In most popular Sci-fi movies and TV shows, the computers of the future have a distinct characteristic: they have voices. In the future, it’s understood that computers will have the ability to speak back to users, if only to activate warp drive. But what about all the other things we could do with voice first technology? What about all the purchases we make online? Pay per click management companies want to know: where does all the advertising go?
In the voice first world, advertising and payment systems do not look at all the way they do today. Can you imagine having a conversation with your computer and an advertisement cutting in?
Entertaining Science Fiction
Brian Roemmele is an author, philosopher, and app developer well aware of how voice first technology will reshape the advertising and payment landscape.
In a recent article, Roemmele suggests the ramifications of voice first on these specific industries will be felt as soon as 2026; however, he also argues that payment systems and advertising agencies are nowhere near ready to handle the shift.
“The companies that prevail will have identified the Ontological Recipe technology to connect merchants to customers,” said Roemmele.
As a refresher, ontology is the philosophical study of the nature of being, becoming, existence, or reality.
In the new paradigm, advertisers and payment systems become one in the same, in something coined Voice Commerce. According to Roemmele, Voice Commerce will replace most online, in-app, and retail purchases, which leads us back to pay per click advertising: in Roemmele’s world, without mediated searches on Google, there is no PPC. Without headlines to scan on an ordinary SERP, there is no display advertising. Where does that leave us?
The Future of Pay Per Click Management
Voice first technology has been around since the mid 1980s but only recently has it become semi-conscious.
Earlier this year, Google released Google Home, and Amazon launched Echo Dot, which is on schedule to be the best selling item on Amazon of all time. The consequence of these two items will result in hundreds of millions of voice first adopters in 2017.
The good news is, that like mobile technology cutting into desktop activity, the division of the pie won’t be focused on reallocating slices for new or unforeseen technologies; instead, the pie actually gets bigger. In other words, PPC won’t be sharing with voice first technology; it’s a totally different dessert.
Pay per click management companies can rest easy knowing that PPC will be relevant so long as people use desktop computers and mobile devices for search; but if computers suddenly loose their interface and start talking back to us, PPC may have to rethink its existence.
