This blog post was written by Carlton Bennett, Jr., founder of TeddyMozart, and Graduate of the New York Founder Institute.
The world of content and commerce is constantly changing, and their platforms along with them. However, one of the few elements that remains the same is the human voice, and its ability to compel, entertain, and engage with audiences.
Voice may seem like an usual platform in the digital age, but look at all of the things we listen to: ads, radio, podcasts, audiobooks, Siri, each other on the phone, etc. In fact, it was the power of voice that led me to launch my company, TeddyMozart, which connects families across generations and geographies by enabling people to record their personal voices, songs, and stories through a mobile app, and can then be shared and played back to a child or loved one through an adorable bluetooth teddy bear. TeddyMozart was brought to life based on the team’s experiences of wanting to stay connected with families abroad, hear bedtime stories from our traveling parents when we were growing up, and the burning desire to have preserved our late grandparents' voices when we had the chance.
While working on TeddyMozart, I’ve done considerable research into the power of the human voice, which has led me to believe that voice has the potential to emerge as one of the most important content and commerce platforms in the world.
But before I dive into voice and its potential as a platform, I think I should first address why the human voice is so important on a very basic level.
Voice is How We Connect We Each Other Directly
I think that because so many of us receive so much information from so many sources, that we often fail to realize just how powerful the human voice is. We all have different reactions to not only what is said to us, but to the ways we are spoken to. Timbre, pitch, speed, inflection, accent, and many other components of human speech play vital roles in the way we take in and process information.
Of course, our sensitivity to the human voice is ingrained in us from an early age. The research journal article, “Mothers Consistently Alter Their Unique Vocal Fingerprints When Communicating with Infants”, further buttresses this claim, reporting that the ability to communicate with one another is developed from an early age, as infants learn to discern the subtle statistical differences about people and voices in order to direct their attention toward the most relevant signals. This article also states that mothers across many cultures consistently change the timbre and tone their their voices when speaking to infants, regardless of the languages spoken.
As you can see, people are quite simply born and raised to respond to the subtle complexities of the human voice, and to recognize how subtle changes affect our comprehension. According to the Zero to Three organization, the first language an infant learns is through the mother’s voice, which has great benefits for both mother and child. Listening to the songs or the vibration of voice from a child's home culture creates continuity between the home and the caregiving setting. This is why, at TeddyMozart, we make it very easy for remote family members to be present from afar by helping them share their voices reading a story for their little loved ones.
So we’ve established that voice is great in connecting with one another, but what about in the hectic schedules of our daily lives?
Voice is Great When Our Hands and Eyes are Busy Elsewhere
Humans learn by doing. Humans learn by watching and reading. But we also learn by listening. Nearly every working person has to go about their daily lives by implementing the use of their hands and eyes to get through the day, from sitting in traffic to typing on a computer, to making breakfast to operating machines. While the lives of many people are filled with these visual- and tactile-oriented of activities, how can voice supplement our routines?
Because we spend so much of our time doing repetitive tasks, the kind that allow for us to utilize our eyes and hands with little to no thought, there are, in fact, plenty of opportunities for us to listen, specifically to voice, in some capacity. MindMeld, a provider of intelligent conversational voice interfaces, released their report, "Intelligent Voice Assistants – Q1, 2016 User Adoption Survey", that surveyed users of smartphone intelligent voice assistants, such as Siri and OK Google, on the adoption, usage, and satisfiers and dissatisfiers of voice interfaces. Below are some of the key findings related to usage:
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61% – Useful when hands / vision occupied
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30% – Faster results
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24% – Difficulty typing on certain devices
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22% – They’re fun / cool
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12% – To avoid confusing menus
*Note: Users were asked to check all that apply.
As you can tell, voice assistance was most useful to those whose hands and vision are occupied, revealing the potential that voice has to inform, entertain, and engage mass audiences.
Ok. So the power of voice is valuable in interpersonal relationships as well as in our daily lives. But is the demand for voice actually increasing, or is this just a passing trend?
The Demand for Voice is Growing
As made clear already, voice has greater value in our society and culture than most people acknowledge. And because of this value, there is, of course, a clear demand for even more vocal experiences and assistance. But don’t take my word for it; check out the numbers below, as reported in the recent Wired article, “The Veni, Vidi, Vici of Voice”:
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In the United States alone, more people listen to podcasts every month (around 70 million and counting) than use Twitter regularly.
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Total advertising revenue from podcasts ($220 million in 2017) is doubling every year.
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Ad networks claim episode completion rates are around 90%, which means that most ads are being heard by listeners.
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The market is paying $30 CPMs for some of these podcast slots, which is around five times Facebook’s average CPMs.
And these impressive numbers are only in regards to podcasts, which is only one industry in which voice is popular. Check out some of the numbers regarding smart speakers below, provided by tech consultancy Parks Associates and covered in GeoMarketing’s article, “Consumers’ Adoption Of Voice Assistants Doubled In Q1 – Here’s Why”:
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12 percent of consumers surveyed said that they used smart speakers with voice assistants during Q1 of 2017 - more than twice what that adoption rate was the previous year.
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The adoption rate of smart speakers with voice assistants grew from 5 percent of U.S. broadband households in Q4 2015 to 12 percent in Q4 2016.
In just these two markets, the demand for voice has risen at an enormous rate in just the past couple of years, with even more growth expected in the next several years and beyond.
Final Thoughts
As you can tell by now, voice as a content and commerce platform is obviously more than just a passing trend, but rather a legitimate movement. And do you know what’s great about this? It’s a sustainable model. Sure, the technology we use to record and distribute voice will certainly change, but the human voice itself, in all of its complex yet relatable glory, will remain the same. And in the digital age, when everything is constantly shifting to accommodate a changing population, anything that serves as an emotional anchor, whether it’s your favorite song on the radio, a heated political debate on a podcast, or the sound of your loved one wishing you a happy birthday, is welcome.
