• by Charlene Weisler , Op-Ed Contributor, October 18, 2016

Or Shani, CEO and founder of Adgorithms,created an artificial intelligence-based marketing system he calls Albert (for Albert Einstein), leveraging A.I. to break through the complexity of digital marketing.

Charlene Weisler: How does Albert work?

Or Shani:  We developed artificial intelligence technology, which helps to do many of the time-consuming, manual tasks involved in modern-day marketing… We currently integrate with nearly 30 vendor platforms within the martech and adtech ecosystem. Albert comes in and acts as a single centralized point of contact.

Weisler: What does your company contribute to TV measurement to gain a greater understanding of how TV is being used/consumed?

Shani: We integrate with any third-party solution the advertiser is already using. By doing this, we’re able to use their viewer data to inform all facets of their digital campaigns, which brings online and offline efforts into greater alignment. Ultimately, this approach gives TV and digital efforts a shared focus, where digital insights inform TV efforts, and TV data informs digital targeting and conversion.

For instance, Albert can use TV data to correlate certain consumer behaviors that he sees online with specific TV advertising spots. Equipped with information about the relationship between TV and specific user patterns and trends, Albert can now make assumptions about different audience micro-segments and begin acting on them. This introduces a new way for brands to convert customers online and on mobile, who they’ve initially identified through TV.

Weisler:  What data metric do you use to match digital to TV?

Shani: Albert utilizes both deterministic data from the different media providers and different targeting methodology.  For example in a digital campaign coinciding with a TV one, Albert could target users based on a number of different interactions they have with the specific TV program during which the TV ad will be shown.  This could include targeting users that have the TV show as one of their interests on Facebook, liking its social pages, or even those that are following the show's main stars on Twitter.  

When it comes to the search channel, Albert could target users that are searching for the TV show or related searches before, after, or during the time of the program.

Weisler: Looking ahead the next five years, what do you see happening in the media measurement landscape?

Shani:  There will be many more AI-driven technological solutions that will make life easier for us, like self-driving cars or personal assistants. These things will become more common. In media, CMOs will be liberated by technology. Marketers will be free to make marketing fun again and not just focused on the execution of a campaign plan.

Weisler: Do you see marketing as a creative job or as more quantitative?

Shani:  Marketing has and always will be a mix of art and science… However, the pendulum has swung more in the direction of “science” in the past decade-plus.

As a result, the creative aspect has started to suffer. Marketers own the brand, customer acquisition and retention.

The best way to build a strong, sustainable brand, which supports the overall business growth, is through storytelling.  This requires a completely different part of the brain than the part used to analyze things until you’re blue in the face.

And marketers as a whole aren’t particularly good at this type of analysis anyhow (mostly because it’s nearly impossible for any human to scour that many channels and produce meaningful insights on each in a short period of time). The need to tell a good story doesn’t go away with data, and marketers are good at telling those stories. Let them focus on tugging at the hearts and minds of customers, while technology focuses on the data aspects of marketing.