Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the current business hot topic, including in marketing. It seems nearly impossible for any kind of marketing/advertising industry event or conference to not have at least one (or likely more!) session or panel discussion on the subject. (I should know, in the last month or so I’ve been a panelist four times at different industry events on both sides of the Atlantic talking about how AI will impact marketing, advertising, consumers, and the futures of business and work.) Are we at “peak AI” or is this trend of great interest in the topic set to continue? Probably the latter, and rightly so.

The AI revolution in marketing, which I’ll focus on in this post, has been spurred by the influx of affordable and accessible advanced data analytics tools (typically based on machine learning methods), the availability of increasingly rich (albeit still noisy) and extensive datasets, and a growing acceptance among marketers of the potential power of data-driven approaches to marketing decision making. The winds have been blowing in this direction for some time, so this is not a new phenomenon. However, it seems that now we are at the point where almost everyone is talking about it and (hopefully) thinking hard about how AI can and will change how they do things. Here are some of my thoughts on how marketing is being changed by AI.

Marketers have more insights-related tools at their disposal that facilitate true data-driven decision making but AI is needed to help integrate across tools, datasets and platforms.

Of course, data are never perfect and marketers’ interpretations of patterns found in data by machine learning and AI analytics systems are still subject to bias and could mislead. However, we have never had so many opportunities for truly data-driven marketing. The difficulty, though, as one CMO friend described to me earlier this year, is that there are now so many tools and data sources and analytics packages and marketing technology software services available. Integrating insights across all of these tools is not easy, even if the various types of software and datasets play nicely with each other (which is often not the case). In the current marketing technology landscape, tools tend to be single purpose and sit in silos. This will change, and AI can help power these changes.

One idea, which I heard from some software engineers at the recent Teradata Partners conference in Anaheim, CA, is “analytics on analytics.” This is a great idea, in which AI-powered analytics tools can be used to take in the outputs of all the tools, platforms and datasets to identify new patterns that can give managers an even better, and importantly, integrated, view of things. In the world of science, we call this a “meta analysis” (an integrative analysis of results from multiple studies), and it is a great idea for marketing analytics and AI can be very helpful on this front.

This is, of course, a highly speculative question. From an extreme point of view, one could argue that AI will pose a threat to the entire market economy system. The rationale is that AI might undermine von Hayek's main argument in favour of the market economy. In our new book, we have taken a less extreme view and argued that AI will create smart services that will disintegrate the customer from the service provisioning process. This, of course, only shed light on a small facet of your question.

https://www.researchgate.net/project/Call-for-Papers-Die-informatisierte-Service-Oekonomie

Some of the contributions will be in English.

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the current business hot topic, including in marketing. It seems nearly impossible for any kind of marketing/advertising industry event or conference to not have at least one (or likely more!) session or panel discussion on the subject. (I should know, in the last month or so I’ve been a panelist four times at different industry events on both sides of the Atlantic talking about how AI will impact marketing, advertising, consumers, and the futures of business and work.) Are we at “peak AI” or is this trend of great interest in the topic set to continue? Probably the latter, and rightly so.

The AI revolution in marketing, which I’ll focus on in this post, has been spurred by the influx of affordable and accessible advanced data analytics tools (typically based on machine learning methods), the availability of increasingly rich (albeit still noisy) and extensive datasets, and a growing acceptance among marketers of the potential power of data-driven approaches to marketing decision making. The winds have been blowing in this direction for some time, so this is not a new phenomenon. However, it seems that now we are at the point where almost everyone is talking about it and (hopefully) thinking hard about how AI can and will change how they do things. Here are some of my thoughts on how marketing is being changed by AI.

Marketers have more insights-related tools at their disposal that facilitate true data-driven decision making but AI is needed to help integrate across tools, datasets and platforms.

Of course, data are never perfect and marketers’ interpretations of patterns found in data by machine learning and AI analytics systems are still subject to bias and could mislead. However, we have never had so many opportunities for truly data-driven marketing. The difficulty, though, as one CMO friend described to me earlier this year, is that there are now so many tools and data sources and analytics packages and marketing technology software services available. Integrating insights across all of these tools is not easy, even if the various types of software and datasets play nicely with each other (which is often not the case). In the current marketing technology landscape, tools tend to be single purpose and sit in silos. This will change, and AI can help power these changes.

