licensing of second-party data transforms its state into third-party. But this is by no means a hard-and-fast rule.

Third-party data

This pertains to any data received indirectly, via an intermediary agent who is not the original source. In ad tech, this data is usually gathered, aggregated, and packaged to be sold to companies to build advertising strategies.

Third-party data has historically been the most sought after in personalised advertising, allowing one-to-one retargeting of an online user. This can be achieved via cross-tracking cookies, where a user’s profile follows them online and is appended with data from each site they visit. Knowing so much about a user enables hyper-targeted ads to be served to them. However, third-party data now sees the most legal scrutiny due to the privacy implications of tracking users so closely across different sites, hence the phasing-out of third-party cookies.

So… where’s the party?

If all this has left you confused about the classification of data, you’re not alone. The rise of zero-party data, and the explosion of second-party data, are a result of initiatives by the industry to avoid falling foul of privacy regulations while retaining access to sources of data which make advertising models effective. In the age of big data, just make sure you know the legal requirements when handling it, so you can avoid having your party busted.

Image courtesy of Joshua Sortino

Where’s the data party right now? Read More »

The third-party cookie is crumbling: what’s next for publishers?

Leave a Comment / Adtech, Technology / By Hazel Broadley

The third-party cookie has enabled marketers to serve targeted online ads for the last two decades, allowing websites to remain free, while ensuring content publishers are paid for their work.

But now, in response to privacy concerns and new regulations, web browsers are quickly deprecating these snippets of code. Apple blocked third-party cookies by default in Safari, while in January, Google announced a complete replacement in Chrome by 2022.

Despite this, the majority of digital advertising still relies on them. In response, we recently spoke to leading industry experts about the future of the ad tech ecosystem. We asked: how smaller publishers in particular can adapt.

Here’s what we found:

Dare to diversify

There isn’t yet a predominant replacement for third-party cookies, so we don’t know where (or when) the industry will settle. In the meantime, there’ll be a fracturing of ad tech. The key strategy for publishers during this transition phase will be to sell ad inventory in multiple different ways.

The most promising solutions avoid falling foul of both data laws and privacy-conscious tech developments:

Subscriptions. While this may be supplemental to ad revenue for smaller publishers, it’s crucial to renew focus on building a first-party subscription base. The advice from industry leaders is to offer a value exchange and make users feel like an exclusive member of a club.

Contextual intelligence. Contextual targeting serves ads based on the content of the webpage (e.g., training shoes on a fitness forum), whereas behavioural targeting uses individuals’ browsing activity. Although behavioural targeting has come to dominate the web, there’s little evidence that it improves revenues. Meanwhile, AI and machine learning have drastically improved contextual methodology, earning it the moniker ‘contextual intelligence’. Many industry leaders think it’s worth betting on this supercharged comeback.

Data clean rooms. These are a legally compliant and accurate way for publishers to continue using behavioural targeting. They can compare their first-party visitor data with those in ‘walled gardens’, e.g., Google and Facebook, to optimise ad matching. However, clean rooms can be expensive and therefore not necessarily viable for publishers with smaller datasets.

Edge Computing. Marking the age of “zero party” data, this data-conservative approach is becoming a popular way for publishers to sell remaining inventory.

Data is collected and analysed directly on the user’s device, rather than on a server, which allows publishers to serve behavioural ads while completely respecting the user’s privacy.

Test and test again

With so many options available, validating their effectiveness will be just as important. Chris Hogg, EMEA Managing Director at data management platform, Lotame, stresses that now is the time to start testing.

“Test solutions and strategies while third-party cookies are still around to compare against. Ask for proofs of concept around Safari and Firefox inventory. The fact we don’t have cookies in some of the other browsers presents a good opportunity for publishers to test out solutions and tactics today rather than later.”

Consequently, publishers will need to be far more involved when it comes to their audience data. Mattia Fosci, Founder and CEO of edge computing solution, ID Ward, urges smaller content providers to approach data analysis with both partnerships and off-the-shelf technology.

