I Had a Hunch You’d Read This

The revolution in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML), coupled with the prevalence of big data, is equipping savvy marketers with laser-like precision in their ability to target consumers at the most decisive moment of their purchasing decisions—reducing the cost of customer acquisitions, dramatically boosting the effectiveness of the messaging, and improving user experiences.AI and ML make it possible for marketers and advertisers to analyze individual consumers’ location, buying habits, and past purchasing history in real-time to accurately predict their next move with startling accuracy.

IBM recently announced Watson, its AI-based bot, reduced the cost per click of digital ads by 71% through programmatic media buying. How? By analyzing the buying histories and habits of consumers and selectively placing advertisements into the digital medium at the time and place consumers would be most responsive to the messaging.

The rise in the sophistication of AI and ML is making it increasingly possible to marry consumers’ online habits with their offline activity, providing marketers with even greater opportunity to close the sell with highly-targeted, exceptionally-personalized engagements delivered to the very instant, place, and device the consumer is most likely to make his or her decision.

Increasingly, the prevalence of GPS-enabled smart devices has made it possible for these engagements to occur en route to the place of purchase, or, if the consumer is visiting a competitor, provide a well-placed reminder that an alternate product or service is available nearby.

A few blogs ago, I wrote about, among other things, how social media giant Google recently achieved “quantum supremacy,” or the ability to make computations not possible by even the most sophisticated supercomputers, solving a complex problem in 200 seconds that’d require classic supercomputers 10,000 years or longer to resolve.

Quantum supremacy is so powerful, it effectively renders passwords obsolete with its ability to brute force any encrypted password by simply attempting every conceivable combination at once. Being able to solve problems in seconds that’d take any other computer thousands, even millions, of years is helping NASA unravel some of the universe’s most tightly held secrets even as you read.

However, when you remember that Google’s primary commodity is not the unraveling of the secrets of the cosmos, but in making sense of the user data it collects, you begin to realize just how powerful the tools marketers have at their disposal as they turn such phenomenal computational ability toward the consumer experience.

Please note, despite the headline, no artificial intelligence went into the penning of this blog.