Trust in the machines

Let’s get marketers back doing what they love – creative campaigns, says Ben Murphy, UK MD at Quantcast

Slowly the wheels are turning again. Within agencies and brands, marketers are preparing to launch new campaigns energised by pent-up creativity and ideas that had no outlet during lockdown.

Yet, situations and sentiments around the globe continue to change daily. The need for unique, engaging, and nimble marketing has never been more important.

With many more consumers online, marketers will need to work harder to engage them as competition surges. Experimentation and being responsive to new emerging opportunities will be key to gaining an edge over the competition.

This agility isn’t possible if marketers have to spend a good chunk of their time executing and reporting on campaigns when their time could be better spent coming up with cutting-edge, award-winning creative and strategies.

Let’s get marketers back to what makes them exceptional – innovative creative campaigns that drive cut through and consumer engagement- and leave the repetitive administrative tasks to the machines.

AI has the ability to easily digest and identify patterns in vast amounts of information, as well as taking action on those insights. Machine learning can help marketers better understand audiences, even during a period of continual change, giving them precious time back to be able to focus on creative, strategy, and building better relationships with their clients.

Here are three ways AI and machine learning are empowering marketers to reconnect with their creativity, spend more time on strategy vs execution, and carve out time for those all-important client lunches:

1. Freedom for experimentation

When juggling execution, reporting, and creativity, it can be hard for marketers to find the time for experimentation on campaigns, especially whilst campaigns are in flight.

By combining real-time data and machine learning, marketers can see results as they happen, rather than waiting for the end of campaign reports. This hugely reduces the cost of testing new ideas as budget can be easily reallocated to the most effective ideas.

With the heavy lifting of manual execution taken care of, marketers can invest time and budget into A/B tests and other types of experimentation.

This agility also allows marketers to capitalise on fleeting trends, which for many, defined lockdown – Tiger King and banana bread spring to mind.

The most forward-leaning brands and agencies are already doing this.

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Information about trends that emerged from the first waves of lockdown (e.g. the rise in use of video calling and food delivery services) are only useful for marketers when they’re in the early stages.

By the time everyone is aware of them, the competitive advantage to act on that  information is lost. Only machine learning has the capacity to enable humans to easily track fast changing trends across a widely diverse set of signals.

2. Real-time feedback

Using a platform that provides AI-driven insights in real-time gives marketers the advantage over their competitors, adapting campaigns as soon as new patterns of behaviour emerge.

By analysing data around demographics, web browsing behaviours, and past purchases, marketers can detect common attributes and better understand segments of consumers.

Having access to data from millions of sources can help build profiles of new consumers, consumers that were previously unknown.

Through this pattern development, marketers can predict a range of actions a user might take next.

In a privacy-first world, having authentic, real-time, first-party data is key, so predictions can update as privacy preferences change.

3. Find new audiences for your creativity

We’re big on creativity at Quantcast. We all have campaigns we can remember for their relevance, courage and creativity. Great campaigns mean nothing if they aren’t reaching the right audience though.

Through the use of machine learning, “common attributes” can be detected and marketers can better understand segments of consumer behaviours.

The post-pandemic world is undeniably different and whilst old audiences have changed, new ones have emerged.

Real-time data can enable marketers to build profiles of new consumers that were previously unknown and engage with them effectively, with AI serving them campaigns that will resonate with them.

No more dreaming ‘too big’. With machines taking care of all the repetitive tasks, there is time to invest in planning award-winning campaigns that will be remembered for years and be seen by the optimum audience.

Automation drives up efficiency. Yet one of the challenges faced by brands and agencies is learning to trust in the technology’s decision-making capability.

Understandably, marketers are reluctant to relinquish control over their campaigns entirely to automation, but it’s not magic – it’s mathematics.

Machine learning platforms are only as good as the data behind them.

Quantcast has live data from over 100 million sources on the open internet, powering real-time decisions for marketers and advertisers.

The ability for machines to achieve the goals set for them presents a huge possibility that humans can’t match.

Machines can tirelessly improve, iterate and adapt to a vast set of signals in order to achieve the best possible outcome.

Let’s get marketers back to what makes them exceptional – innovative creative campaigns.

Leave the execution and evaluation to the machines.