Everyone’s buzzing about generative artificial intelligence (AI), and it’s true that technology like ChatGPT is already having an enormous impact on advertising and marketing. But other AI tools that our industry has been using for years have changed the face of media planning and buying. The examples below share how we have been utilizing AI for our pharma clients. They are real examples in actual use today.
Investment and Allocation
Genetic AI is used to help media planners allocate their clients’ investment in the best possible way. What is genetic AI? It uses a Darwinian-based algorithm to help determine which variables will have the best outcomes, similarly to how evolution works.
In a blog post, Pavan Vadapalli explains it like this: “A genetic algorithm is used to solve complicated problems with a greater number of variables & possible outcomes/solutions. The combinations of different solutions are passed through the Darwinian-based algorithm to find the best solutions. The poorer solutions are then replaced with the offspring of good solutions. It all works on the Darwinian theory, where only the fittest individuals are chosen for reproduction. The various solutions are considered the elements of the population, and only the fittest solutions are allowed to reproduce (to create better solutions). Genetic algorithms help in optimizing the solutions to any particular problem.”
The client shares their brand objectives for the campaign, including audience, and also proposes a potential budget. The agency’s analytics team inputs the total budget for the campaign and the audiences they want to reach. Genetic AI helps them find the best possible spend by channel and by audience by evaluating thousands of possible combinations that maximizes the client’s revenue, profit, return on investment, and awareness. The planner can also run multiple scenarios at different investment levels to evaluate the optimal budget. In some cases, the team may find ways for the client to spend less than originally intended. The analytics team then coordinates with the media team to make a recommendation that’s aligned with client goals.
Building More Precise Consumer Audiences
In healthcare marketing and other highly regulated industries, it can be challenging to build audiences because of privacy restrictions. The solution is to build look-alike audiences. These are audiences that have the same profile as someone with the condition who are found using non-health-related variables that are completely in line with privacy guidelines. For example, someone who may benefit from certain health information may mainly fall into a certain age, gender, and behavioral group.
Utilizing another type of AI, machine learning, companies can now evaluate thousands of attributes to build these look-alike models with precision. Multiple machine learning algorithms can be used to identify audiences that probabilistically fall into the ideal categories that the company is looking for without using health-related data. While it’s still not a perfect science, utilizing AI to build look-alike audiences can make communicating to the right audiences more effective and improve overall outcomes.
Task Automation
Outside of generative AI, task automation is probably the most-discussed benefit of AI. It allows boring and often overwhelming data entry to be handled by AI rather than by humans. For example, AI-driven task automation bots could be designed to deliver more effective ad trafficking. Bots could also be trained to follow an extensive set of rules built around diverse types of campaigns and their complexities. The result could be faster launches and more accurate campaign setup.
What’s Stopping You?
One major reason brands don’t use AI technology: awareness. Whether it’s knowing that many examples of AI can help your brands, having the opportunity to get educated on how AI can help, or gaining an understanding of the differences between AI offerings, becoming aware of the benefits of this technology is one of the best things marketers today can do to further their brand goals.
