“The speed of digital marketing is so great that we always have to make decisions in real time.” Karl Villanueva, Hello, Fresh.
The digital advertising industry continues to rapidly evolve. As industry players, we have to constantly keep up with the latest trends before they break out to stay relevant. Throughout the many changes out there, a key point in our industry now is that the user is in complete control and demands more transparency. Industry players now have to not only get their message across and talk at their audience, but rather talk to their audience in the most efficient and personable way possible for acceptance. Simultaneously, the steady rise of Artificial Intelligence (AI) signifies the importance of data rather than the concept of “robots taking over the world,” and that a seeming consensus among digital advertising experts is that we as key players should collaborate with AI rather than react against it.
Recently, we attended the annual re:publica conference and expo in Berlin as well as the Online Marketing Rockstars Festival in Hamburg Messe, where we learned about the latest industry trends. While re:publica’s motto, “tl;dr,” or “too long; didn’t read,” focused more on academically-critical angles on the effects digitalization has on society, the OMRs shared industry experts’ insights on the topics surrounding AI, data-driven decisions for creative storytelling, and the importance of transparency. Among the many interesting talks, master classes, expos, and more, we had a great time! Let’s have a look at some key takeaways from both events in our recap.
AI: Are “robots really taking over the world?”
Making data-driven decisions for creative solutions
“Data and creativity are synonymous”
User control: the importance of providing a human rights-centered industry
Food for thought: is AI here to stay?
AI: Are “robots really taking over the world?”
Over the years, the concept of AI adopted the stigma that “robots are taking our jobs,” particularly due to algorithms’ ability to learn to automize various tasks. However, many industry experts, such as Getty Images’ Senior Global Development Manager, Benjamin Beavan (OMR), and Humboldt University researchers, Shirley Ogolla, and Dr. Hendrik Send (re:publica), call for a different approach to our relationship with AI: we should collaborate and co-exist rather than compete. Ogolla and Send shared insights in their talk, “Expect the Unexpected: Implementing AI at the Workplace,” that we tend to react and resist against AI, where people and machines should instead co-operate.
With AI and machine learning functioning as data sets, machines essentially carry the task of drawing patterns from its data input as well as by matching and sorting the information. This means that while digital marketers input efficient data into our machines, these data sets give us the access to work with its automized patterns holistically. Caroline Mozilla suggests that with transformative technology, AI or data determines what the algorithm does and thus enables us to be more creative with the decisions made for content strategy connecting best to our target audiences. Meanwhile, Beavan offers that AI helps us spot patterns in big data, where it learns like a child and most importantly, allows an objective point of view on making data-driven decisions for creative solutions.
Making data-driven decisions for creative solutions
In marketing, having no data is not the issue; the issue is to understand data. From Tableau’s talk, “Marketing Analytics Evolution,” they emphasized an important challenge for digital marketers: navigating through the many marketing tools and data that are available out there; Tableau shared that as of 2019, there are 7,040 analytic tools for marketing, which has doubled since 2016. A 2017 marketing accountability study from Forbes shows that marketers with data focus increases performance and that there are three reasons for marketing analytics: faster insights (lead to), more insights that are advanced and deeper, (which thus leads to), and scalability. With that said, consider that mastering the ability to understand data will help online marketers to make better, data-driven solutions.
Through AI and a coherent analysis of data, marketers have the power to make objective choices for creative solutions. For instance, for content strategies and creative campaigns, brands can now use the power of AI to better communicate with their audiences and not at. From Quantcast’s “AI Tricks” talk at OMRs, Sara Sihelnik notes that humans not only make decisions consciously, but sometimes more with emotions, which we can also make unconsciously to where they go beyond conscious awareness.
With machine learning as a part of AI, she also suggests that AI is more than a hype because machine learning can solve problems at scale, continuously learns, and identifies real decisions. Beavan from Getty Images demonstrated how data and AI’s ability to form a learned algorithm gives online marketers access to implement effective choices for creative content, like say, choosing images that would perform well in engagement and potentially convert leads for brands.
“Data and creativity are synonymous”
Since computers see things objectively through neural points and networks with factual data, marketers can generate stories about images that machine learning provides us. For instance, if the associative words “summer feeling, smiling person” are put into a computer, the data set provided could share a catalogue of all the popular images in terms of engagement and positive interaction; through objective data, AI can essentially pick our creatives. This is because visuals, the right ones, optimize well. To demonstrate this, Beavan provided case studies of successful brand campaigns that used AI to help choose the right images for various client product campaigns on Instagram. For example, through making data-driven decisions, a travel service platform client used city images instead of beach images, where it performed better with a higher engagement of 34%.
From CNN’s masterclass, “How Data Fuels Creativity,” James Hunt, VP, Create Group, and Tini Sevak, VP, Audiences & Data, synonymously compares data with creativity and not as a binary, mainly due to how data, user behavior, and consumption has changed. Through meaningful and relevant content, data used to back online marketers’ communication strategies will build credibility and favorability through accuracy and trust. With the right understanding of data sets from machine learning combined with objective, data-driven decisions for creative solutions, marketers can better communicate to people with their brand messages through emotionally-connected and visual storytelling to strike a chord.
User control: the importance of providing a human rights-centered industry
Between both conferences, AI and creative storytelling were some of the many trends that came up, and in addition, the most important topic that will only continue to increase and stick around: the importance of transparency and user control. Google VP of Central Europe, Philipp Justus, gave a talk about advertising in a privacy-first world and called for using data for our products and helping the needs of others and not just to advertise; 86% of global users want to understand the need for transparency with data, what data is collected, and what they get out of the exchange. Justus reflected on the question of how marketers can do more with less, but relevant data.
Following the promotion of increasing transparency while giving users more control, Caroline Mozilla’s talk at re:publica suggested that transparency online is opaque, which is concerning since trust is a “byproduct of transparency.” Most interestingly, Mozilla suggests that transparency needs to be human rights-centered, and that to her, violations of this transparency are the current systems and protocols as well as location services being automatically turned on, which makes sense.
Once industry players rightfully maintain these privacy policies, a brand can better obtain the trust of their target user, which enables an open line of authentic interest, loyalty, and eventually lead conversions from the brand’s online messages. As Philip Morris’ Marian Salzman proposed in her OMR talk, “Creating Positive Buzz: You Zig, Let Others Zag,” with the state of content marketing and communication today, we are essentially experiencing “P2P,” or, “person to person” marketing. This is true as connecting humans to data in the right way will help marketers have a data-driven creative-making process to enable a win-win scenario for users and brands.
Food for thought: is AI here to stay?
Like fashion, the digital marketing industry trends come in and out quite fast and rapidly. The status quo of the transformation of digital marketing is that it is currently relationship and technology marketing-based with an emphasis of a data-efficient, storytelling approach. As Sevak suggests, today in marketing, user expectations are increased, while patience has decreased. Thus, when targeting, we should define people on interests or attitudes, not fields such as their jobs. Data sets with objective and factual perspectives resulting from the ability AI can provide enable us digital marketers to make data-driven decisions for creative solutions.
As long as our technology and strategies allow for a human rights-centered approach while communicating with effective and creative stories, AI will continue to successfully stick around and co-exist with humans rather than compete against it. “We overestimate the effect of technology short-term but underestimate long-term,” says Quantcast Country Director DACH, Sara Sihelnik. If we continue to give users full control while using the aide of AI to provide us with relevant data sets, we as digital marketers have the full potential to gain more brand loyalty through properly communicating with our target audiences.
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