How AI is changing the Advertising and Media industry

Over the past decade or so advertising has changed drastically. From the humble copywriter/editor complement, advertising today has turned into a multidimensional effort with professionals from multiple verticals pitching in to achieve the end result. This, of course, is no surprise considering the deep impact that IT has had on almost anything and everything. If a copy editor were to tell you 15 years ago that his computer will be taking care of your advertisement and its standing, you would have thrashed him with his keyboard and taken him to a mental asylum. Yet here we are at the pinnacle of IT (as far as we know) and computers are planning ad placement, bidding for keywords and updating you the status of their efforts. So the question we need to ask ourselves is how far can this be leveraged.

The use of AI and Machine learning for such processes is nothing new. As a matter of fact, the current usage of AI in advertising is still relatively primitive. But the inroads we are making through the use of this technology is substantial. However, for AI and machine learning to make any sort of assessment the most important thing is data and it needs lots of it.

What is Data Driven Advertising? 

Anything you do on the internet required the use of data and while you do it generates data as well. From a business perspective, one of the biggest reasons why organizations use the internet is for advertising. Advertising is a multi-billion dollar industry with many dimensions within. Among them internet today is the most prominent and offers the most comprehensive results. So what kind of data is it that floats around the internet to help out with advertising. Well, the answer is pretty much everything, from search histories to personal information, social media updates to data pertaining to behavioral attributes, the internet is a repository for all these. Big data as we all have come to know it is what drives this process. While in the past data-driven advertising was largely based on manual analytics, the vertical today relies on automated technology.

The AI and Machine Learning Influence on Advertising     

While still in their inception stage, both machine learning and AI are being used more than we might have anticipated.

• Search History: Most of the data that is available today on the internet comes from search history. For advertisers, tools like Google AdWords offer keyword suggestions that tend to draw in more viewers based on their activity. This largely automated service provides an edge over competitors to place your ads with the right keywords. Be it product, service or information, anything you search for on the internet gets registered irrespective of the search engine. This information is then transferred to the highest bidder like in the case of Google as part of the google analytics tool. So advertisers who are registered with the tool gain access to your location, the products you were searching for, your brand preference if you have purchased anything and so on.

• Voice Recognition: Online shopping’s next frontier-voice recognition devices like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home are currently taking the entire e-commerce sector by storm. The ability of these devices to relay your requests as well as make suggestions based on your activity is truly something that will be influencing e-commerce in the years to come.

• Social Media Bots: While being the cause of much controversy recently, the use of bots in social media has made the process of gathering information lightning fast. Social media is the source for a plethora of sensitive information and since inception has been exploited by advertisers and marketing companies to plug their products.

• AI Content Creation: The use of AI for content creation particularly for social media and BuzzFeed, have truly revolutionized advertising and marketing. Several types of content on multiple platforms are being written by AI today. Still, in a primitive stage, this is a technology that will surely pick up in the years to come and who knows maybe be even replace human writers. It is predicted that by 2043 we might have the first number one best-seller authored by AI.

Conclusion

While the current state of AI does leave much to be desired for advertisers, we are not that far from perfecting it for that purpose. There are plenty of prospects to be had on the advertisements themselves as AI and machine learning develops. Machine learning, in particular, could be leveraged to design ads without any human involvement. Currently, technologies such as deep learning are being used in the imaging process in games and movies, which point to good prospects on that front.

There are many more technologies that are still in the prototype stage being tested under various scenarios to eventually integrate into the mainstream processes within advertising. So let us wait and watch as this bit of technology evolves and its story unfolds.  

Myths about Cognitive Technology Debunked

Cognitive technology is one of the widely discussed concepts in the world of business. These discussions help businesses understand the importance and opportunities of the technology. However, there are several myths associated with cognitive technology that limit the knowledge of enterprises.

According to a survey on cognitive technology, businesses and enterprises feel confident about the future of AI and cognitive technologies. However, it would be important to clear the myths in order to successfully adapt cognitive technologies.

In this article, we are going to clear the air around the common misconceptions around congnitive technology.

1. Cognitive technology is all about automated functions

There is a myth among enterprises that cognitive technologies are only used to bring automation in the workforce. The technology is used to reduce the required human labor. However, this is not the whole truth.

