It’s no secret that Google, Facebook, Amazon, IBM and Microsoft have begun using AI for commercial purposes, and now, numerous marketing and advertising agencies have begun to follow suit. Indeed, AI has begun to permeate the marketing and advertising industry because of its capacity to process, analyze and optimize big data in ways heretofore impossible.

As a result, we are seeing a revolution in digital advertising, including in the video sector, and in particular, programmatic advertising; and it’s a revolution that’s only just begun.  In fact, industry experts believe that what we see today is just the tip of the iceberg of what we will see four years from now when AI will have an even more profound impact on marketing and advertising.

How is AI Accomplishing this, in a Nutshell?

With the advent of AI deep learning technology, big data can now be analyzed to identify consumer trends and make marketing predictions all in real time. And the more data that is gathered and processed, the smarter the algorithm becomes, and consequently, the more tailored and cost efficient the advertising campaign becomes.

For example, AI can examine the massive amounts of big data that is procured and reveal the context in which an ad was seen, who saw it, the time and location it was viewed, and additional variables associated with such viewership. These insights are then used to tell advertisers where, when and to whom to advertise their products.

AI Trends We Can Look Forward to in the Future

And just what are those trends and impacts we can expect to see in AI over the next couple years?

1. More and more video ad campaigns will combine AI and third party brand research in order to specifically target only those users that are most likely to make a purchase; a vast improvement over previous video campaigns, which broadly delivered ads that were irrelevant to user interests.

2. Advertisers will increasingly use AI technology for their video ad campaigns to develop better metrics that will improve revenue.


3. We will see programmatic and associated AI technology expanding into TV. In fact, we’re already seeing it. More and more TV shows are being streamed online, making it possible to build a profile around viewer behavior and then target ads accordingly.


4. Spending on programmatic advertising will continue to grow; in fact, it will be huge especially as we see continued growth and success in AI technology.


5. We will continue to see aggressive improvement in deep learning and artificial intelligence performance.


6. Content augmentation; AI technologies will increasingly be used to help create better content that’s more on target and more on brand.


7. Natural language understanding is also on the horizon for AI systems. These systems will be able to understand and even predict human emotion providing advertisers the ability to actually predict future behaviors and buying patterns.


8. We will see better sorting and analysis of big data from social media forums which will lead to more powerful and more successful customer profiling and segmentation. This will then allow advertisers to reach their customers in more meaningful ways.


9. The combination of automation, real-time deep learning based on artificial intelligence, and content discovery platforms has taken and will continue to take advertising to new levels.


Those are just a few of the trends that have been triggered by AI, but there are likely to be many more impactful developments. The nice thing about these innovations is that they are beneficial to both advertisers, who can now run more cost-effective and more targeted campaigns, and to consumers, who are seeing more relevant and native ads and less intrusive and irrelevant ones. AI is no longer a mysterious concept of the future; it has already arrived and for the marketing industry and consumers alike, that is definitely a good thing.