Sarah O'Connell
March 22, 2023 | 01:39:57
It seems that you can’t go a day without seeing a news headline that references Artificial Intelligence. With the rise in popularity of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools, there is debate about the use of AI in public relations, journalism, and everyday life.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been transforming industries and businesses, and ad tech, a specialist sector where we do a lot of work, is no exception. Already, AI is emerging as a game-changer for ad tech, with a variety of uses that are solving problems and driving efficiencies.
If you google “Generative AI” you’re likely to see at least five news stories about tech companies using it for search, products and tools. Generative AI is a type of artificial intelligence technology that can produce various types of content, including text, imagery, audio and synthetic data, so it makes sense that so many companies are jumping on the generative AI train. Meta, Google, and Snap are using generative AI to power augmented reality features, to create images and videos, and helping to jumpstart their marketing campaign plans. Brands can use generative AI to create new images and videos that are unique and personalized to users.
As a personalizable technology, AI can help advertisers identify ultra-specific niches in order to get the right ads in front of the largest number of desirable people. Personalized ads have a higher conversion rate as they are more relevant to the user’s interests and needs. AI-powered personalization also enhances the user experience since users see ads that are tailored to their preferences.
Cooler Screens, the world’s largest in-store digital media and merchandising platform for retail, turns refrigerated doors into interactive advertising displays using AI. The smart screens inform, entertain and inspire shoppers to take action through tailored content driven by contextual signals like store profile, occasion, geography, seasonality, or time of day. Customers are empowered to make choices that best fit their budgets, diets, preferences, and unique health conditions.
Ad fraud wastes or steals ad budgets by inflating clicks, impressions, faking app installs, or otherwise defrauding ad networks.It’s a significant challenge in ad tech, and AI can help detect and prevent it. Fraud costs advertisers billions of dollars each year. There are AI algorithms that can detect fraud by analyzing data such as user behavior, IP addresses, and device types. AI can identify suspicious patterns and quickly alert brands of the suspicious activity for review. Ad tech companies also use AI-powered fraud detection tools to identify and prevent fraudulent ads.
The ad optimization process, which tracks and adjusts campaign elements to improve performance, used to be tedious and time-consuming. With AI, brands can optimize for attention metrics in real time by analyzing data such as ad performance, user engagement, and conversion rates. If brands see that an ad campaign is performing well, they can use the algorithm to increase the ad spend to maximize reach. On the other hand, the AI algorithm can show when an ad is not performing well and the brand can use that information to either reduce their ad spend, change their targeting strategy, or even stop the ad entirely. AI makes it easier for brands to optimize their ad campaigns, giving them the ability to maximize efficiency and effectiveness.
Analytics is at the heart of ad tech. Not only can AI tools track and synthesize data, but they digest vast amounts of it much faster than a human. AI can analyze and share data that has been collected in real time and use it to drive better results. Its superpower gives AI a pivotal role in redefining data collection, analysis, and usage.