AI and cognitive technologies are much more than automation solutions. The applications of these technologies can be used in multiple processes including insights. For instance, cognitive technologies can be used to create better customer service for the end users. The technology helps in understanding the customer data through insights and provide relevant and satisfactory services to the customers. So, the application is more about the intelligence, rather than just automation.

2. The financial outcomes are very basic with cognitive technologies

There are business owners who feel that AI technologies require a lot of investment and result in very basic financial outcomes. Also, they argue that the time lag between the investment and benefits is too long for general organizations.

However, the above-mentioned survey suggests that about 83% of companies that invested in cognitive technologies have obtained impressive or moderate benefits in terms of finances. So, the improved functions of the business get much better economic results with the application of cognitive technologies.

3. Cognitive technologies increase unemployment

One of the most argued topics in the application of cognitive technologies is the automation that brings unemployment. However, this is all wrong. In fact, cognitive technologies present great opportunities for the human employees to work side-by-side with the artificial intelligence.

The technology definitely enhances the productivity of employees, but it doesn’t reduce their importance in any manner. Plus, the arrival of cognitive technologies has created multiple new jobs for professionals, which is also a positive outcome in terms of the future of employment.

4. Cognitive technology is just a trend that will fade away

Many people suggest that AI and cognitive technologies are just a trend that is getting hyped by the media. But what they don’t know is that AI presents clear signs of acceptance and growth on a global scale. In fact, the AI market is expecting $59.8 billion revenue worldwide by the end of 2025. And that says a lot about cognitive technology’s future.

5. The application of cognitive technologies requires a complete transformation

This is another myth that stops companies and organizations from implementing AI in their business. A few company leaders think that cognitive technology application changes the functionality of the business drastically. However, it is not about the transformation, but the integration of cognitive technologies in business.

Final words:

The studies are presenting clear signals towards the success of the cognitive technology. It is the time that you understand it too. Debunking these myths will help businesses embrace this technology wholeheartedly and gain from it.

How Machine Learning can help with Business Development

Accelerated business growth has always been about innovation in functionalities such as customer experience, employee management, and others. And with advanced machine learning technologies, businesses are now able to make useful changes to bring better results for their companies.

The biggest advantage of machine learning in the corporate sector is the ability to make automated decisions without taking risks in any manner. This is why the corporate sector is expecting $59.8 billion revenue with machine learning and AI by 2025. More and more companies are integrating machine learning into their businesses to innovate various aspects.

Here are the top 4 ways that businesses can leverage machine learning.

1. Bringing personalization to customer service

Businesses keep on looking for effective ways to improve the quality of customer service and reduce the investment requirements. And machine learning offers those exact solutions to obtain those goals. With ML technologies, businesses get the ability to combine their years of data related to customer services and merge it with natural language processing technology.

The NLP algorithms make customer interactions more personal by leveraging the data to provide satisfactory services. Each and every customer gets the most accurate answers to their questions, which makes them happy. Plus, the same technology reduces the need for too much investment, resulting in lower customer servicing costs.

2. Making recruitment process convenient and successful

For a long time, hiring and recruitment processes faced multiple struggles. The difficulty in shortlisting the right candidates, removing the human biases, asking the right questions and keeping it cost-effective have presented troubles for recruiters.

But now, with machine learning, it is possible to bring automation in the hiring process. Corporates are now able to shortlist candidates among thousands of applications without skipping a valuable candidate. The machine learning tools are able to analyze credentials and match them with relevant job profiles.

Also, the same technology can detect biases and remove those factors while conducting the assessment. It all makes machine learning a cost-effective and successful way of hiring people.

3. Improving finance management and handling methods

Machine learning also offers the capacity to manage financial processes of a company. In fact, the processes such as payment, invoice analysis, and others can become automatic with machine learning.

A huge number of invoices can be analyzed in no time. The companies can reduce their efforts and time on managing their finances and save a lot of cash too. Plus, the security of machine learning technologies provides protection to the processes at the same time.

4. Marketing and Management

Marketing and management can also get innovative results with machine learning. The AI tools are already being used in gathering customer data, supply chain management, and other processes.

Companies are leveraging machine learning tools to find data related from social media about products, logos, and other factors. All this data is used to create a better brand exposure and to get successful outcomes.

