Artificial intelligence or AI, is an umbrella term to describe types of technology that can simulate human intelligence. It is one of today’s hottest topics across many business sectors. AI techniques teach computers to organize data in a contextual manner to provide requested information, supply analysis, or trigger an event based on their findings.
Marketers are already leveraging the power of AI to obtain valuable insights about their customers, automate tasks, and improve workflows. Just over half of marketers currently use AI, and an additional 27% are expected to incorporate the technology by 2019. This represents the highest anticipated year-over-year growth of any leading technology that marketers expect to adopt in the next year, beating out the Internet of Things and marketing automation. And, as the volume of consumer-generated data grows, AI computing techniques like machine learning, deep learning, and natural language processing, will become increasingly important to data-driven decision-making.
AI enhances personalization, and identifies the best practices for marketers looking to integrate the developing technology into their strategies. Marketers can implement AI to better target audiences, gain a competitive edge, and analyze data from social platforms. These applications will both transform and enhance the way marketers analyze data, conduct burdensome tasks, and create content.
AI is advancing beyond data analysis and moving rapidly into data generation, as machines get better at automating two basic human senses: sight and hearing. Gleaning insights from data-rich media like voice and video is now possible, and humans no longer have to manually categorize or describe various types of media.
AI will transform marketers from reactive to proactive planners. The enhanced analytics that AI provides will help marketers more efficiently plan and execute campaigns in three main areas: segmentation, tracking, and keyword tagging.
However, the rapid pace of innovation is contributing to marketers’ sense of unpreparedness for AI implementation and future use cases. When asked to choose which trending technology they felt most unprepared for, 34% of global marketing executives chose AI, the most of any option.
AI will aid in content creation, but human marketers are still necessary. It’s still early days for marketers to use AI to automatically create editorial content or stitch together the right image with the right messaging for display ads. Machines will help cut down on production time, but humans are needed for their creative juices.
I changed my iPod’s name to Titanic. It’s syncing now