April 23, 2018 | Veratad Blog | File under: Veratad Technologies Blog

Alexa, Who Is Scott Galloway? Continued

Alexa, who is Scott Galloway? Continued…

We had a stellar time at the KNOW Identity 2018 conference in Washington, D.C. in March, 2018. Prior to heading down to D.C., we shared which sessions we were the most excited about – and they did not disappoint. Over the next few weeks we will be sharing some of the highlights and our favorite moments from the panel sessions and the various keynotes.

The opening keynote was on The Break Up of Big Tech by Scott Galloway, and he devoted a lot of time to Amazon, so we decided to follow suit.

Early on Scott Galloway launched into how Amazon’s ability to perform Jedi mind tricks with their stock prices. Generally, when a company announces that they will have a good quarter, their stock falls. Not Amazon’s. Amazon announces its acquisition of Whole Foods and competing grocery stores slash their prices and their stocks fall.

Not so long ago, The U.S. Department of Justice was blocking AT&T’s acquisition of Time Warner to protect consumers from price hikes and monopolies. While the white house is worrying about cable, he shared some fun statistics about the cost of capital. 4% of all retail sales are on Amazon, but 44% of all U.S. e-commerce sales. 66% of households have prime – that’s more than voted in the US 2016 election and more household than have cable television. Scary, we know.

Those stats becoming more jarring when you consider that more and more households are opting into streaming services like Amazon Prime, over cable. Amazon Video includes $4.5 billion spent on original content for their streaming service ($6B for Netflix).

The future is voice. How many of us wake up and ask Alexa what today’s weather is? To play some music or calculate some conversions? Amazon has 70% of the market share in voice. Want more fun stats on the cost of capital? Walmart paid $64 billion in corporate income taxes since 2008. Amazon paid about one billion. More successful companies are paying less in taxes.

“Alexa, is that a good thing?” Galloway asked in a perfectly sarcastic manner. I’ll leave you to ponder the answer.

Missed at KNOW Identity and don’t want to wait until next year to chat with us? Let’s talk!