Alexa, What’s This Month’s Blog?

Last weekend I awoke in the middle of the night with sharp chest pains. It was a bit disconcerting as I contemplated waking my wife or figuring out how to get better on my own. Feeling confident that I wasn’t having a heart attack, I opted for a few moments on the couch after grabbing a couple of Tums. That morning as my wife and I were starting our day, I mentioned to her what had happened. We had the typical husband/wife back and forth for about 5 minutes. It was just her and I in the room, or so I thought.

Later that day as I was going through my emails, I received this from WebMD:

This was no coincidence. I think it was a calculated marketing execution that started with the Amazon Echo that sits on my nightstand.

Leaders in Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence marketing (AI Marketing) is a method of leveraging customer data with machine learning to anticipate a customer’s need. Ostensibly, this improves the customer journey. Many marketing professionals believe that AI is the future of advertising. I think the future is happening now.

To put it simply, different platforms incorporate AI in order to sell more product. Any guesses on who’s leading the charge here? That’s right, Google, Amazon, Netflix, and other platforms like them. AI does things like tracking search terms, voice recognition, noting product purchases so you can get served ads for compatible items, and recommending new content based on your previously watched programming.

How We Use AI for Our Clients

At ReThinc, we don’t listen in on your private conversations but we do engage some forms of AI to the benefit of our clients. The most prevalent use of machine learning that we utilize is done through Google. ReThinc is a Google Premier Partner, meaning that we have met their requirements in three areas: certification, ad spend, and performance. Being a Premier Partner means we are knowledgeable, experienced, and successful in optimizing campaigns to make money (their words, not ours).

In executing our digital campaigns, we also create customer personas that enhance the results of our programmatic outreach. Customer personas are profiles of the demographic audience that we are targeting. Google helps us to take that persona forward to reach similar archetypes.

We also make our clients’ social media campaigns more effective by using smart targeting technologies. With CPM’s and CPC’s on the rise, smart targeting helps us to offset costs while also delivering a more refined (and relevant) audience for their ad message.

More sophisticated forms of artificial intelligence marketing gauge moods and then recommend products (or content). Visual search technology serves ads that help shoppers find a complementary item, not based on past purchases, but on how they look. Platforms like Pinterest and Google Lens are moving that tech forward.

AI… This is a Good Thing, Right?

Either way, things are happening at a rapid pace. Artificial intelligence is becoming more prevalent. A point made clear to me when I realized my device was listening in on my conversations. I don’t want to minimize the privacy concerns that consumers may have as our homes become more advanced with items that serve our needs but also take note of our words or actions.

It’s an interesting time to be a human. It’s an even more interesting time to be a human who executes marketing campaigns. AI and other advances promise to keep me both busy and employed for a long time.

If you have questions or perhaps even concerns about marketing technology… feel free to drop me a line at ed.olsen@rethincadvertising.com.