Written by: Oren Hisherik, CTO, AcuityAds
From cutting-edge research and development to everyday operations, businesses all around the world are relying more and more on the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) with each passing year. A 2021 McKinsey survey found that “AI adoption continues to grow and the benefits remain significant.” However, with such expansive capabilities, it can be difficult navigating the AI space. In response, here are four concrete and specific ways that AI is improving customer experience and driving business outcomes in 2022.
1. Personalizing the end-to-end consumer experience as a seamless consumer journey
Simply put, the consumer journey is a representation of the complete consumer experience from start to finish. In order to personalize this experience and connect each point of the journey, a robust digital apparatus is required to stitch together the front-end flow of consumer data to an intelligent framework that activates across channels and touchpoints. This is where AI enters.
Consumers benefit from AI-powered personalization through an experience that is not only catered to their digital habits, but also their needs. Through automated decision-making, they interact with content most relevant to them and receive a distinct experience, one that feels curated and unique.
Businesses, on the other hand, benefit from the 360-degree view of consumers that they are able to build from connecting and interpreting data signals from everyone that their consumers are. Personalization has proven to drive repeat engagement, drive conversion and build loyalty over time. For instance, McKinsey found that companies that excel at personalization generate 40% more revenue from those activities than average players.
2. Utilizing AI chatbots for simple interactions
Chatbots are comparatively simple AI programs that are designed to simulate a customer service representative to consumers, most commonly through a chat window. They are by no means a new invention, but their effectiveness has drastically increased thanks to advancements in AI technology. As a result, more businesses than ever before are investing in chatbot technology: By 2022, 70% of white-collar workers will interact with conversational platforms on a daily basis (source: Gartner).
While they aren’t mature enough yet to replace real humans, chatbots provide consumers with a fast, 24/7 support structure for simple problems and queries. They are a step above sifting through troubleshooting articles and FAQ sections to find the information you want. Businesses that use chatbots can count on reduced customer service costs, fewer customers relying on their human support systems and even increased lead generation.
3. Managing fraud and cybersecurity threats
Last year was a landmark one in terms of cyber attacks: In 2021, there was a 50% increase in overall attacks per week on corporate networks compared to 2020 (source: Check Point). As a result, managing cybersecurity threats continues to be a focus in 2022. Given that human error accounts for 95% of cybersecurity breaches (source: usecure), AI shows tremendous promise in combating all types of cybersecurity threats.
Besides the obvious consumer benefit of safer online interactions, employing AI for cybersecurity accelerates both detection and response times, and reduces workload for security analysts through a system that is constantly learning and adapting to threats. More generally, AI fosters a sense of trust and loyalty for both businesses and consumers.
4. Optimizing performance through test-and-learn ecosystems
Through AI-based software testing, many industries are optimizing performance that far exceeds what could have been possible by humans alone. Test automation has been around for several years— A/B testing in marketing being one example—but recent advancements have made it faster, cheaper and more thorough.
In 2022, AI-powered optimization can not only identify bugs faster and more accurately than ever before, it can also bring new software applications to market in shorter timeframes, offering consumers faster updates due to a shorter development cycle.
How we use AI at illumin™
At AcuityAds, we use AI to power our digital advertising technology, illumin. illumin allows advertisers to plan and execute digital ad campaigns with virtually no friction, and our proprietary AI is instrumental in getting the right creative in front of the right audience in a way that is timely, relevant and cost-efficient. Specifically, our AI ensures we:
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- Target the right audience by analyzing a variety of digital behavioral signals and other data points to build out audience pools and allocate ad spend to the top-performing segments—creating look-a-like audiences and using real-time predictive modeling to understand a user’s propensity to convert.
- Optimize ad spend by identifying the most effective and efficient route to consumer conversion. It enables advertisers to build and test alternative paths and understand which one works the best for which audience.
- Place ads in contextually relevant environments by using keywords, page types, images and more to understand the context of the page and provide the most relevant content.
- Execute omnichannel campaigns autonomously by evaluating thousands of variables each minute, and allowing machine learning to optimize ad bids across channels and devices.
I’m proud of what illumin has accomplished with our AI, and believe me, there are many more advancements we are planning to further improve the customer experience and drive business outcomes in 2022 and beyond.
