So why leave it to machines to find a solution?

In this video interview with Beet.TV, two executives discuss how artificial intelligence can come to the rescue of troubles in media and marketing:

• Randi Stipes, Chief Marketing Officer of IBM Watson Media and Weather
• Kieley Taylor, Global Head of Partnerships, Managing Partner, GroupM

AI = Added Inclusion

GroupM’s Taylor says she is using the tools to interrogate her agencies’ creative for inclusivity.

“There’s a tonne of opportunity … using AI to curb things like hate speech, to make sure that there is more inclusivity in the platform discourse,” she says.

“Personalization at scale sometimes was not as meaningful as it could be to people who are perhaps underrepresented.

“So we’re really looking holistically across both creative and media to make sure that there’s meaning on behalf of advertisers when they’re talking to diverse audiences in a more equitable and inclusive way.”

Boosting identification

IBM’s Stipes, who leads marketing for IBM Watson Advertising, says the industry has “only scratched the surface in terms of showcasing what AI can do”.

Clorox last year used AI and chatbots for customer service inquiries during the pandemic.

Stipes says AI can be useful in a world watching the looming deprecation of third-party cookie matching.

“AI can rapidly and continuously make sense of the privacy-friendly data inputs and then use that data to recognise patterns to make predictions without relying on cookies or other identifiers,” she says.

“DCO (dynamic creative optimization) has traditionally been all about preset, programmed rules, decision trees. With AI, though, what we’re really talking about is real-time continuous learning that allows brands to predict the creative that will actually drive consumer action.”

Influencer intel

IBM’s Stipes also says AI can help agencies and brands pick through the growing number of influencers open to marketer partnerships.

“You’ve got to pick the right spokesperson and that’s a pretty arduous task to go back and look at a potential influencer’s content maybe from a decade ago,” she says.

“So using AI actually can enable brands to do this in a way that’s scalable and make better decisions.”

Responsible data

As agencies lean into advanced data usage technologies, GroupM’s Taylor says it’s important to do so responsible.

“We agree with the industry consensus that fingerprinting’s creepy,” Taylor says.

“We got to this place and this lack of trust, not the consumers, (they) were right in feeling wary of that thing that they already bought following them around the internet.

“So things like the data ethics compass help us to make sure that we are being really thoughtful about what the data is. Just because we can (do things), doesn’t mean we should.”

This video is part of the Global Forum on Responsible Media produced by Beet.TV, GroupM with the 4A’s.  This track on creativity, advanced technology and advertising is sponsored by IBM Watson Advertising.  For more videos on this topic, visit this page.  For more information on IBM Watson Advertising, please visit this page. 

This article and accompanying  video highlight interviews from this series.

Sheri Bachstein, Watson Advertising and The Weather Company

“It’s time for us to evolve,” Sheri Bachstein, global head of Watson Advertising and The Weather Company, says in this highlight reel from Beet.TV. “It’s time for us to leap forward. We’ve been working with the same traditional identifiers and cookies for a long time — really, since programmatic came into play almost 10 years ago.”

She says artificial intelligence (AI) technology can help to address four key priorities for the advertising industry: first, reduce the dependence on “walled gardens” like internet search and social media companies. Second, avoid over-reliance on third-party cookies and device identifiers that are becoming less effective for audience tracking. Third, stop over-targeting the same consumers among different media channels. Finally, avoid paying fees for unnecessary tech services.

“There’s just a lot of change that needs to happen in the advertising industry,” she says. “It’s not going to happen if we keep doing the same things – if we keep using the same tech, and expecting different results, which we desperately need.”

Norman de Greve, CVS Health

CVS Health, the drugstore store chain with more than 9,900 locations throughout the U.S., uses IBM Watson’s AI to comb through data and help to target ads more appropriately to its customers — a key priority as the weather grew colder and flu season started.

“The speed of it and the ability of it to handle massive amounts of data and associations create opportunities that just haven’t been even on the radar before, ” Norman de Greve, chief marketing officer of CVS Health, says. “We used different data to find a highly accurate way to predicting if flu is going to be rising in a locale. We can get our advertising into that locale before flu happens.”

Allyson Witherspoon, Nissan Motor

Reaching consumers in a way that’s contextually relevant requires a data-driven strategy for Nissan Motor, which has different car models for different segments of the automotive market.

“We’re finally at a place where we’re taking that digital-first approach,” Allyson Witherspoon, U.S. chief marketing officer of Nissan Motor, says. “We’ve been talking about it for years, and based on what we’ve seen and how consumers are shopping and consuming media, it’s here.”

Consumer worries about privacy have led to calls for more regulation on data sharing, such as the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) that may become a model for a federal law.

“As we get to a much more privacy-focused environment, how do you continue to do that with the data that you have available?” she said.

