With intelligent personalisation taking centre stage in modern marketing, how will artificial intelligence change the relationship between brands and consumers? Benjamin Graham, Director of Communication at personalised marketing app Clemmie, looks at how marketers can make the most of AI.
If you believe the blogs, magazine features and tabloid news stories, AI is a revelation, and it’s going to change everything. From op-eds predicting humanity’s end at the hands of superior intelligence to scientists feverishly discussing the future of medical care, AI is on everyone’s lips. Reporting on AI often seems to focus on the worst-case scenario, but AI can change our lives for the better and revolutionise the way we interact with technology, the world, and even each other.
The ways in which we perceive the world around us is in a constant flux as technology develops. A recent study from Stanford and Cambridge Universities claimed that a computer can know more about its human owner than their friends and family. Artificial Intelligence was used to analyse 10 Facebook ‘Likes’, which then enabled the AI to to predict and study a participant’s personality. This is just the start, with Machine to Consumer (M2C) interactions replacing the costly (and frankly unpredictable) human customer service approach completely in the near future. AI will touch on every aspect of marketing, from how we conceive, run and measure campaigns to the very definition of the profession.
Taking the guesswork out of marketing
AI can focus more on delivering ads to people, with less guesswork. EMarketer predicted that as machine learning takes precedence over human analysis, digital advertising dollars driven by programmatic initiatives would rise to 63% by the end of 2016, representing $20 billion in programmatic ad buys.
With AI, marketers will be able to understand consumers on an intricate level. Artificial intelligence tailors the entire experience to the recipient to ensure every ad is relevant. We are already seeing this change, as disruption-advertising techniques are replaced by a more targeted, data-driven approach.
Just as billboards on roadsides rely on distraction, pre-AI ads translated to little more than guesses about what consumers may want to buy based on the few details the company could glean from their IP address. This approach failed to understand the context of individuated customer searches, an issue AI will overcome through ‘intelligent learning’.
Creating connections & developing a dialogue
Thanks to AI, marketing will no longer be a one-sided conversation. George John, writing in The Drum, explains, “Currently, with the possible exception of social media, marketing is a one-way channel… As AI technology improves and evolves it will progress beyond selecting the right message and design (crafted by humans) to deliver to the right person, over the right channel, at the most opportune time, to actually having a two-way conversation in real-time.” AI won’t just personalise content, it will allow consumers to provide instant feedback, ask questions about products and take advantage of special offers through interaction with the AI. Artificial intelligence technology has already progressed to the point where it can tailor customer interactions through increasingly sophisticated language processors and visual perception tools.
Personalised advertising becomes truly personal
When it comes to programmatic ad buying, the current process is largely dependent on a machine’s ability to make decisions. Taken into account when selecting the ad are variables like location, previous search history and search text syntax, but these are still largely impersonal, generic ads. With AI, ads are customised to a greater degree and instantly delivered to users based on a qualified profile shot of their browsing habits. AI can ‘learn’ to avoid users who have never interacted with a specific type of advertisement. Each time a similar campaign is run it will know who is likely to engage and who isn’t, only targeting the most relevant users.
Websites become easier for everyone
With AI ensuring ads now precisely target users, engagement will improve, saving brands significant advertising revenue while ensuring higher conversion rates and eCPMs. This is good news for the firms placing the ads, the sites hosting them and the user viewing the site.
Because businesses are earning more revenue through fewer ad placements, sites can trim the number of ads to only those that are relevant to that particular user. Not only will this improve the onsite experience for users, but it will also increase the likelihood of people engaging with the advertising they do see.
Human input takes a back seat
Companies are now employing big data analysts and data scientists in marketing departments to uncover insights to drive business decisions, but the introduction of AI will eventually transform the very role of humans in marketing. CMO’s at several tech-savvy firms are already witnessing the influence of AI on daily operations. The difference being that, whilst today the role of CMO’s is to create and source content that increases brand visibility and continues to generate revenue, AI will tackle several of these responsibilities. No longer will CMO’s have to adjust media campaigns according to new trend progressions. AI’s ability to adapt to changes in real-time means the implementation of marketing campaigns will require less human interaction.
AI doesn’t have to be all-controlling, however. Some companies are already using it to provide updates to changing market trends, which are then taken into account by a CMO and applied at their own discretion to subsequent campaigns. The more artificial intelligence is used the more efficient it becomes, meaning it will be able to adapt to, and even anticipate, new trends as they happen. Instead, marketers will be tasked with establishing guidelines for the AI to ensure interactions with consumers remain within the appropriate brand context.
Working hours could become a thing of the past
With most mobile traffic occurring over the weekend, when marketers are out the office, artificial intelligence comes into its own as an optimisation tool. AI optimises campaigns in real-time, taking the manual labour aspect away from the marketing team who can then concentrate on other, more subjective aspects of the marketing campaign. A study by analytics firm IHS and video inventory management platform SpotXBy found that by 2020 more than half of all digital video advertising revenue in Europe will be programmatic.
A whole host of new roles will become fundamental to the continued marketing strategies of companies around the world. Working hours will become less restrictive, with AI handling the work a human counterpart would have to do outside of work time. For instance, most mobile traffic occurs over the weekend. For most companies, however, this is the time when workers are at home. AI can track interactions, schedule updates and optimise content according to what people are searching for, regardless of when, what time or where the search is made.
Embracing the increase and development of AI is crucial to future marketing efforts. Despite all the scare stories, AI is a human creation that can be harnessed in a multitude of ways. When used intelligently and responsibly, AI can enrich our lives in a multitude of ways. By leaving the most mundane, time-consuming and logic-driven tasks to AI, we free ourselves up to think more creatively, to focus our efforts on more subjective matters and, if we’re lucky, come up with the world’s next big revelation.
By Benjamin Graham
Director of Communication
http://clemmie.xyz”>Clemmie
Ben is the director of communications for Clemmie, a tech startup based in Edinburgh and developed in partnership with Google. Clemmie specialises in creating instant and targeted microsites for companies, personalised to specific B2B decision makers. Clemmie also tracks how individual clients have engaged with the microsite content through simple and clean analytics, which users can receive through email on their Desktop or directly through the newly launched Clemmie app.
Clemmie website: http://clemmie.xyz/
http://clemmie.xyz/