How the “Vicarious Haptic Effect” Can Boost Your ROI

Don't take another product photo without listening to this episode... Snapchat kills its coolest influencer marketing tool... How Link-In-Bios can secretly track consumers... And more!

Pixy, We Have a Problem 

Pixy, Snapchat’s flying selfie drone, has gained its angel wings. 

Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Snap Inc. is discontinuing its latest hardware product less than four months after launching it. 

Sources say Snap Inc.'s CEO recently told staff during a question-and-answer session that further development of Pixy was being halted as part of a "reprioritization of company resources".

Back in April, Snapchat introduced Pixy as a pocket-sized free-flying drone that hovers over people while taking photos and videos that are then automatically uploaded to Snapchat. 

It had the potential to be a great product for brands to get drone footage and product photos without having to spend big bucks on production. But, it never really took off. 

According to The WSJ, the company will continue to sell the current version of the drone. However, as of right now, the drone appears to be "out of stock" on the Pixy web site. 

Snap Inc. did not respond to a request to comment on the report.

📌 You’ve Got to Hand it To Them

There are many advantages e-commerce brings to consumers — they can shop from home, it’s easier to compare products from different stores. But there’s always been one big disadvantage: They can’t touch anything. Sometimes, holding a product in your hand, is as much a part of the buying process as holding your credit card there.

But if we can’t give them a good feeling by letting them touch the product, can we get at least half-way there?

👩🏼‍🔬 Bring In the Science!

Andrea Luangrath is an Associate Professor of Marketing at the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa. She and her colleagues have published a fascinating research study in the Journal of Marketing Research called “The Vicarious Haptic Effect in Digital Marketing and Virtual Reality.”

I spoke with her recently and asked if we marketers can extract the same warm emotional feeling that someone has holding a product by just showing them a photo of someone holding it?

Dr. Luangrath: Yes, you absolutely can. What we see is that people evaluate products more favourably when they see a hand reaching out and touching it.  They report greater willingness to pay. 

This is because it fosters a sense of what we call 'psychological ownership.' It makes people feel as if the product being touched is their own; the product feels like it's "mine." And this is really what drives product valuation.

Tod Maffin: What marketing benefit is moved by seeing a hand —  are consumers more willing to buy a product? Do they get a warm feeling about the brand? Do they consider the product to be more valuable?

Dr. Luangrath: One is that they just evaluate the product more favourably, they liked the product more too, and they actually report being willing to pay more for the product — 32% more for products after having seen them touched, as compared to not touched. 

We also tested this with social media content. We looked at whether or not consumers will actually engage more frequently with products that are shown being touched as compared to not touched. And we see that, indeed, consumer engagement goes up for those brands for those posts that actually have and show touch.

🤿 Dive Deeper

Our full conversation goes deep into detail on this topic, covering things like:

  • Must the image show touch, or can it just show a hand?

  • How a photo performs, vs a video, vs an animated GIF

  • What instances you’d want to AVOID showing a hand in your product photos

  • How did her results differ when it was a female hand, but a male consumer viewing it

  • And race — did a Black hand viewed by a caucasian person change their perception of the product?

  • And I try to extract from her the secret formula — the perfect composition… left hand? right? How much of the hand should be in the photo?

Our full conversation with the answers to all those questions and a lot more is coming tomorrow exclusively to the Premium Podcast feed, which you can subscribe to right now by going to TodayInDigital.com/premiumfeed.

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Reels Audio: “Oops!”

An update on yesterday's story about Instagram blocking users from repurposing Reels content by stripping away audio. 

If you need a refresh — Some users reported that video clips saved from the Reels edit screen were stripped of sound, forcing them to publish a Reel in order to save them properly with audio. 

Meta says it wasn't intentionally trying to stop creators from creating content in its app and then exporting their videos to other platforms such as TikTok, The Verge reports. 

Quoting Meta:

Due to a bug, the Reels download feature is not working as intended for iOS users and in some cases, audio is missing in downloads — we’re working to fix the issue as soon as possible…

“Data in Bio”

Does "link in bio" open a privacy loophole for social giants to access consumer data?

👉 New research points to yes. 

A recent study published last week found that Instagram, Facebook and TikTok have the ability to track interactions when users open in-app browsers, such as:

  • Searches

  • Clicks

  • Screenshots

  • Form inputs, like passwords, addresses and credit card numbers

According to the research, Meta has access to "monitor everything happening on external websites, without the consent from the user, nor the website provider."

🤯 How? 

The study explains that some social media apps inject Javascript code into third-party websites that load within their in-app browsers. When it loads, these companies can collect data about what the user does on that webpage. 

It also injects what’s called a “PCM script,” which, according to Meta, helps aggregate events, like online purchases, before those events are used for targeted advertising and measurement and "helps Meta respect the user’s ATT opt out choice".

A follow-up study published yesterday says that TikTok's in-app browser is capable of tracking "all keyboard inputs," including "every tap on any button, link, image, or other component rendered." 

Forbes reported that TikTok confirmed that “those features exist in the code,” but said that it is not using them.

Walmart’s Building Payment Services

Walmart is looking to expand its payment offerings now that PayPal's former CFO is on board.

The retail giant's new chief financial officer, John Rainey, recently joined the company, after nearly seven years at PayPal, and provided some insight into future payment opportunities during this week's earnings call. 

🌐 A big one is Walmart investing in payment systems in other countries. 

According to company execs, one of them in India, called PhonePe which is majority owned by e-commerce company Flipkart, is making progress, Retail Dive reports. 

Walmart International's CEO noted that PhonePe is not only a payments offering, but also a merchant services play, allowing for a two-sided network presence. Furthermore, its total payment volume rose to $830 billion during the quarter.

Quoting Rainey:

To put it in perspective, what PhonePe is doing, if you look at the largest digital payments companies outside of China and the world, PhonePe after a very brief history is already roughly two-thirds of the size of that and what is going to be the largest market in the world in a very short period of time.

Meta: You Hate Conversion Modelling? HERE'S SOME MORE!

And finally, just in case you thought we'd send you off into the weekend on a good note, here's something popping up today in some Meta ad managers. 

A dialog box reading:

As part of our ongoing efforts to support advertisers through industry and regulatory changes, we are making changes to how conversions are reported, such as expanding our use of conversion modeling. 

The message ends with this bizarre conclusion: 

You may see more complete reporting.

Okay, bros. Can you just not?

My thanks to Rok Hladnik for tweeting this out today.

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