Ben Jankowski, Mastercard

Using data for ad targeting makes investments in media “powerful and productive” as part of a broader effort to improve media measurement and the walled gardens.

“The work that the industry is trying to do around cross-media measurement has the potential for a huge change,” Ben Jankowski, senior vice president of global media at Mastercard, says. “We believe we’re making progress in breaking down the walled gardens that we’ve whined about for the last number of years, and trying to make progress on: how do I really understand the consumer journey across platforms?”

Stuart Pennant, Wavemaker

Predictive analytics to help make smarter decisions about media buying are a key advantage of AI technology.

“In terms of applications for machine learning in our industry, they’re very rich,” Stuart Pennant, executive director of data and product at Wavemaker US, says. “Understanding how much money or how much funds should be going into certain channels, let’s say search, and predicting what your response would be based on other media that’s running…This is very valuable to our clients.”

He also sees important applications in sentiment analysis that provides insights into consumer attitudes and online buzz that’s part of earned media.

Michael Lampert, Mondelez

A data-first approach underpins the strategy of Mondelez International, the packaged foods company whose brands include Oreo, Triscuits, Ritz Crackers and South Patch Kids candy.

“We need to move from the old legacy models we grew up with, where you had a TV budget that you allocated first, and then you started to figure out what could be done after that,” Michael Lampert, global marketing data lead at Mondelez International, says. “Because of the decisions of consumers and the way they’re consuming media — the omnichannel approach we all talk about — you have to look at where the consumers are.”

Randi Stipes, Watson Advertising and The Weather Company

IBM’s AI technology is capable of handling a variety of big data applications, including those for media and marketing. As an indication of AI’s power, it has been applied to cybersecurity to help ward off online attacks, and currently helps to mitigate 1 trillion security events a month.

“We think AI can help, and play a critical role. We’ve seen AI address foundational problems and foundational challenges in other industries,” Randi Stipes, chief marketing officer of Watson Advertising and Weather and the Developer Ecosystem Group at IBM, says. “If AI can help with these incredibly complex problems, surely it can play a vital role in the marketing and the media industry.”

You are watching “Break The Cycle: Making AdTech Better in 2021,” a Beet.TV leadership video series presented by IBM Watson Advertising. For more videos, please visit this page.

“It’s not all doom and gloom,” Randi Stipes, chief marketing officer of Watson Advertising and Weather and the Developer Ecosystem Group at IBM, said in this interview with Beet.TV. “We’re already seeing the industry move forward. We’re seeing the right direction with third-party cookies going away, with increased demand for consumer privacy regulations.”

Her company recently published the “AI Advertising Almanac” to describe the technology’s potential to tackle some of the biggest challenges faced by the marketing and media industries.

“We still have a big challenge ahead of us: How do we make sense of the growing and disparate data sets that exist?” Stipes said. “We think AI can help, and play a critical role. We’ve seen AI address foundational problems and foundational challenges in other industries.”

IBM’s AI technology has been applied to cybersecurity to help ward off online attacks, and currently helps to mitigate 1 trillion security events a month. Businesses also are using AI to predict when it’s safe for their employees to return to work, a daunting prospect as they grapple with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

“If AI can help with these incredibly complex problems, surely it can play a vital role in the marketing and the media industry,” Stipes said.

Developing AI Standards

IBM Watson Advertising is currently working with the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and other organizations to develop standards for AI applications in advertising and marketing. The goal is to make those applications more transparent and boost adoption.

“We need to develop a standard that will help us scale AI’s potential,” Stipes said. “For people to trust AI, it must be transparent. It must be explainable. We also need to make sure that the data and the insights stay with their creator.”

Stipes sees additional potential for AI outside of programmatic advertising, where the technology helps to match buyers and sellers of digital ad placements in automated auctions. Ad personalization is a big area of growth, using AI for natural-language processing (NLP) to better understand the context and meaning of text and human speech.

“We know that personalization is a huge challenge for marketers, but when we use AI’s natural-language processing capabilities, it can create ad experiences that help a brand engage one-on-one with a consumer,” Stipes said. “That forms a more personal connection.”

AI also has applications in fraud prevention, media measurement, ad targeting and sentiment analysis to match marketers with social influencers who can help to reach target audiences.

IBM currently is working with the Ad Council, the nonprofit that produces and distributes public service announcements, on an effort to promote awareness about the safety of coronavirus vaccines. The council is using IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator to predict and serve relevant creative to target audiences as well as leverage those insights to inform their larger strategy.

“We want to help the industry get smarter on AI’s value,” Stipes said. “The challenges that we’re facing right now — those should serve as a catalyst to forge a better path forward.”

You are watching “Break the Cycle,” a leadership series brought to you by IBM Watson Advertising and Beet.TV. For more videos, please visit this page.