Data in the times of AI

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Data in the times of AI

AI needs you as much as you need AI

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In the dynamic and ever-evolving marketing realm, the quest to connect with the right audience remains an ongoing journey. While change has long been recognized as a constant, the pace of change presents a new challenge in the marketing world. Consumers, too, are evolving swiftly in their preferences and behaviours, necessitating agility from marketing organizations unlike ever before. To navigate this shifting landscape effectively, marketers require tools that keep pace with change and lend momentum to managing the marketing funnel, and artificial intelligence (AI) becomes a promising new tool.

Obsession with the Funnel

At the core of every marketing strategy lies an unwavering fixation on the marketing funnel, a hierarchical model delineating stages of awareness, consideration, and conversion. The transformative power of AI becomes apparent within this context. By leveraging AI, marketers can optimize their strategies for every funnel stage, enhancing audience targeting, refining messaging, and maximizing campaign effectiveness. Thus, AI emerges as a potent catalyst to navigate the intricacies of the modern marketing landscape with precision and agility that feeds our obsession with the funnel.

AI for Top Funnel Decisions

In the realm of top-funnel activities, where the primary objective is to raise brand awareness and capture the attention of potential customers, the challenge of selecting the target segment has intensified. Unlike TV, selecting target groups (TG) on digital platforms is significantly more complex. The science of segmentation has evolved, with unique taxonomies and an abundance of signals to consider. Brands are faced with the challenge of selecting from numerous user personas. Audience selection becomes even more critical as digital platforms introduce oceans of diverse signals. Here, AI has the potential to emerge as a game-changer.

AI-powered recommendations can revolutionize target consumer selection methods by considering thousands of signals beyond traditional demographics like age and location. In essence, AI assistance can be the co-pilot for campaign planners and empower them to make more thoughtful selections. It will also push digital campaign managers to get smarter as they do more in this area.

AI for Mid and Bottom Funnel Decisions

As we transition deeper into the funnel, the focus shifts towards converting awareness into action and fostering meaningful engagement with the brand. In this domain, the role of AI has become increasingly prominent, particularly within mid and bottom-funnel activities. Recognizing the complexities inherent in audience selection, industry giants like Google and Meta have embraced artificial intelligence (AI) as a potential solution. They have introduced solutions that automate the process, allowing campaign managers to define their objectives and entrusting AI to execute the intricate task of auto-selecting segments, signals, and attributes.

While embracing new ideas, we must not blindly follow them and assume they are a cure-all. This could work for some brands and may not for others.

Brands embarking on the journey from 0 to 1 may find the automated, goal-oriented approach to audience selection simpler, allowing them to focus solely on campaign optimization. However, what happens when a significant portion of their recruited customers are of low value or churn out faster? On the other hand, having achieved critical mass, brands may desire greater control over audience selection to target specific consumer cohorts. The assisted AI approach to audience selection may represent a viable middle ground in this context.

Transitioning to campaign optimization, platforms like Google and Meta have continually refined their algorithms, urging brands to provide as much campaign event data as possible. This data enables AI to optimize campaigns more effectively. While AI excels at optimizing for cost and efficiency, it remains imperative to prioritize reaching high-quality user segments, ensuring campaigns yield impactful results across the funnel.

How can marketers and agencies become "Co-Pilot" to AI and be future-ready?

The answer lies in being data-ready. AI thrives on quality data – the fuel that powers its algorithms and drives outcomes. When we become swamped with machine-generated data, the ability to generate training data validated by humans would make all the difference to the quality of outcomes for AI “software.” Hence, marketers must prioritize data readiness and feed that into AI. Unlock data readiness with widespread applications, be it for insights, segmentation, campaign activation, or attribution, and in the process, make your marketing team future-ready.

Are you using alternate consented consumer data for insights, segmentation, and top-funnel campaigns, or are you using it for mid/bottom-funnel campaigns? If not, you need to embrace the change faster. By embracing unfettered curiosity and seeking partners offering unique consented consumer signals and Insights, marketers can provide quality human-validated alternate data to train the AI models of walled gardens and DSPs. In the process, it increases the chances of enhancing the efficacy of top- and bottom-funnel campaigns across walled gardens and open internet.

Measuring data's impact on marketing efficiency is of utmost significance in today's business landscape. As such, operational involvement is necessary for success. This task is no longer considered downstream for marketing organizations but has become critical. Its achievement calls for a methodical approach, which can help efficiently utilize data to enhance marketing efficiency.

So, the question is: Are you Data-Ready (read: future-ready)?

If not, let’s do it, and if yes, let's do 10X more with data because "Data comes before AI".

Note: This article is authored by Mr. Dippak Khurana, Co-Founder & CEO, Vserv AudiencePro, and was originally published in MMA Global India and GroupM's report, 'Modern Marketing Reckoner 2024: Winning With AI.