All in all, AI and machine learning offers innovation to almost every part of a business. So, it would be wise to integrate right tools and algorithms to improve ROI and make your business a success.

Artificial Intelligence in Social Media Marketing

It is increasingly being proven that AI is helping marketers find leads and engage like never before through social media. Targeting social media users over the online space is a highly specialized and complex field. Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a potential catalyst that can drive the fortunes of digital businesses across the globe.

Why the need to introduce AI into marketing?

73% of B2B users need to be nurtured for quite some time before they are converted to active leads for the business. In a traditional ecosystem, marketers simply cannot keep pace with the lead management scenario that evolves daily for each and every enquiry. AI can help devise and deliver personalized content to nurture leads to a better degree.

How does this happen?

Marketers can leverage the basic principle of AI to understand human psychology and its implications in the real world scenario. When marketing automation uses AI, it helps understand and monitor various aspects of customer behaviour like –

1 – How they spend their time online

2 – What posts or products get the most visibility from them on social media

3 – What do they use the social media for

They combine this with past marketing campaign data and then build appropriate marketing messages that have good potential for success. Here are some ways in which this can be done.

1. Better insights on CRM

Bits and pieces of useful information may lay hidden in plain view in various mediums like emails, phone calls, or social media posts/comments. With Artificial Intelligence, you get the right hints about what steps can be taken to subtly induce the prospect to move up the sales funnel towards successful conversion.

With the presence of sufficient amount of data, you can also configure a sentiment analysis activity to grasp the purchase goals/motivators behind the words used by the prospects on social media.

2. Align social media content with buyer persona

With a structured buyer persona, a marketers’ targeting efforts yield better fruits. AI can help smartly segregate customers into personas for a better level of personalized marketing. AI can also learn about which type of content (blog posts, whitepapers, videos, case studies, or other marketing collaterals) will help which type of personas at a particular level in the sales funnel. This way, customers will find only the content which is relevant and timely to their particular need.

3. Social sentiment analysis

With continuous social media analysis a viable brand analysis picture can be formed. However, keeping track of all the posts and ads and analyzing these on different platforms can be complex.

It eats up a lot of time for the marketer which could have been otherwise used to push fresh and unique content for the readers. This is where AI comes in. Take NY Times’ case – it has been using chatbots in innovative ways to create a deep one-on-one experience for its readers.

Thus, with astounding levels of competition to capture eyeballs on the social media, these advantages prove that AI adopters will have an upper hand in this regard.

UX Design for Chatbots

If you look at the market and business trends, Chatbots are available on almost every list. All the big businesses and brands are leveraging chatbots. On the other hand, small brands are planning to have one for their business.

Experts say that chatbots are going to cover about 85% of customer service related interactions in the coming years. However, the popularity has also increased the demand for a quality experience. Hence, businesses can’t compromise the UX design of their bots in any manner.

Sure the functionality of the bots matters a lot, but it is the user experience of the design that brings customers again and again.

Here, in this article, you will find the most valuable UX guidelines to create an impressive chatbot for your business.

1. Make it easy to understand

The initial impression matters the most in your chatbot design. The users should be able to understand the functions and the processes of the chatbot very easily. Only then, you can expect them to come back for further interactions.

So, make sure you include exciting and helpful elements in the onboarding process of the chatbot. This will make the design more impressive for the users.

2. Add elements to maintain the conversational flow

Many times, the users don’t realize that they are interacting with a chatbot. So, if the bot does not maintain a conversational flow, the users might leave and never come back.

To avoid this, it is important to add elements that can help you maintain a conversational flow. A chatbot can ask pre-defined questions or present suggestions to the user. These elements in the design help out the user throughout the conversation. Some of the advanced chat platforms such as Facebook Messenger and Kik leverage such elements in their chat methods. These platforms offer regular response suggestions during an ongoing conversation, which helps the users.

3. Give it a consistent personality

The personality of the chatbot is probably the most important UX design component. The goals should be to attain consistency. Plus, the bot should sound friendly during the conversation.

To achieve that, you need to focus on providing clear diction capacity and simple language to the chatbot. Use a vocabulary that is generally used in the common language. This will make the conversations more smooth and friendly.