One idea, which I heard from some software engineers at the recent Teradata Partners conference in Anaheim, CA, is “analytics on analytics.” This is a great idea, in which AI-powered analytics tools can be used to take in the outputs of all the tools, platforms and datasets to identify new patterns that can give managers an even better, and importantly, integrated, view of things. In the world of science, we call this a “meta analysis” (an integrative analysis of results from multiple studies), and it is a great idea for marketing analytics and AI can be very helpful on this front.

Artificial intelligence increasingly influences the choice of the consumer. "Random" contextual advertising, mailing, etc. is increasingly becoming the result of tools from the field of artificial intelligence. The use of artificial intelligence tools to analyze information from a personal account of a potential consumer is a source for increasing sales.

I like the answer given by Vitalina Babenko. It is short and to the point.

AI is no longer the way of the future, it is the way of now. If you're not on board, you're already behind. AI is finding planets, placing students into appropriate classes, rooting our terrorist networks and, perhaps most appropriate to this question, deciding what we are most likely to want to buy before we even get a chance. Big data teamed up with AI is critical to keeping up in the ever-expanding market.

If Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already influencing marketing and directly in the way companies approach potential customers and how we approach ourselves already encouraged to consume goods and products for invented needs or real requirements.

As real, as search engines like Google, fed by AI programs, almost guess what we want and want to just write part of the term, phrases or incomplete questions.

From all this and through data mining and concepts, there are lists of consumers that commercial companies use to fill us with invitations and announcements to move from clients and potential consumers to real customers and consumers.

I got my education as an economic theorist, so I know marketing only as a consumer. I want to say that it became more aggressive, and not only quietly informs but changes preferences of consumers. This contradicts the basic assumption of economic theory that preferences are fixed.

What we observe today is, to my opinion, a dangerous experiment with uncontrolled development of both social networks and AI, not only in marketing.

Perhaps a lot of private money is behind that, but there are no models of social impact of such development. So this evolves like an uncontrolled social experiment.

If some are interested, I have formulated such theoretical question: https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_do_you_know_or_think_about_economics_of_social_networks

More or less, I am a lot into internet and digital marketing, so quite aware of how marketing is rolling online.

I do strongly believe, as someone already noted, that AI is not the future - we are fully in line with it now. The most prominent examples are chat-bots on FB messenger (I know for sure that Lufthansa and KLM do use those). The amount of data gathered they collect is simply staggering. This together with our digital footprint we are leaving on a daily basis (intentionally or not) is just making it easier for marketers to re-target and re-market to us (if we fall under their targeting criteria of course).

LinkedIN is a perfect example whereby if you have clear targeting criteria you can literally advertise one individual in his/her forehead with your ad.

Looking forward what the future brings when it comes to merging AI and other marketing techniques though.

Dear Alexander, they cannot turn it off. There are big private money behind that.

I endorse Yuri.

Huge advertising can never be stopped and it needs millions by using famous stars of sports or movies etc.

Do you think a company can bear those costs without siphoning huge margin from consumer.

AI in marketing is already a reality; exponential knowledge automation will add fuel on fire (next 2-3 decades). Prof. Arnold's argument that these exponential technicalities will pose a threat to the market economic system are a worrying issue; the Hayekian explanation of the market information system will become obsolete, i.e. that Nobel lecture will become 'economic history' in a double meaning.

I must admit that I do like how the discussion rolls.

As a follow up on Mr. Arnold's statement. Yes, new services and products are going to pop up, undoubtedly. But isn't it in human nature to develop and thereafter to develop/change/adjust/amend accompanying economic system as well? If we wouldn't be the way we are, would we have a chance to exchange our thoughts on free of charge Research Gate platform (or on Internet in general).

In the end, nobody knows for sure how monumental AI as a concept might be in the future.

Some of the examples of people's reaction toward novelties:

http://mentalfloss.com/article/87288/8-skeptical-early-reactions-revolutionary-inventions

Dušan, I agree. My point is that AI will produce services that are autonomously delivered for and no longer with the customer. Weiser has made a name for it, even though he didn't think of "real" AI: Ubiqitous Computing. We have made two recent studies on this. The first shows that customers feel that more autonomy is perceived as convenient (argument made by Weiser). However, a perception of loss of control is also created. With regard to attitudes and intentions of use, these phenomena seem to be more or less canceling each other out, at least for the time being. Surprisingly, the second study shows that permissions to carry out autonomous activities sometimes increase and sometimes reduce the intention to use. On the normative level, I am not sure whether such services are "good" or "bad". Ultimately, however, they will lead to greater dependency.

Of course, AI does not necessarily have to become a threat to the market economy system in the long term. However, the reasons suggested above by Stephen Ternyik and myself suggest that this is quite possible.