“While it may not be viable to hire a full-time data analyst, don’t underestimate the importance of analysis on your bottom line. Publishers should have more control of their audience data, but they do not need to build their own in-house solutions… Instead, publishers should work with partners that protect and enhance their relationship with their own audiences.”

Turn obstacles into opportunity

While ad tech’s brave new world is an uncertain place, one thing’s for sure – it puts publishers in a much stronger position than before. As David Reischer, Head of Product at edge computing solution, Permutive, explains, “The death of the cookie is a huge opportunity for publishers to course correct on what has happened, with their data being aggregated at scale, repacked and sold as audiences or models.”

Now, publishers can use their first-party data to bring brands even closer to audiences. By being prepared, respecting privacy, and fostering user loyalty, the entire industry stands to benefit from the change.

Head over to What’s New in Publishing to download the full report.

Image courtesy of Pezibear

The third-party cookie is crumbling: what’s next for publishers? Read More »

Is deepfake technology a threat to society?

Leave a Comment / Data, Technology / By Hazel Broadley

You’d be excused for being sucked into the recent hype as one of the most famous actors in the world joined TikTok. The 53-year-old is seen practising his golf swings, falling over in a store, telling anecdotes and performing a magic trick with a coin. Already, the account has 11 million combined views and a following 383,000.

Only… it isn’t Tom Cruise. These videos are highly sleek deepfakes – the latest technology causing a storm across the world.

What are deepfakes and how do they work?

Deepfakes are highly realistic videos or audio recordings that look and sound like the real thing. They are constructed using a new application of machine learning called Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) in which two deep neural nets are trained in tandem based on the way our human brain works. Both are trained with same data, but each with different a different task.

Input real video and audio data of a specific person and the software recognises patterns in speech and movement. Introduce a new element to the software such as someone else’s face and voice, and a deepfake is born. As with most AI applications, the amount of data available determines the sophistication of the end product. This explains why Tom Cruise – one of the most photographed celebrities – has become a number one deepfake target.

Potential dangers

So far, deepfakes have mostly been created or used by amateurs on social media platforms. However, their future potential to be used in a malicious manner is of real concern. Experts suggest deepfakes are an imminent threat to the erosion of democracy. In an era of fake news and clickbait, widely-circulating deepfakes, such as those of highly authoritative figures making believable yet false claims, is detrimental to reputation and public trust. Deepfakes have the power to skew our perception of reality to such an extent that genuine reality is something we plausibly deny.

Deepfake software applications such as DeepfakesWeb and Faceswap are increasingly accessible to the public with no experience needed to get started. In the wrong hands, deepfakes can easily be used to enter fake events as evidence in court tribunals, as well as posing personal security risks to data currently protected by face and voice recognition. As deepfakes mimic and transcend security barriers, they leave the door open for increased malware and cyber attacks.

There is a strong likelihood that criminals will use deepfakes in the future, for instance in phishing attacks, or in extreme cases, to blackmail individuals for ransom. With the technology being used for such basic ruses as imitating the voice of a family member or friend asking for a money transfer, deepfake technology is undoubtedly establishing smoother routes of operation for cybercriminals – at an alarming rate.

Net positive for humanity?

Using state-of-the-art technology, deepfakes hold considerable potential for everyone, regardless of who we are or how we communicate. In a 2019 campaign for Malaria No More UK, deepfake technology simulated David Beckham delivering an anti-malaria message in nine different languages. Here, the positive global impact of deepfake technology was evident whilst enabling influencer marketing to reach the next level.

Moving away from media, deepfakes are also on track to deliver revolutionary benefits within the healthcare sector by aiding the development of new disease treatment. Researchers have already trained algorithms to create ‘fake’ MRI brain scans that are just as accurate in detecting brain tumours as algorithms trained using real medical images, but without using real patient data.

The potential benefits of deepfakes to society mark exciting tech prospects, equipping us with the ability to impact at scale and speed. However, as the tech becomes more widely available, so too does the opportunity for misuse. We need to be questioning its morality and safety within our society now, before it’s too late.

Is deepfake technology a threat to society? Read More »

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