3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Affect Marketing in 2017

Are you embracing AI to improve your ad campaigns?

Throughout the last year, artificial intelligence (AI) and its multitude of uses for marketing have become more and more obvious.  While many brands were hesitant to explore the plethora of benefits it offers, 2017 is seeing brands dipping their toes into the AI waters, ready to embrace it as a beneficial component of their marketing strategies.

Take a look at these 3 ways artificial intelligence will affect marketing even more in 2017.

Impactful Ads

The creation of better advertisements is one of the biggest ways artificial intelligence will impact marketing in 2017. The ability for brands to use AI to research and develop crucial marketing aspects, such as keyword searches, empowers marketers to build smarter, more effective ads that should lead to more conversions.

For years, companies have focused on who to show ads to and when to show the ads.  AI allows marketers to, instead, focus on what messages to show the audience so brands can create powerful ads specific to the target audience. With programmatic accounting for 67% of all global display ads in 2017, AI is needed more than ever to ensure the increased volume of ads doesn’t affect the quality of ads.

One form of AI that is showing significant promise in this area is Natural Language Processing (NLP). NLP is a cognitive machine learning technology that can find trends in behavior and traffic the same way a human brain does. Using NLP in this way will match ads with individuals based on context, compared to just keywords in the past, therefore significantly increasing click rates and conversions.

One thing to know is that consumers today have large piles of data about them at marketers’ fingertips as a result of what they do on Twitter, Facebook, and other digital channels.  This makes people wonder why -- despite the data available about today’s consumer -- do we still see ads that don’t pertain to the individual? The problem won’t continue for long; individual advertising is an ongoing project and one that is worth the effort. Traditional audience segmentation is dying.  People want and need to receive personalized treatment, and AI supports the customer preference and will continue to generate and serve people’s needs in the future with the help of artificial intelligence.

Smarter Search

Businesses looking to stay competitive need to learn how to integrate artificial intelligence into their marketing campaign, or they will risk being left behind. Digital consumers of 2017 are able to seek out and find information more quickly and efficiently than in the past, while brands are continually looking for ways to present their messaging in a meaningful way to individuals on a 1:1 basis.

Search giant Google is using AI, called RankBrain, in a “very large fraction” of queries which previously were unrecognizable. Since RankBrain will improve search results by providing searchers better answers to their questions, marketers are able to take advantage of RankBrain by producing higher quality content geared towards voice search.

Smarter Sentiment

There isn’t a way that even the most skilled teams of marketers can sort through all of the things customers are talking about on blogs and social media, especially with the growing list of platforms available.  AI allows marketers to analyze just what their target customers are thinking and how they feel about the brand.  It helps marketers act in a more compassionate manner.

Marketing is about inclusion – trying to stand in the customer’s shoes. When the number of shoes is exponentially growing, like the number of conversations across the web daily, it’s almost impossible for brands to scale to meet the need. Facebook is using deep learning technology to better detect human faces, and with their DeepText program, Facebook is cracking the code of computers understanding the nuances of language. For marketers, this means more accurate segmentation and targeting for ads.

Whether or not we are prepared to embrace this changing landscape, AI is going to be a big part of marketing from this point forward.  Marketers are using AI to strengthen their campaigns and help understand and solve the needs of each customer in each situation. Marketers should embrace the multitude of benefits it can provide and look for innovative ways to allow this technology to work to their and their customers’ advantage.

Megan Totka is the Chief Editor for ChamberofCommerce.com. Chamber specializes in helping small
businesses grow their business on the web while facilitating the connectivity between local businesses and more than 7,000 Chambers of Commerce worldwide. As a small business expert, Megan specializes in reporting the latest business news, helpful tips and reliable resources, as well as providing small business advice.