Watson’s Coming Impact on Digital Advertising

Rob Beeler Jeremy youamp8217ve been in digital media sales for over 15 years How has the transition to IBM impacted your view of media and media sales Jeremy Steinberg pictured at right amp160I see a bright future for media as Watsonamp160pictured at top and other cognitive technologies are going to transform the media industry Everyone in digital media wants to be able to make better decisions and see a higher ROI Iamp8217m fortunate to have a front seat view and as part of IBM I get the exciting opportunity to help steer the industry towards its cognitive future amp160Beeler Yes but is Watson going to take your place heading up salesSteinberg amp160Ha Yeah Iamp8217m not worried about Watson taking my job because at IBMamp160weamp8217re guided by the term amp8220augmented intelligenceamp8221amp160rather than amp8220artificial intelligenceamp8221Beeler amp160Okay whatamp8217s the difference between augmented and artificial intelligenceSteinberg amp160Itamp8217s the critical difference between systems that enhance and scale human expertise rather than those that attempt to replicate all of human intelligence With amp8220augmented intelligenceamp8221 we want to help extend human capability expertise and potential not replace humans We focus on building practical AI applications that assist people with welldefined tasks and in the processamp160expose a range of generalized AI services on a platform to support a wide range of new applicationsBeeler How do you see that applying to digital mediaSteinberg amp160Watson is smart enough to listen learnamp160and make increasingly refined suggestions the system can interact naturally learn from interactions and surface meaningful insights from huge amounts of data amp160With its deep speech and language capabilities Watson can understand the intention behind a specific command and move beyond itAs foramp160Watsonamp8217s impact on digital media there are three key marketing functions that we believe we can help transformPlanningamp160 Because Watson can analyze all data including unstructured formats like images video and audio we can apply Watson to make sense of a clientamp8217s data in conjunction with other predictive data sets like weather and location to unlock deep audience insightsExecutionamp160 We can then use those insights to create targetable profiles that enable marketers to anticipate and respond to the needs of an individual in realtimeOptimizationamp160 We are building tools that enable marketers to quickly and efficiently understand audience and campaign performance and easily make adjustments to drive towards a desired outcomeWe believe that when effectively leveraged Watson can help brands create sustainable connections that will drive conversion lift create lasting customer relationships and ultimately free up time for marketers to think more strategically and creatively about their businessBeeler amp160An area Iamp8217ve heard where Watson might be applied is natural language classification amp160Will Watson help brands better understand the content that they are adjacent to and perhaps provide more brand safetySteinbergamp160 We have introduced Watson to the advertising ecosystem with Watson Ads This is an industryfirst solution that learns and interacts with consumers through advertisingamp160and is 100 brand safe It also lets consumers interact directly with brands by having a personalized twoway conversation within an ad experience amp160It uses Watsonamp8217s natural language and conversation capabilities to find a new recipe or a new car or even ways to relieve allergy symptomsFor marketers Watson Ads can act as a massive focus group by uncovering actionable consumer and product insights previously unavailable in traditional campaignsWith each interactionamp160the Watson Ads get smarter and that helps brands understand consumers more Brands are finally able to listen to what their consumers are thinking and looking for amp160These insights can then be used to inform future creative productamp160and messaging strategiesSince Watson Ads interactions are consumerdriven these personalized experiences can create meaningful connections with the brand that may ultimately lead to higher product salesAs cognitive advertising evolves itamp8217s our hope that Watson Ads will inspire industry innovations amp160We are actively planning new solutions and ways Watson can help marketers with problems like ad fraud and brand safetyBeeler amp160As youamp8217ve talked to marketers are they seeing the full opportunity Steinberg amp160Most falsely assume that accessing data is extremely complicated and will require a significant overhaul of their systems and an insurmountable amount of new creative assets amp160While architectural changes might help optimize performance over time marketers actually have a surprising amount of resources at their fingertips amp160For the executions that Weather ran with our partners we leveraged existing FAQ documents About Us statements and social prompts which provided a rich starting point for our teams amp160Then when combined with third party dataamp160such as weather context or recently visited sites the possibilities are remarkableBeeler amp160Are there any specific use cases you can share with usSteinberg amp160Watson Ads takes advantage of Watsonamp8217s conversation capabilities to address consumer questions explain more about productsamp160and ultimately help them make better buying decisionsIn the consumer packaged goods category for example Watson Ads can tap Chef Watson to create brand new mealtime recipes on the fly combining the consumeramp8217s ingredient input with Chef Watsonamp8217s deep knowledge of the cooking domainWeamp8217re seeing an average session time of just under two minutes which far exceeds industry benchmarks Weamp8217re also uncovering interesting product insights like the fact that consumers tend to engage more deeply when theyamp8217re submitting nonintuitive ingredients for recipe suggestionsBeeler amp160Very cool Will Chef Watson be catering your session at OPSSteinberg amp160NoBeeler amp160I have a feeling you didnamp8217t even ask Last question How big a part can Watson playamp160in our lives Steinberg amp160I can tell you that IBM39s CEO and Chairman Ginni Rometty has stated Watson technology would impact the lives of more than 1 billion people by the end of 2017 and in five yearsamp160every major decision personal or business will be informed with the help of WatsonClick the social buttons above or below to share this story with your friends and colleaguesThe opinions and points of view expressed in this content are exclusively the views of the author andor subjects and do not necessarily represent the views of MediaVillagecomMyersBizNet Inc management or associated writers

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Watson’s Coming Impact on Digital Advertising

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Rob Beeler

Jon Miller | Cofounder Marketo, Engagio | The Gumball Machine is Broken - Rethinking B2B Marketing - By Mike Linton

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