There's an AI disruption technology sliding under the radar [INFOGRAPHIC]. Its called the Voice activated Device. Unfortunately for most brands, this is a technology that most brand marketers haven't seen coming and even worse, are totally unprepared for the disruption this technology will likely bring. Almost a year ago Jam&Co published a blog post called – “The undetected grocery disruption technology in 2018″. In this article, we looked at how the grocery sector was being set up for set for massive disruption as a result of AI technology. The point of the article was to raise awareness that there is a definite risk of AI killing off brands and branding.

Voice Activated Device

Did you know that almost half (47 % according to Salmat ) of Australian shoppers are already aware of at least one in-home voice assistant device? Be it Siri, Alexa or Google Home. The research also pointed out that 46% of Australian shoppers are willing or excited to use an in-home voice assisted devices to interact with and shop from retailers. Today using Voice Activated Device (VAD) search is a significant part of the internet world. This is an AI medium that is in major growth mode and is set to continue. According to voice search statistics, (see INFOGRAPHIC attached), using our voice through Voice Activated Device's to perform tasks will soon become as common as using a keyboard and mouse. Voice Activated Device growing popularity is because it makes multitasking easy. People want to search while they are driving, cooking, working, walking, and even while they are in bed!

Brands are not Voice Assisted Device ready

Why haven’t brands seen the impact of in-home voice assisted devices on the grocery shopper? Many brand marketers may already have and be using their very own VAD, yet they have yet to translate it's an impact to their work and brand.

The imagined future is here and now!

Voice activated Assistants are here to understand your inquiries and provide you with relevant answers within seconds. These AI devices are getting better and smarter, completely changing the way consumers interact and shop. For those brands that haven't started the process of optimising for voice search, will end up losing a fair share of their shopping cart.

Did you know these voice search statistics:

• 325 million people are searching through the internet using voice search
• 20% of Google searches are done through voice search with 95% accuracy of answers
• 4 million Amazon Echo devices are sold during one holiday season
• By 2020 50% of searches will be voice searches.

Voice Search 101

Searching the internet by using a hands-free Voice Activated Device is one of the biggest advancements in recent years. In essence, it's a two-way communication between you and your VA assistant aimed to help users complete a variety of different tasks in real time. The device processes and transcribes human speech into text. From there the text is analysed to determine commands and questions. The virtual assistant then reads the result of the request into the external data sources to find relevant information. It then translates the information into a digestible format providing the user with the answer to their request.

"Device, please add butter to my shopping list!"

Imagine telling your device to add butter to your shopping list. Now when you tell your device to send your shopping list to Coles or Woolies and order your groceries...

• Which brand of butter will they send you?
• Will they send you the brand based on your previous shopping history or will they send you the brand with the highest margin?

The problem for butter bands are if the consumer already has an online supermarket shopping account set up, with a "butter brand" already on their shopping list, how will your brand make it onto that list?

What voice AI devices are mainly used for in 2018

• General info search on the internet
• Getting directions
• Calling or texting
• Checking the weather
• Scheduling an alarm
• Checking sports scores
• Finding jokes
• Playing music
• Opening an app
• Checking email.

Here's an Infographic

You can check out this INFOGRAPHIC, put out by Harsh Reddy and Hristina Nikolovaska from Seo Tribunal which highlights current trends and voice search prediction research and details of how voice search works and how brands and businesses can benefit most from it at the moment and what you need to do to prepare your brand for voice search.