4. Prepare chatbot for anticipated issues

A conversation between a human and a chatbot presents some difficulties. Sometimes, a user might ask an invalid question or a query, which won’t allow the Chabot to answer. However, that should not stop the conversation. Your design should get the user on the right track for the conversations to flow. For that, you can include polite reminders of the purpose of the bot. The bot can provide suggestions and tips to help the user ask the right questions and queries. This way, the conversation won’t end in the middle.

So, in this way a good UX can help you create an impressive chatbot and also create immersive user experiences for your customers.

Natural Language Processing tools for Chatbots

Language understanding tools have the capacity to make chatbots smarter. These tools are designed to enhance the communication capabilities of the chatbots. The ability to understand the sentiment, create an automatic summary and find a relationship between the topics. All these abilities can make your chatbot much more effective for the users.

Here are 5 NLP tool choices that can help your chatbot deliver high impact performance in customer servicing.

1. LUIS

Microsoft offers cognitive services to provide language intelligence and other capabilities. The LUIS or Language Understanding Intelligence Service offers high-quality models that help chatbots understand various entities and intents. The availability of the models related to times, places and others enhance the performance of chatbot. The users can get much better experience, as an active understanding of the language is used.

The tool is compatible with various platforms such as KiK, Slack, Facebook Messenger, Skype, SMS, and others. You can get both free as well as paid versions of the tool.

2. RASA NLU

When you are looking for an open source method of classifying the intent, RASA NLU is your answer. The tool offers a complete set of APIs that make entity extraction highly convenient for the chatbot.The libraries come along with the tool that enhances the capacity of any bot. The corporate sectors like health, insurance, travels, telecoms and banks get the maximum advantage of this tool.

The tool is available for free and works on platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Telegram, SMS, Skype, Line, and others. This is why the tool has gained an incredible level of popularity in multiple sectors.

3. Amazon Lex

The tool can provide high-quality language capabilities to your mobile applications. The specific properties include natural language recognition and speech recognition too. Hence, the chatbot can provide both text and voice experience to the users.

This will improve the ability of the bot to assist and help the users conducting various tasks such as placing orders, opening an account, making bookings, and others. The tool offers a simple console, which makes the processes much more convenient for the chatbot.

4. API AI

Known as one of the most trustworthy language understanding tools, API AI makes brand specific interactions easier. The businesses can leverage this tool to create bots that can provide multiple services to the users.

The conversational interface with this tool takes not much effort. Plus, the powerful features of the tool allow the bots to answer highly complex questions asked by the users. The bots get to leverage the stored knowledge along with the machine learning. Hence, the bot learns and gets better.

Some other valuable features include multilingual interactions, cross-platform support, easy integrations and others.

5. ChatScript

ChatScript allows you to create a script for the dialog conducted by the chatbot. The tool uses the scripting rules to create extensive texts. Plus, it scans documents, memorizes old interactions and manages a large volume of users.

All the mentioned tools have their own set of properties. You can add these tools and enhance the capabilities of your chatbot.

Artificial Neural Networks – The basics

Artificial Neural Networks are simulations that are derived from the biological functions of ‘neurons’ which are present in the brain. Thus, Artificial Neural Networks are essentially artificial neurons configured to carry out a specific task. ANN has gained a lot of popularity as it is used to model non-linear processes.

Artificial Neural Networking allows solving problems like clustering, classification, pattern recognition, prediction, and determining outliers. This has made ANN a very useful tool.

How does ANN work?

Artificial Neural Networks acquires knowledge through learning continuously. Like in humans, the knowledge acquired is stored in the artificial neurons designed within the ANN and used to perform the required task. ANN has a wide range of syntax, semantics, and speech-tasks which help ANN solve a wide range of problems.

Some of the interesting applications of ANN are discussed below.

1. Text Classification

Applications like web searches, language identification are some of the applications that use text classification. Neural Networks are widely employed for this type of classification. Experts agree that deep learning can be applied to enhance the value delivered by text classification. Artificial Neural Networks can be applied from character-level inputs as well as abstract text content.

CovNets or Convolutional Networks can deliver good outcomes in text classification without prior knowledge of words or phrases by applying them along with deep learning and Neural Networks.

