In this guest post, Pressy Sankaran (pictured below), head of Criteo ANZ, talks Artificial Intelligence and why Aussie marketers need to get on board and pronto…

Marketing campaigns have changed beyond belief from reliance on the traditional media of TV, print and radio. Now, the proliferation of content being streamed from every media and social platform imaginable means that brands need to think critically and create strategies to rise above the digital noise.

To combat this explosion of content opportunities, Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being implemented into marketing strategies to transform and give brands and retailers the opportunity to connect with customers directly. AI has created a huge opportunity to understand and serve customers with a level of unmatched personalisation – individually tailoring messages and engaging directly with the customer in a scalable manner.

Instagram and Facebook now deliver ads that are relevant to a customer’s location, past search history and apps purchased. Some may say that this form of content can be invasive, but can brands afford not to adopt AI into their strategies?

Below are some key reasons why AI technology is a key component in effective marketing:

One to one conversation

Being able to target specific individuals is not, in itself, a new concept. For example, even the shift in popular use from landlines to mobile phones brought with it a change in individualisation and accessibility. When you called a location, you weren’t sure who you were going to get on the other end of the line. Now, when you call a mobile phone, you can reach the person no matter where they are, and they can decide if they want to pick up the phone.

AI provides a similar opportunity. When marketers create a digital marketing campaign, with AI, they can identify their customer and tailor the message in real time. This will allow them to move away from the increasingly antiquated notion of audiences, which does not reflect the true intent of the individual. Combining personalised data and the limitless possibilities of AI, a hyper-personalised, hyper-relevant message is delivered, creating an optimal user experience that will result in higher engagement and conversion rate.

Limit Marketing Waste

Over time, brands have become more innovative in their approach to speaking to their targeted audience. Brands now use influencers on social platforms like Instagram to build augmented realities, collaborate content on podcasts or YouTube to essentially integrate their brand into the everyday lives of consumers.

Personalised content can limit marketing spend on ads that won’t communicate to the targeted audience. Instead, content can be altered and delivered to specific groups based on a user’s data, saving a brand wasted budget on a campaign that is sent out to a broader network and risk it falling on ‘deaf ears’.

AI’s ability to create Dynamic Content, tailored to individuals.

Marketers know that personalisation is the most powerful way for brands to stand out, especially in the noisy digital world of today. If content isn’t customised to what a shopper wants at that moment, it’s essentially invisible.

Dynamic Creative Optimisation (DCO) has risen in the digital advertising industry over the last few years as a powerful way to improve the performance of display campaigns. DCO works by using AI technology to deliver targeted creative using the shopper’s specific data based on their search and geolocation.

Brands should be allocating budget and time into producing dynamic creatives to fuel campaigns and bring it to the next level to cut through digital noise and rise above its competitors.

AI encourages objectivity

By respecting individuality, conscious and unconscious biases can also be eliminated. Personalisation through AI can leverage extremely fine-grained data that is fully relevant to the business objective. Manual approaches are less precise and can exhibit strong biases, such as sensitivity to gender, race, religion, or political opinions. An AI-driven objective analysis based only on directly relevant data can create a view of the customer that resists traditional biases.

Of course, there are a few hurdles that must be crossed until the industry is ready for AI to be widespread. The heavy computational cost of AI was a significant hindrance until just a few years ago when GPUs and cloud computing made AI tractable to most. And as many companies open AI labs around the world, they face a lack in skillset. The fast pace of AI advancement is a challenge to traditional training programs, and companies are required to innovate in the domain of personal development. This is creating the need for a creative, and even aggressive, approach to hiring the best talent.

The proliferation of data relevant ads and marketing technologies will transform the industry and be a boon to both companies and customers. The demand for increased personalised content will open new opportunities for communication between brands and customers, leading to a more open and collaborative environment. AI will lead these hyper-interactive and hyper-integrated forms of delivering campaigns and will fast become a must for all marketing strategies.