Tasneem Ali is general manager of Pureprofile's media business Pure.amplify.
The AI marketing revolution has arrived. Artificial Intelligence is transforming old methods and delivering exciting new efficiencies and capabilities. While the technology has been in the marketing arena for some time, it is now front and centre thanks to the new optimisation it provides.
AI can be used in a variety of ways. One key example that we can all relate to is Google Search. While looking online for book recommendations, Google’s advertising algorithms are able to select from a number of different headlines and copy, specifically tailored to the user who is undertaking the search. There’s a huge volume of data available about every single internet user, which means that individual ad messages can be tailored in order to increase the total number of purchases made.
Product recommendations work in much the same way. By using AI and machine learning to detect buying patterns, companies like Netflix and Amazon are able to promote selective, relevant products to future buyers. As the technology becomes more integrated into the everyday online experience, there are a number of reasons why marketers must leverage the technology for their next campaign.
Real-time analysis and optimisation
One of the most critical factors that AI delivers is speed. It can generate insights in real-time, enabling optimisation in the middle of a media campaign. Previously, results were once recorded and analysed after the campaign had concluded and the money was spent. By not being able to amend things on the fly, misaligned messaging and wrongly targeted ads could have been in market for weeks. Such mismatches have the potential to damage a company’s reputation – there’s no point advertising seniors’ health insurance to an audience of young people.
We've recently started working with a new client in the health and beauty sector, and through both manual optimisations and the recommendations generated from our AI technology, we were able to improve their cost per action by 30% month on month and 35% year on year.
AI is able to detect and recommend solutions for a huge range of issues. It can produce daily reports with keyword analysis and recommendations for improvement. Split-testing can be automated, using AI-generated insights into the keywords and ads most likely to convert visitors.
It can also deliver alerts regarding anomalies, and any issues with a campaign – such as broken links or landing pages that won’t load – can be easily identified. Expensive keywords that aren’t converting can be picked up on, and new keyword ideas generated. This can be very effective for niche categories, where AI optimisations and recommendations are able to truly shine.
Maintaining a human touch
While AI has much to offer marketers, maintaining a human touchpoint throughout its use remains critical. There’s always an element of the decision-making process that needs to be made by a human.
This was the case on a campaign we worked on with an education client, who were seeking to engage with the building industry. Many of the conversions generated by the campaign stemmed from a predominately male audience. However, it was revealed that females had a much higher level of engagement with the campaign, thanks to analysis of website traffic.
In this situation, AI technology would look at the user engagement and make the recommendation to optimise content for a male audience. This is why the human element is still critical in the digital realm. By engaging with the client and conducting additional research, it was revealed that females were either engaging with the campaign on behalf of their partner, or it was a mother conducting background research into educational opportunities on behalf of their sons.
AI is increasingly being integrated into every facet of our online consumption and is driving purchasing decisions each and every day. This new era of online marketing is overhauling traditional approaches to audience engagement and is providing the ability to complete real-time updates throughout in-progress campaigns. When used in conjunction with teams that can closely analyse trends and data, it is a powerful tool that is driving us into a new era of digital advertising.