2. Semantic Parsing

Artificial Neural Networks can be actively helpful in answering questions. A Q&A system will automatically answer any question asked in natural languages like definition questions, biographical questions and so on. Using Neural Networks in these systems makes it possible to maintain a high performing question answering system.

Developers have released semantic parsing framework for answering questions using a specific knowledge base. ANN uses this framework to quickly identify the type of questions and then answers it using semantic matching. There are other frameworks available which can further improve neural networks’ performance in this field.

3. Speech Recognition

Voice technology has advanced and now it is used for automated telephone conversations, speech-only computing, and much more. Neural Networks are being used extensively in this area. neural networks can specifically be programmed to handle multiple types of queries over a wide range and with continuous learning, neural networks help you achieve a great speech recognition software.

4. Character Recognition

Character recognition has become vital in today’s world across different industry verticals. There are many practical applications in this realm. Some instances include character recognition on receipts, invoices, checks, or legal billing. The Character Recognition framework for Artificial Neural Networks has been effectively used in this field and tests have shown the accuracy to be above 85%.

5. Spell Check

Text editors help you find out misspelled words to help you rectify them. Neural networks have been incorporated in many of these text editors nowadays to provide easier spell checks. It uses the personalized spell check framework and it outperforms many other text editors that don’t use Artificial Neural Networks today.

To conclude, we can say that Artificial Neural Networks are very versatile and make a lot of jobs easier in different functions within an enterprise.

Chatbots in Recruitment

Did you know that 74% of the candidates for a job recruitment drop out after starting the job application process? The lengthy process and reams of paperwork are some factors for this stat. How good would it be if technology could present a solution that takes out the tediousness from the entire recruitment process?

Well, technology already has a solution ready that fits in perfectly in this context – chatbots

What is a chatbot?

A chatbot is an AI programme that converses with humans in a meaningful and contextual way. Their ability to be accessible to customers round the clock adds multiple business advantages. They not only elevate user experience but also reduces costs of maintaining full-time customer support personnel.

Because of the immense business value that a chatbot offers, it finds applications in multiple industries. The recruitment industry is the latest one to have enjoyed the benefits of having a chatbot. Mya and Job Pal are two examples of chatbots that are revolutionizing the recruitment industry to a great deal.

How can a great chatbot make recruitment effective

1. Save time and money

Chatbots have evolved to be smart and useful. Right from sifting resumes to answering initial queries from a job applicant, it can do it all without the need for an actual executive to sit in front of a computer to carry out these tasks. It can also determine if a particular job opening is aligning well with a particular candidate during a conversation.

2. Application process made more effective

A chatbot is a better option to engage in the initial phase of candidate application. It can save time and get the needed information by taking the course of a natural conversation. This way the high chances of midway drop-outs through the application process can be brought down significantly.

Even if the candidate leaves midway, the chatbot can nudge him/her later on in subtle ways to try and get the entire application process carried out. From scheduling appointments for interviews to sharing information on new job openings and letting the candidate know about the application status, a chatbot can help make the job application process less cumbersome.

3. Pre-screening process made transparent

The traditional interaction between a recruiter and a candidate is filled with uneasy periods of silence post the interview. A chatbot can help fill this gap by a pre-screening process and making the entire activity an interactive and transparent one.

By instantly providing information on approval or rejection, the candidate can take the next appropriate step. This transparency of application process helps candidates get a quick update on the status of their job applications and reduces a lot of back an forth procedures for the HR management and candidate.

4. Automate routine tasks

Mechanical tasks such as sifting through resumes, scheduling interviews, and internal coordination are routine yet necessary tasks within the recruitment activity. With a chatbot, all these routine tasks can be easily automated and HR professionals can focus on more complex activities such as employee branding, improving the outreach and other management related aspects.

To wrap up, while many recruiters feel that chatbots are likely to make jobs obsolete, the fact remains that they actually make the recruiters’ job more powerful and effective rather than making them redundant.

Artificial Intelligence Trends in 2018

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has soared to unbelievable heights in recent times, and even today, with tech giants like Google and Microsoft making constant advancement in this field, AI is almost everywhere. Needless to say, there will be many things that AI will learn to do in 2018, and make the lives of people much easier than it already has. Though we don’t yet have flying cars and floating buildings, like in movies, we do have some great AI like Alexa and Google Assistant.

