B&TB&TB&T
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Search
Trending topics:
  • Cairns Crocodiles
  • Nine
  • Seven
  • Federal Election
  • Pinterest
  • AFL
  • AI
  • News Corp
  • Married At First Sight
  • NRL
  • Cairns Hatchlings
  • Channel 10
  • oOh!Media
  • WPP
  • Anthony Albanese
  • Thinkerbell
  • Special
  • TV Ratings
  • Radio Ratings
  • Sports Marketing

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
Reading: CNET’s Brian Cooley On The Future Of Consumer Technology
Share
B&TB&T
Subscribe
Search
  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Technology
  • Regulars
    • Agency Scorecards
    • Best of the Best
    • Campaigns of the Month
    • CMO Power List
    • CMOs to Watch
    • Culture Bites
    • Fast 10
    • New Business Winners
    • Spotlight on Sponsors
  • Jobs
  • Awards
    • 30 Under 30
    • B&T Awards
    • Cairns Crocodiles
    • Women In Media
    • Women Leading Tech
Follow US
  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.
B&T > Marketing > CNET’s Brian Cooley On The Future Of Consumer Technology
MarketingTechnology

CNET’s Brian Cooley On The Future Of Consumer Technology

Staff Writers
Published on: 1st June 2018 at 4:00 PM
Edited by Staff Writers
Share
4 Min Read
SHARE

Speaking at a Vivid Ideas breakfast event yesterday morning, Brian Cooley, US Editor at Large for CNET.com, made some predictions on the future of consumer technology and shared tips on what trends we should keep an eye on.

Cooley (pictured below) kicked off by defining the four characteristics of great technology in his opinion.

Brian Cooley

Great technology is:

  1. Transparent. There’s no intrinsic value in a physical phone; it’s what it enables you to do. And we’re always trying to make them slimmer and more transparent.
  2. Intuitive. It’s about more than understanding how to use the technology, but why to use it.
  3. Intimate. It knows the user better than they do. We’re starting to have a relationship with the consumer so that we can tell them things that they don’t know themselves. You know who your friends are on Facebook, but you don’t know what percentage your family spends in different rooms of your house. Technology can tell you this.
  4. Constant. Consumers want to have the experience where they want it – normally the screen.

Looking at what’s around the corner, Cooley predicts the future of interaction is:

  1. Anticipation. We’ve shared, liked and thumbs upped everything to death. We need to find something a little more elegant. Try to anticipate needs so that instead of having to go find something, it arrives on its own.
  2. Interface. We need something more ambient than swipe and search. The future will be based on biometrics, face, voice recognition and computer vision.
  3. Electric cars. Not autonomous cars. There will be 10 million autonomous cars by 2020, but this is a relatively small number and will be mostly fleets.

Three trends to watch keenly are:

  1. Voice. This will be in everything. ComScore predicts that worldwide, 50 per cent of search will be via voice by 2020. That’s a faster transition than desktop to mobile.
  2. Health and medical. This is the biggest growth area of tech, but also has big hurdles to adoption. There is a shifting blending of devices in this area. Fitness bands have been cannibalised by the connected watch but health and medical technology will raise the bar.
  3. Mixed reality (VR/AR). The hardware in this area is coming along nicely.

Offering some advice to marketers, Cooley argued the three keys to voice marketing are:

  1. Watch for the big winner or two. Currently there’s five players in voice: Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Samsung. Big platforms win by network effect, which gives them greater smarts for all. Only big companies will play in this game. We don’t yet know who will win, but it won’t be a small player.
  2. Know how each platform gate-keeps your brand. The future will be B2B marketing, not just consumer.
  3. Check your conceptions of brand loyalty. Brand loyalty is often a synonym for laziness that AI will upset. Algorithms will reward you for being fresh and innovative and recommending new products. You may need to subdivide or blow up your brand to get the algorithms at the big players prioritise you. When a consumer says, “I need toothpaste”, they want their need to be met but they also wanted to be delighted.

 

Join more than 30,000 advertising industry experts
Get all the latest advertising and media news direct to your inbox from B&T.

No related posts.

TAGGED: AR, CNET, Technology, voice marketing, VR
Share
Rosie Oakshott
By Rosie Oakshott
Follow:
Started out at Retail Week in London before tackling large-scale expo’s around Australia. Rosie’s background gives her the nous to bring together B&T’s editorial, events and commercial vision.

Latest News

Emboldened, Emotional & Inspired – Cairns Crocodiles Masterclass, Presented By News Australia, Tug The Heartstrings
16/05/2025
TV Ratings (15/05/2025): Women’s State Of Origin Game 2 Pulls Nearly Twice The Viewers Of AFL Clash
16/05/2025
Nine Hails “A Great Day For Investigative Journalism” As Ben Roberts-Smith Loses Defamation Appeal
16/05/2025
Keep Left Updates Earned Media Impact Score Platform
16/05/2025
//

B&T is Australia’s leading news publication magazine for the advertising, marketing, media and PR industries.

 

B&T is owned by parent company The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd.

About B&T

  • About
  • Contact
  • Editorial Guidelines
  • Privacy
  • Terms
  • Advertise

Top Categories

  • Advertising
  • Campaigns
  • Marketing
  • Media
  • Opinion
  • Technology
  • TV Ratings

Sign Up for Our Newsletter



B&TB&T
Follow US
© 2025 B&T. The Misfits Media Company Pty Ltd. All Rights Reserved.
Welcome Back!

Sign in to your account

Register Lost your password?