The future of AI and Marketing : The Arrival of Contextual Marketing
AI is one of the most promising technologies currently on the horizon all around the world. But, at the moment, we’re still in the early stages of Artificial Intelligence technology, or as I often put it, it’s “The Commodore 64 Era of AI.” I got excited by the possibilities of my Commodore 64, but just think about the evolution in computer power we had since then. Wow. Well, that same evolution is ahead of us. The future of artificial intelligence and marketing is bright for both advertisers and consumers. Technology has already made a lot of advances, especially in the field of marketing. From the 1990s to the present, marketing has evolved from “Permission Marketing” to the “Targeted Marketing” of today. Once Artificial Intelligence systems understand your current context and mood, they can help to improve the customer experience. Once AI can understand your mood and context, we have arrived at the future of marketing. A world where everything (product, service, communication, price) is personalized based on the mood of the consumer.
Today, we are not there yet. Contextual marketing is still something for the future. For instance, right now, if AI notices that you’ve purchased some shoes, or booked a hotel in a certain city, it simply recommends the same thing over and over again, which is annoying to the customer. It doesn’t help the advertiser either. You’ve already bought that product. But, as the technologies of Artificial Intelligence move into the next phase, of “Contextualized Marketing,” this whole dynamic will change and improve the overall customer experience. Once AI gets to the stage of Contextualized Marketing, the system will be able to understand your entire context and mood.
The example I like to use to illustrate this is linked to Spotify. Everyone knows how the Spotify algorithm works: if you like happy music, Spotify will recommend more happy music. Even if someone close to you dies, even that day, Spotify will still recommend happy music. Unless Spotify understand your current mood and context. Then, it will recommend adapted music. This is where we are going. The future of marketing and artificial intelligence leads to a world of contextual messages, products, prices….
Check out this video if you would like to hear all my thoughts on this topic: