Artificial Intelligence: More than a Digital Marketing trend
This topic is actually flooding the media. This is not a prognosis about what will happen to digital marketing in the near future: In fact, a plethora of changes related to Digital Marketing AI have already occurred on the Internet, and their consequences are developing pretty quickly. It is not a coincidence: Artificial Intelligence is considered by some as the next industrial revolution, which, of course, will affect all aspects of human life. It will not be, nor is it the only factor that will affect it, but it will definitely be one of the main features of human life from now on.
What is Artificial Intelligence? In a nutshell, AI is a technology that simulates the functions of human brains through computer processors, and its goal is even surpasseing the human possibilities so that all the processes that are carried out through the use of automation, are much more effective, cheap and fast. Some people, such as Stephen Hawking, consider that artificial intelligence is a real threat to mankind since there is a possibility that machines will be out of our control at some point, especially when they acquire self-consciousness and are able to self-replicate. By 2024, a single supercomputer could process all the data produced by humans and turn it into information. It scares some and astonishes others. It all depends on the perspective.
When it comes to digital marketing, the possibilities are endless. One of the most important advances in which this technology could be used is data analysis. This basically consists of a process of inspection, selection and conversion of a high volume data that allows the further production of information, which very useful for making better executive decisions in the shortest time possible. Specifically, what could be useful for digital marketing is data mining: The creation of knowledge models, produced from collected information through artificial intelligence. Nowadays, many business owners use data mining to analyze their marketing strategies and make forecasts that allow them to know what decisions to make.
Read also: Setting the right expectations for digital marketing strategies, by ReputationDefender
An example of the application of this technology is the Amazon algorithm. If you buy a product on this platform (an astronomy book, for example,) the algorithm will keep recommending you similar books that you will certainly find interesting. This is achieved through complex personality analysis and customization processes, which are possible thanks to data analysis (a fully automatic process.) This same technology is applied by Facebook with much success, depending on the likes of users, the contents they share, the groups to which they already belong, and to the way Facebook tracks the online activity of its users. Netflix, Spotify, YouTube … every big social network uses it according to its needs and way of operation.
Another good example of this technology is Watson, a virtual super-advisor created by IBM who processes large amounts of information with the aim of answering questions. Although it can be used to defeat human opponents in a knowledge TV contest, it can also be tremendously useful in an organization from any branch (from the financial world to the military) in which it is necessary to make CEO-level decisions.
Another interesting development is automated customer service. What is this? Basically, it consists of an assistant that can attend all the requests from your users and potential customers permanently. For many companies, this means an advantage, because this system saves a lot of expenses (especially about paying overtime and night hours to call-center workers,) and will also attend users in a standardized way (which you program depending on what you need.) This means avoiding many inconveniences of customer service, which, in many cases, become online reputation problems when users feel that they have not been treated properly and respectfully.
These chatbots are becoming more and more popular, especially in companies that have a lot of customer service issues (eg Internet providers or public departments that must deal with thousands of angry citizens every second.) But chatbots do not just answer frequently asked questions with a great capacity for semantic analysis. A chatbot can also perform banking transactions, schedule orders, and generate reminders for forgetful users, among many other functions. CNN chatbot has been a success so far, for instance.
Indeed, more than a trend in the world of digital marketing, the use of artificial intelligence is becoming a pressing need. In addition to the large amount of data that companies have to process every day, an example of this need is the popular use of ad blockers. Ad blockers are programs and apps that remove ads from a website. When it comes to users, its implantation is liberating (we all know it, for sure,) while for the advertising sector it is a threat to the business. So far, the only type of advertising that has managed to evade these blockers is native advertising, but ad blockers also evolve and are increasingly effective in allowing users to browse the web without advertising disturbances (the Opera browser, for example, has a native advertising ad blocker.) The only solution for this kind of situations is the constant use of artificial intelligence. It’s the best way of adapting to the coming times.
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