Live From CES 2022: Clear and Roaming in Las Vegas

The nice thing about classic casino sportsbooks is that unless something big is going on, it’s pretty easy to find a socially-distanced desk with its own light and power outlet. This evening I’m sitting at one such desk in the Westgate composing my traditional mid-show scoop on CES. The experience is both familiar and surreal.

What’s it like here? There are fewer booths and fewer attendees. COVID-19 is at the same time everywhere and nowhere. We’ve all been vaccinated and have the Clear app to prove it. But those of us who are here, masked as we are, would rather not talk about omicron. We’re here to get jobs done. I’m here to deliver thought leadership on the future of media, advertising and consumer behavior based on what I’m seeing on the show floor. So, here we go - my hot take on the themes of this year’s CES 2022 as of Day 1.

Own The Glass - Perhaps the biggest sea change in media consumption continues to be cord-cutting. Practically all of the TVs at CES are “smart TVs”, leaving us only with the question of what operating systems are embraced by different manufacturers. Controlling the operating system a consumer uses to discover and enjoy content is an enormously impactful place to be, especially from an advertising perspective. This year Samsung is even bringing its Samsung TV Plus AVOD service to its line of smart fridges. They also announced Freestyle, a Gen Z-aimed smart TV projector that doubles as a tool for content creation.

While Samsung, Panasonic and LG are sticking with their proprietary OS platforms, Google TV is steadily replacing Android TV across Sony, Hisense, and TCL. The latter two of these also boast robust lineups of Roku TVs. The future of AVOD & CTV, including ad targeting and measurement, will be substantially impacted by developments in the TV OS ecosystem.

Metaverse - The notion of “the Metaverse” is both a distant concept decades away, and a product design direction that is being iterated upon today. The virtual worlds we have now are key prototypical platforms along the path towards amazing and impactful consumer experiences of the future. An ecosystem of metaverse-enabling technologies is forming in this context, and this year at CES the footprint of these exhibitors has grown substantially over previous years. These products are designed to augment the visual element of a virtual world with corresponding physical sensations. On the floor this week are bigger players such as Ultraleap, Owo, bHaptics and Yaw as well as startups such as OmniPad and Contact CI. Notably this year, Vuzix has expanded its line of enterprise AR smart glasses to include a micro-LED powered model.

Matter is going to matter - Matter is an IoT/smart home initiative that brings together wireless technologies such as WiFi, BLE and Thread (low power mesh networking). It is supported by Google, Apple, Amazon, Samsung and others. Fully launching in 2022, it offers the possibility of much more seamless smart home experiences for consumers. There are hints of what is to come sprinkled throughout the show, but perhaps the most interesting is from NxP. They have announced a single chip that supports WiFi 6, BLE 5.2 and Thread, optimized for IoT devices. Components like this chip could offer a turn-key solution for device makers to rapidly embrace Matter in their lineups. Comcast announced that their xFi advanced router will act as a Matter hub. With media touchpoints such as smart speakers and TVs being both content devices and hubs for smart home control, this is a space to watch for brands to become part of consumers’ lives in new ways. Other interesting smart home launches at CES 2022 include those from Labrador Systems - who make a self driving shelf designed for users with home mobility challenges, and Moen - who have debuted a completely touchless kitchen faucet, controlled only by gesture and voice.

Fitness, Health and Wellness - This year at CES the footprint of health and wellness has grown to encompass much of the North Hall. The pandemic in general and remote work in particular have drawn consumers towards products and services to keep them healthy over long periods at home. Two companies to benefit from the intersection of content and home fitness are Climbr and Hydrow. The former is a compact connected exercise device optimized for smaller urban dwellings, and it sports a screen for on-demand video coaching. The latter is a rowing machine with a screen for live and on-demand content. The live content is drawn from athletes around the world out in the water rowing along with you. The award-winning Motion Pillow uses sensors and AI to detect snoring and gently adjusts its shape to turn one’s head for clearer breathing. 

Sustainability - One of the hottest tickets annually at CES is Samsung’s keynote presentation. This year the event began not with a gadget announcement, but a comprehensive overview of Samsung’s sustainability efforts. This included how they approach production, packaging and e-waste. They also announced a new remote control that can be powered by both solar cells on the back and ambient radio waves from such devices as WiFi routers. The aim is to eliminate millions of batteries from landfills. Elsewhere at this year’s show, electric modes of transport - from e-bikes to autonomous vehicles - are ubiquitous and sometimes clever. VideowindoW makes glass panels for use in the construction of large public spaces such as airports. These panels use natural light as backlighting and LCDs to display video across large glass wall surfaces. The shading provided by this content can entertain, inform, and reduce the amount of air conditioning needed in the summer. RanMarine from the Netherlands showed off WasteShark, an autonomous robot that scoops up trash and biomass from rivers and lakes - think Roomba but in the water. RainStick is a shower system that treats drain water with UV light for disinfection and recirculates it, driving water and energy savings of up to 80%. It also works with Alexa and Google Assistant; though this isn’t a sustainability feature I always like pointing out voice integration. 

Cryptocurrency & NFTs - There are at least a dozen startup booths here this week that address the various facets of trading and securing one’s cryptocurrency savings. Several exhibitors this week are announcing integrations with non-fungible tokens, grabbing headlines in the process. The most high profile examples are Samsung and Netgear’s Meural offering users the ability to show off their NFT images on TVs and digital art screens respectively. Off the beaten path in Eureka Park there’s a booth representing the “cryptostate” of KONG Land, citizenship of which can be purchased as an NFT. My take on this technology with respect to media and brands has evolved over the past several months and would fill an entirely separate column. For now I’ll just say that there are a lot of interesting NFT experiments percolating, but we must be careful to remain consumer-centric. For our purposes, each execution using blockchain (NFT or otherwise) needs to be evaluated on how it delivers genuine value to peoples’ lives. 

This is my 10th CES and at least for me, it’s been frankly less disrupted than it might be for others. My beat is typically the small and medium-sized innovators, and they are here in force. I'm still finding hidden gems and the occasional product of questionable appeal. The crowd is thinner so talking to lots of people and taking lots of notes has taken less time. The lack of parties has eliminated FOMO entirely and I am going to sleep at sensible hours.

The most impactful difference that I feel is one of connectedness. We are here in the same boat and making the best of it. I also feel a connection to those who backed out of the in-person event - it is an entirely rational and appropriate precaution. Despite a wide variety of participant decisions, roles and objectives, whether in-person or virtual, the core function of CES remains the same as we chart a course towards the future.