So, the question that arises now is – what is the future of AI in 2018? Well, some mighty intellectual people may think too much into the future regarding what things AI will be able to do, but for now, let’s you and me focus on what we can expect from AI in 2018.

1. AI will become more Human-Like

In today’s busy world, where manpower itself is not enough to handle the ever-increasing customer demands, many companies are using AI in the form of chatbots and automated answering machines to make their institutions run smoothly. Customer assistance is a major field where AI is said to make a huge progress.

However, it is likely for some people to feel weird listening to a robotic voice talking to them, which is why Artificial Intelligence companies have been working towards making their products more and more human-like, so as to encourage people to use it. AI’s like Amazon’s Alexa is a great example of a personal assistant.

2. Voice Recognition will become much Better

Almost all the smartphones today have a voice recognition technology installed in them, which enables you to talk to the AI and set appointments, call someone, set alarms, and much more. Siri and Google Assistant are some good examples.

However, it becomes irritating sometimes, when the voice recognition doesn’t hear you correctly when voice typing, and you have to edit the whole message again. This is said to change in 2018, as AI companies and their voice recognition tech is said to improve by folds.

This means that your smartphone assistant will hear your commands better, and type your voice message better.

3. Machines will be Data-Driven

Machine Learning has become necessary in today’s time. The immense growth in AI and the IoT (Internet of Things) has made companies invest capital and workforce towards advancing their AI functionalities.

This may sound crude, but AI has become essential for companies to maintain their data flow and important company data, and an AI functionality has become a vital part of every company’s functionality, and that will continue to grow in 2018. Artificial Intelligence functionality has been broadened to new horizons by all the data provided by Internet Of Things, and it will continue to grow exponentially.

In 2018 and beyond, there are a lot of advancements in AI to look forward to. While it may go mainstream in many sectors, others will have a more cautious approach before embracing the technology.

Artificial Intelligence in the Banking Industry

Artificial Intelligence has taken the world by storm and has been advancing rapidly in recent times. It has shown a remarkable potential to augment human efforts and free them up from routine tasks so that they can focus on being better in strategizing and doing complex activities.

In today’s world, almost every aspect of life and business has the potential to be disrupted by AI. It is no wonder that the AI market is expected to surge past the hallowed $100 billion mark by 2025.

How will the banking sector be affected?

AI has had an effect on almost all the industrial sectors, and the banking sector is also one of them. Banks have started using AI for multiple purposes to make their institutions operate smoothly as AI bots can run all round the clock and do the jobs assigned to them flawlessly. The banking sector is using AI increasingly and so, here are 4 ways AI is impacting the banking industry.

1. Improved and Cost-Effective Customer Service

In today’s ever-growing corporate world, it is almost impossible for a human being to bear the burden of all the customers calling the bank’s support helpline. This is where AI plays an essential role.

Apart from being available to customers all round the clock, AI has drastically reduced the manpower and money required for customer service. This has majorly benefited the finance industry.

2. Better Management

Before the advent of AI, companies used to ask advice from bank experts as to how they can maximize profits and minimize taxes. However, it’s in the nature of humans to be imperfect, which is why the predictions were not correct mostly.

Now, customers who are looking for advice can directly ask the bank’s AI program about any questions related to their company. The AI-powered solution can provide a full report with all references and facts, thus helping both the bank and the company.

3. Know your future prospects and returns

With a targeted AI solution, you can keep getting continuous updates on various offers available and build on your current assets to increase your returns. Also, you don’t have to start from scratch as the AI will do all your work for you. Once you have an AI system in place, it will keep your account safe from market fluctuations.

4. Precise investment information and research

The finance sector is a volatile one, and many a time, there are crucial decisions that need to be made. In this case, it is but natural to choose the expert programming of an AI over human predictions and trust the AI’s continuous learning methods to forecast better.

If a bank has an AI systems in place, it can provide you with all the research and reference along with exact facts and figure to help you make the best possible decision. This makes AI an invaluable asset in the financial sector. Investment decisions are very crucial as customers may lose their trust over a bank in case the advisor makes a wrong decision.

Thus, AI has become a vital part of the financial sector and will continue to be, in the future. With so many benefits being derived from the industry it is natural that AI will find increased adoption in the months to come.