Me vs. the machine: A few ways AI is impacting mobile marketing

As the hype around artificial intelligence (AI) grows, the notion that blog posts like this will soon be brainstormed, typed up and published in the blink of a robotic eye by a machine doesn’t sound as ridiculous as it might have done a few years ago.

Marketers out there needn’t worry just yet though – Arnie kindly paid me a visit from the future to inform me this won’t happen for quite some time. However, the signs are there. In present day, AI is seamlessly becoming a bigger part of our lives. It’s already being used to aid medical procedures and drive cars.

While this is a little frightening, machines aren’t here to terminate our efforts (or jobs) in tech, but rather makes things much more efficient for everyone. And digital advertising is an area that could certainly do with a helping hand.  

Looking specifically at mobile, the ways AI is changing the game are fascinating. Here are some things the industry is talking about.

Hyper-targeting

Mobile advertising has always been affected by the sheer volume of data that must be processed and analyzed for marketing campaigns. Machines can do this faster than any human will ever be able to, meaning more sophisticated audience segmentation and ad targeting solutions are becoming a reality. Algorithms can now analyze millions of data points to make use of data in ways that were previously unachievable. 

The smart use of AI is already accelerating the move away from serving ads to broad user segments, such as age range or country of residence. It allows advertisers to show ads that are targeted to individual consumers based on their mobile interactions. Take e-commerce, for instance. An algorithm could assess past data and conclude that since a 31 year old individual regularly visits a certain online store in the evening, to view polo shirts, there is a high chance they’ll be interested in buying chinos (which would then be displayed to them as an ad). The real game-changer with AI here, is that machines can self-learn from the 100s of millions of user patterns and trends they see every day, which would be impossible for a human. From this, they can predict current and future customers for a business and target them with relevant content, eliminating a sizeable amount of wasted budgets and increasing ROI.

For programmatic buying, AI can use this data to calculate exactly when an ad should be served to an individual user, ensuring spend isn’t wasted on displaying something to them at the wrong time.

The fight against fraud

AI is helping the industry win the seemingly endless whack-a-mole game of mobile ad fraud. Machines can scan massive amounts of data, spot irregularities and flag issues for further inspection at a far quicker rate than us mere mortals. On top of that, these AI driven solutions are continuously learning and optimizing their performance to foresee problems and identify potentially dangerous or suspicious activity.

On the other hand, it’s important to note that despite its awesomeness, AI can’t completely replace the human brain and its expertise. Blindly trusting the data we receive from third-party tools that use machine learning may lead to the loss of sources that were actually legit. Some of these solutions continuously flag false positives, so behind each smart machine there should be at least one smart analyst who is able to evaluate the data correctly. The mobile industry wins a lot with the collaboration between AI and human intelligence, but it will undoubtedly lose if its plays favourite with any of them.

Better experiences

It’s been established that impactful mobile advertising can’t be done with a “one size fits all” approach. Providing personalized experiences is the way to excite people, and AI can move this along at a faster pace than humans. By crunching data at immense speeds, those clever algorithms can accurately match ad content and formats to users in real-time based on their short- and long-term preferences and interests. This tech can also be used in app to deliver better all-round user experiences, such as improved customer support where AI learns from an individual’s problems and pushes content to help solve other issues they might have.

Improved creative

We recently published an infographic on using data from playable ads to optimize apps. It won’t too long before AI is analyzing this kind of information and offering recommendations on how elements of creative should look for selected audience types. By storing and sieving through data on design and its performance, machines will soon develop a keen eye for what looks good, and this can used to speed up the creative process.

Quick learners

By helping the industry overcome some of its toughest challenges, there’s no doubt that AI is defining and bringing mobile advertising into a new era. The key to completing this transformation rests on how quickly companies fully understand how to use this technology and the ways it can be applied to achieve specific business objectives.