There is no brighter, shinier object for marketers in 2018 than Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. But do brands really need to rush in? Join us as we kick off the 2018 installment of Marketing AI with this very pertinent question and explore how marketers are resisting the smoke and mirrors around these hot topics, while zeroing in on how these technologies apply to their marketing goals and infrastructure today.

AI and ML represent a huge opportunity and challenge for ad agencies; how quickly they adopt and deploy these technologies in the right way both internally and externally through client work will be crucial. But what does that mean? How can AI and ML help improve customer experiences today as well as further down the road, and what is the road map to getting there? How do these technologies inform advertisers about how to leverage data in new ways? How is it advancing programmatic advertising, in particular?

Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts sought to improve its customer experience by transforming into an “always-on” platform. To do this, the iconic New York City institution launched an AI-based conversational interface for its Web site named “Wolfie” (after the composer Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart). In this presentation, Lincoln Center’s SVP of Brand and Marketing, Peter Duffin, will share best practices and results from the implementation of “Wolfie.”

One of the most exciting applications of AI is its impact on mega marketplaces like Amazon, Wal-Mart.com, and Target.com. While the marketing tools these ecosystems offer may be less refined than Google and Facebook, AI and ML will undoubtedly accelerate the maturation of these mega marketplaces. What ecommerce marketing tools are brands and agencies experimenting with on these platforms, and how are AI/ML evolving these products? How are recommendation engines and user reviews becoming more adept thanks to AI/ML?

Search data forms a big part of the backbone for AI technology: innovations in analytics, people-based marketing, voice/virtual assistants, and image recognition all leverage search data to be more accurate. But these innovations also create new and complex data streams for marketers to interpret. How are artificial intelligence and machine learning bringing us closer to the 1:1 Promised Land, and what is search’s role in facilitating that, in particular? What are the privacy and security pitfalls along the way?

AI and ML are already revamping and improving the ad tech ecosystem, saving advertisers time by maximizing workflow efficiencies, and analyzing and readying more data for marketing purposes than a human possibly could, while also requiring less humans overall, leading to huge cost savings across the board. However, technology sellers can be quite opaque about the secret sauce behind their algorithm, making it hard for marketers to understand what they’re really buying. In light of that, we ask the buy-side to sound off on whether it’s smarter to build, buy or borrow AI technology, while giving AI sellers some tips on how best to engage them.