3 Ways Artificial Intelligence Will Affect Marketing in 2017

Our society is undergoing a major transformation. New tools and ways of working are emerging and it’s important to understand how we can use these changes in our work. AI is one of the trendiest subject and it is developed in every industry: healthcare, travel, bank … To handle this evolution, marketers have to be prepared to incorporate this technology in their daily work.

We already know how powerful AI is but do we know the real impact on digital marketing?

To answer this question, it will be interesting to focus on three main areas: Advertising, search and customer behaviors.

First, marketers want to create a better way to implement advertisement. It isn’t only about the target of the ads or when to show them, is about create more personalized ads in order to improve the quality of their message. AI will use the Natural Language Processing to match ads with user’s interest thanks to their research (keyword) and based on the context. This will completely change the traditional approach of audience segmentation and will keep the users more satisfied.

Indeed, the implementation of AI will also improve marketers marketing campaign. Users are always seeking for relevant and helpfull information. With AI and especially RankBrain (Google), now it is possible to recognize a wide range of queries who were previously unrecognizable. Marketers can take advantage of this technology to be able to produce better content, based on voice search for example.

The most interesting changes bringing by the AI will be the new way to analyze customer behavior. For example, Facebook is already using deep learning technology to analyze and detect the human face, understand their feelings or to understand the nuances of language. Thanks to this tool, marketers will be able to clearly understand what their customers feels, what they think so marketers will be able to do better segmentation or targeting for ads.This also mean that they will meet user's need in a very pertinent way

To conclude, putting these new digital needs into the right perspective are very pertinent ways to meet both customer and marketer’s expectations. It’s important to stay informed about innovations and technologies in order to be competitive.

Thalia Lafond & Sarah Lundqvist

http://medicalfuturist.com/googles-amazing-digital-contact-lens-can-transform-diabetes-care/

Current and Future of Location Based Marketing

            Location based marketing is just another useful tool for businesses to utilize that exists because of emerging technology. It would have been the dream for advertisers decades ago to have access to the information of the where abouts of their potential customers. Now, with all of the services and tools that are experimenting with location based services, it made the tracking of consumers possible. The one thing about location based service is that people might shy away from the option to ‘actively check in’ into the service, without a huge incentive for them to do so, it’s useless to simply ask people to turn on the location option. What does seem to contribute to the success of location based marketing more is the act of passive check ins. Passive check ins include when people tag themselves in a location on a picture or video they post to Instagram, Facebook, Twitter etc.

            Looking at current trends, it is a must to invest in location based marketing as it has a promising future. According to statistics, nearly a third of the world’s population will own a smartphone in 2017. Plus, 80 percent of all social media is happening through a mobile device, and social media platforms are the easiest ways to encourages users to geotag their content.

Above all, mobile commerce continues to become more prevalent for companies. B2C businesses are serving localized ads to nearby customers, localized ads can raise the conversion rates threes times more than regular ads. Author Aaron Strout lists the four important areas that are key to grasping the value of location based marketing currently:

1.     Sensors: Technology such as Bluetooth Low Energy beacons, sensors allow near-field communications between a user and their smart device. This allows the ability to wake up in-store apps. Both Samsung and Apple has included NFC chips in the past two generations their smartphones.

2.     Geo-Fences: These are fences that use GPS, Wifi, electromagnetic fields or RFID technologies for companies to trigger and collect data when the user enters them. This technology needs to be paired with a mobile app with location service turned on or by a geo tagged post on a social media platform.

3.     Context: The right context is crucial to location based marketing. To market to the customer, knowing where they come from and where they are going is a must. So, it is critical to map functionality to location, since with location based marketing the experience the customer is getting is happening in real time.

4.     Ad tech: $100 billion is expected to be spent on mobile advertising this year, it’s clear that marketers understand its’ importance. There is great leverage for retailers to adopt location based ads besides social and in app.

              So what does the future hold for location based marketing? As we have concluded it’s significant to the future of advertising. Strout suggests in the article that more and more sensors existing in smartphones and now fitness bracelets will increase context for marketers. Secondly, augmented reality; even though as of now, more augmented reality apps are entertainment based, there is a huge opportunity in this field for location based marketing. Strout envisions every major retailer to use smart bots and augmented reality to create personal shoppers or concierges for the customers. In conclusion, there’s much room to grow in the department of location based marketing. It would be valuable for retailers to keep in mind. 

Rose Yin, Yauheni B. 

Source of article: http://marketingland.com/location-based-marketing-going-195732

Public transportation is getting digital: good news for ecommerce!

Change is coming very fast regarding transportation today. Public transportation has to grown and change significantly to face the growing number of users and their new expectations. A bunch of carpool startups have been created in the last decade such as Uber, Lyft, Heetch making public transportation old-fashioned for a lot of people.

To take part in the smartest-cities of the world race, Paris announced this month that it plans to have the most digital metro in the world by 2025 with new innovative infrastructures such as optical fiber, data centers, telecom networks, Wi-fi and geolocation system. Parisian subway is getting digitalized in order to help people gain a lot of times when they have to go from a point A to a point B. But this is not the only issue.

Paris metro has always been an important place for advertisers. Indeed, there is almost 5 millions of users everyday. Those users are consumers and you can easily grab their attention : when their are in the metro they do not have much to do, people are waiting their train and then, they wait in the train to arrive at their destination. Well... that was before. Today, everybody is on its smartphone. That’s why bringing wifi, geolocation and big datas where millions of consumers pass everyday  will revolutionize ads in public transportation.

Users experience will be improved and users will be able to buy anything during their journey : 1 online purchase out of 4 is made with a smartphone today and this figure keeps on increasing. Today, it is complicated to buy while you are in the metro because you do not want to take the risk to see your connection shut down. With big data analyse, retargeting and Wifi, you’ll find that your journey in the metro will probably become the right place and time for you to do your shopping.

Be able to track people on public transportation will have a big impact on digital marketing. Indeed, public transportation says a lot about you: where you live, where you work, at what time, where you go for shopping. It means that we can deduce your social background, define your favorite brands, push ads for you that matches your preferences, inform you to go out at a certain station for a special event etc… But who can gather all those data? Well, on the road, companies such as Waze already deals with a huge amount of datas and has an important impact on advertising. An other app, Moovit could become the Waze of the metro.

Actually, startups like Waze and Moovit (an israelian app created in 2014) had the idea that the most efficient way to simplify rides does not lie into high technology object but definetly onto people who are using those transportation system every day. They are creating a network where everyone can be a stakeholder. Waze’s business model is based on advertising using CPM and it has been bought by Google for 1.15 billion $ two years ago. 

Moovit works directly with the parisian public transportation company RATP to help it improve their service in cities and in return the RATP is promoting the company. Nowadays, every companies are looking for this kind of win-win situation.

 To attract people using the app, they provide virtual reward to users who are helping improve the service. They main interest is to create a community.

Will Moovit know the same success story as Waze ? If it expends to other big cities metros, we can bet that Google will look closely at their activities. 

Marine Esposito 

Julia Ibrahim - Ouali 

Sources : 

http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/le-grand-paris-veut-se-doter-du-metro-le-plus-digital-du-monde.N453497

https://dataparis.io/

https://siecledigital.fr/2016/08/01/waze-accelere-monetisation/

http://www.usine-digitale.fr/article/moovit-s-appuie-sur-les-usagers-des-transports-pour-construire-l-appli-de-mobilite-ultime.N456477