The difficulties that marketers face have considerably risen in the past few years. Budgets are being strained, consumers are becoming increasingly dispersed and their attention span is dwindling each year.
Marketing tactics have had to adapt more swiftly and frequently in response to competitor moves or unanticipated disturbances like COVID.
Brand messaging must therefore be adapted to a wide range of audiences, and media spending must be managed, while campaigns must have the option to be promptly launched. This is where AI steps in to save the day. AI has impacted numerous facets of marketing, yet, undoubtedly media buying and planning is the only area that has explored the limits of AI. Let’s see why and how.
If You’re Not Using AI in Media Buying, We’ve Got Bad News For You!
Utilizing artificial intelligence in order to generate statistical analyses allows marketers to leverage quicker and more intelligent decisions. According to Deloitte’s study on AI, more than 45% of artificial intelligence adopters report great success regarding the increase of KPIs after employing the technology.
By combining different data sets to create a comprehensive picture, AI can draw connections and spot patterns that are otherwise invisible to human perception. The majority of AI developments in marketing take advantage of the sheer amount of data processing that human resources can’t possibly offer, reducing the amount of effort and personnel required in order to optimize marketing campaigns to their fullest potential. Believe it or not, AI can come up with data insights 1000 times quicker than a human.
AI goes beyond the simple historical analysis of data and constructs forecasts of expected outcomes and makes recommendations for how to get ready for those predicted events. This enables marketers to encourage proactive behavior rather than reactive behavior in response to external environmental changes. The secret to remaining yet another step in front of the competition is information decision-making supported by AI and historical data.
Media Planning and AI Should Get a Room Together
Although media planning might be a tedious chore to some, AI presents several intriguing options. AI can optimize allotment using advanced analytics since it can combine data from both digital and other channels, while also spotting outliers and abnormalities and taking into account seasonal trends.
With the help of AI and automation, planning experts can more effectively create strategies that will attract clients and merchants by using a machine to handle labor-intensive tasks behind the scenes.
Software is used to conduct programmatic advertising, which boosts its effectiveness and generates income by automatically matching publishers’ available placements with advertisers’ banners and needs to target particular demographics.
In addition to purchasing ad clicks in advance from particular publishers, it also offers real-time auctions when marketers compete for impressions in either desktop or mobile placements. Programmatic advertising is gradually replacing all processes that previously required manual input. This is why machine learning and AI play a big role in both placing the ads and ruling the bid auctions.
Using Visitation Patterns to Optimize Campaigns
In media buying and planning AI is currently used for creative communication, and purchase optimization, although the mechanisms used to accomplish each of these application cases may differ based on the focus and objectives of the business.
Well before a campaign is launched, AI can be used to study the brand’s website traffic and social networks following, enabling marketers to deploy “pre-optimized” campaigns, banners, and even landing pages due to the quicker learning and forecasting of AI.
Machine learning can discover the best visual and copy combinations for distinct target segments. For bidding optimization, AI enables brands to make effectively-priced bids for each separate ad placement in the marketplace, and it makes sure that ads are shown to those who are suitable viewers and that the display advertisements are shown in brand-safe settings only.
AI Won’t Render Marketers Useless, The AI-pocalypse is Still Far
Artificial intelligence and deep machine learning algorithms can quickly process data and point out inconsistencies or trends while failing to process emotions and missing elements such as intuition, real-world contexts, and word of mouth. AI can only do so much in optimizing the campaigns to keep them cost-efficient and properly placed.
The most visually stunning and cunning campaigns will always be created by great media buyers and designers. Although it’s obvious that artificial intelligence may be a useful element of any marketing strategy, knowing how and when to use the technology is much more helpful. A completely automated campaign won’t offer the same opportunity for learning as a campaign that is managed by a human.
Final Words
In the near future, we would expect the most successful and memorable campaigns to be run by professional marketers who strike the correct balance between using ML, AI, and human efforts to test hypotheses, gather insights and provide outcomes for their customers as artificial intelligence and automation become more intricately intertwined into digital marketing.
Those who fail to adopt AI into their strategies would either require an insurmountable amount of human labor or would fall behind the competition.
Author Bio – Steve Kaplan
Founder, Click Then Convert
Steve Kaplan is a founder at Click Then Convert, a performance marketing expert, and a long-time media buyer and strategist. Now, he’s taking over the world of applying AI and Machine learning to DTC and PPC, where he guarantees a 30% ROAS with a proven blueprint for moving clients from 6 or 7 figures to 8 figures.
A commitment to measurable results and ROI is always on his mind when using Martech to capture the best data and build the most comprehensive strategies. Sharing his knowledge and experience is a passion, and he wants to jumpstart others on their paths to modernizing beyond current trends.