Of all the technologies that have emerged during the Fourth Industrial Revolution, artificial intelligence has had the most dramatic impact on business. AI’s ability to automate, unify data, personalise service, anticipate needs and trends, and optimise marketing campaigns makes it a competitive must-have for businesses in the digital age.
For advertisers, it has become the go-to tool for addressing the unique challenges of the modern market. Here are three key ways AI can help drive advertising success.
1. Resolve customer identity
More people are spending more time on the internet. Globally, there are 4.39 billion internet users in 2019 – an increase of 366 million (9%) since January 2018 – spending an average of six hours and 42 minutes online each day. The variety of channels and devices is huge and gives advertisers unprecedented access to massive audiences. At the same time, all the platforms in use provide an immense quantity and range of data for advertisers to sift through. A manual approach will no longer cut it.
Fortunately, there are many ways AI can help you stay on top of your customer data. One of the most powerful is identity resolution. In advertising, audience is everything. It’s essential for advertisers to know who they’re advertising to, so they can deliver personalised content and relevant offers.
Given 64% of customers start and finish transactions on multiple devices, this can present a challenge. But it’s one AI-powered probabilistic identity technology can meet. Advertisers can now identify one person shopping or browsing on different devices, and make sure their messages are consistent and relevant.
2. Personalise at scale
Today’s customers expect personalised advertising that delivers messages on their preferred channel at the right time. The journey from ad view to purchase should be quick and seamless.
Advertisers need to deliver one-to-one experiences like these at mass scale – something which is now achievable thanks to AI’s ability to gather, aggregate and analyse vast quantities of data from any number of channels.
Through lookalike modeling and new segment discovery, AI can add a helping hand to increasing brand awareness and attracting new customers. Advertisers can quickly identify their best customers’ key attributes and find people with similar characteristics – marketing to audiences who are likely to engage and provide good ROI.
AI can also help advertisers personalise ads to existing customers by micro segmenting and uncovering more personas than they’d previously thought existed.
3. Know what works
Advertisers have traditionally struggled to understand the impact of their ad spending. It’s been hard to know which sources are performing well, and which are underperforming.
19th-century marketing pioneer John Wanamaker is said to have observed: “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted. The trouble is, I don’t know which half”. With the stakes higher than ever, today’s marketer’s can’t afford to be in the same position. Advertising in the APAC region alone continues to be driven by digital formats with digital advertising sales expected to reach USD90 billion this year – almost half of total ad sales.
AI takes the guesswork out of where to allocate funds by tracking all the interactions consumers have with ads across every channel and using attribution modeling to gain insights about which campaigns are achieving goals and where engagement is flagging.
AI gives advertisers a much deeper understanding of their customers, clear insights into their actions across all channels and platforms and the power to deliver the timely, relevant, personalised messages and offers that today’s customers demand.
Find out how the expectations of more than 8,000 consumers and business buyers continue to shift, and which emerging technologies are transforming engagement standards. Download the State of the Connected Customer report.
