Systematic innovation requires a willingness to see change as an opportunity.
Peter Drucker, American marketing theorist.
Nowadays marketing is everywhere and at any time. On the street, on the radio, and even at our professional mail address. But it wasn’t always the case, or at least it existed in other forms before it developed and became an integral part of our lives. Have you ever started a business or wanted to promote an event you were attending? What were the tools to do so? I’m willing to bet that after some research you decided to use tools such as GA or Facebook ads, which are rather easy to use and above all have a budget that is adapted to the possibilities of the moment.
Traditional communication, i.e. television, radio, or newspapers have long been the most used means because they were universal and accessible to all, that’s how we judge that media is efficient. But since the arrival of the Internet in the 2000s and the development of social media, it is even easier to reach a large audience without leaving home, just by being precise about the target you want to reach and the tools you use.
It is therefore legitimate to think about the future of digital marketing when we know its importance for companies. More and more targeted posts, more and more efficient algorithms, in other words, more and more personalized offers for each potential customer are the promises of the arrival of AI in digital marketing. I will illustrate the possibilities of AI in digital marketing with two examples of what is possible to make the machine do today.
RankBrain
Regarding queries, Google has developed RankBrain. It allows to analyze and process Google search results to reliably understand users’ queries and offer them relevant answers. This AI is really an asset for Google. It allows it to interpret long-tail queries and voice searches, which are becoming more and more precise and specific. To achieve these results, the algorithm will transform written language into computer language modeled by vectors that the machine will be able to understand. The algorithm updates itself over time and becomes more and more intelligent as it learns. Rankbrain has an 80% success rate.
Machine learning is already accurate
Finally, Artificial Intelligence, equipped with machine learning, is capable of understanding and apprehending the behavior of users, predicting their intentions, but above all calculating their probability of conversion! For example, thanks to these algorithms, it is possible to determine the level of interest of a visitor for a brand. If his probability of conversion is higher than a certain threshold, it will then be possible to offer him a discount coupon so that he will make a purchase. It is also possible to propose advertisements, banners, announcements, emails, and personalized recommendations according to each user’s profile
So myth or reality we will see but it is certain that the practice of marketing is bound to evolve at the same time as consumers and that the modernization of all communication tools. The future of digital marketing will make us sooner or later enter a world where Black Mirror is not so much a distant fiction, a world where advertisements will be deployed before consumers even think about the proposed product, a world where the balance of power will be reversed.
