IBM Brings Artificial Intelligence At Scale To The Marketing And Media Industry

Expanding AI Advertising Suite to Strengthen Brand, Publisher and Consumer Value Exchange in a Privacy-Forward Future

IBM announced three new products to add to its growing suite of AI solutions for brand and publishers. The new capabilities are privacy-forward and designed to allow brands to reach consumers while considering user privacy. IBM intends to work with industry leaders, including Xandr/AT&T, Magnite, Nielsen, MediaMath, LiveRamp and Beeswax to help scale the use of AI across the industry. The announcement was made this morning at Advertising Week’s digital-first virtual event #AW2020.

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“While the advertising industry strives to re-emerge strong from the global economic and societal issues we faced this year, it’s also deep in the throes of a major transformation with changes to mobile identity, certain elimination of third-party cookies, compliance and regulatory shifts and increased demand for trust and transparency,” said Bob Lord, SVP, Cognitive Applications and Blockchain, IBM.

He added: “We believe AI will be the ‘backbone’ of the new era as the industry prepares for the next generation of advertising. We’re using AI to help solve problems across the advertising industry, just like IBM has in countless other industries like Healthcare, Financial Services and Retail. Our work will be a step forward in our evolution to meet the advertising industry’s upheaval, and we are proud to help the advertising industry advance with the value of AI.”

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The IBM Watson Advertising suite of solutions leverages AI to help clients make informed, data-based decisions. Expanding on recent additions to the suite, including Watson Advertising Accelerator, Watson Advertising Social Targeting with Influential and Watson Advertising Weather Targeting among others, the planned AI-enabled capabilities include:

• Extensions for IBM Watson Advertising Accelerator: Enhanced video and OTT capabilities available in the coming months that are expected to leverage Watson Machine Learning, to help enable marketers to pivot video advertising creative based on individual user reaction.
• IBM Watson Advertising Attribution: Beta Solution available in the coming months that leverages Watson Machine Learning, which allows marketers to accurately quantify the efficacy of their advertising spend while understanding intent and performance drivers.
• IBM Watson Advertising Predictive Audiences: Solution leverages Watson Discovery, to help enable marketers to progress beyond ‘look-alike’ to ‘do-alike’ segments in a privacy-forward format to reach consumers that exhibit similar behaviors.

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A New Ecosystem to Accelerate AI Adoption and in Advertising

IBM plans to bring its toolset to industry leaders including Xandr/AT&T, Magnite, Nielsen, MediaMath, LiveRamp and Beeswax to help make it accessible across the advertising ecosystem. The companies will have an opportunity to drive the next generation of IBM advertising technologies to help reinstate trust in the marketplace.

IBM Watson can offer increased AI capabilities for businesses across language, automation and trust. The planned capabilities from IBM Watson Advertising will be designed to help infuse trust and transparency into the advertising ecosystem. IBM is negotiating definitive agreements with Xandr/AT&T and Magnite.

“We’re currently leveraging IBM’s AI through The Weather Channel, an approach that helps us use data to create meaningful and respectful experiences with consumers in the moments they need us most,” said Rand Harbert, Executive Vice President and Chief Agency, Sales & Marketing Officer, State Farm. “IBM has evolved from an advertising partner to an AI partner, enabling us to help our customers and prospective customers better prepare and respond during life events.”

“The advertising industry is undergoing rapid change and we’re infusing AI into our platform to better equip independent publishers in a sea of walled gardens,” said Tom Kershaw, CTO, Magnite. “We’re proud to stand with IBM, a company rooted in advanced technology, to deliver on the promise of an open web and solve the mounting challenges facing independent publishers.”

“Across WPP, we are committed to helping our clients navigate the disruptive trends that have been building for some time,” said John Dunleavy, Global President, Eightbar. “We’ve seen firsthand the important role AI can play in mitigating bias and making data useful so that every constituent – brands, content owners and most importantly consumers – can have authentic, relevant and meaningful interactions.”

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“The opportunities for AI are immense–and we’re already seeing real value within the retail and consumer packaged goods (CPG) industry,” said Arun Ramaswamy, Chief Technology Officer, Global Consumer Business, Nielsen. “AI algorithms have vast potential to reinvigorate the brand-consumer trust dynamic by leveraging mathematical techniques that remove biases in the data consumers provide before they lead to improper results and interpretations. And within an open, cloud-based ecosystem, having the right, robust, high-quality data fueling AI is paramount to better understand and predict purchasing habits, and thereby inform marketing and advertising efforts.”

“AI technologies are transforming organizations and freeing up employees to do higher-value work,” said Victoria Petrock, Principal Analyst, Emerging Technology, Insider Intelligence. “For marketers and advertisers, AI is already disrupting core functions, including ad targeting, media buying, content creation and propensity modeling.”

“Data is the key to increasing engagement across platforms that deliver premium content,” said Grant Ries, SVP of Marketplaces & Emerging Business at LiveRamp. “We’re thrilled to connect our Marketplace with IBM AI to deliver actionable insights, at scale, across the ecosystem in order to help partners thrive in an undefined future. As the digital marketing industry evolves, it’s more essential than ever to rely on trusted partners to preserve the integrity of the open web.”

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“AI is no longer an emerging technology, it’s here, now and the digital ecosystem must lean in to realize its full value beyond media buying and selling,” said David Cohen, CEO, IAB. “I am thrilled to see IBM, with its deep roots in artificial intelligence, take on a leadership role to develop CTV and attribution solutions for the next generation marketplace.”

“It’s in our DNA to empower our clients and partners with the tools to establish deep and trusted connections with consumers at scale,” said Joe Zawadzki, founder and CEO, MediaMath. “As inveterate champions of the power of math and science in marketing, we are eager to usher in a new era of enterprise applications into our industry and are excited to expand our partnership with IBM to introduce their world-class capabilities to an open web that keenly needs them.”

“We’re thrilled to help power IBM Watson Advertising with our Bidder-as-a-Service™ platform,” said Ari Paparo, Co-Founder & CEO, Beeswax. “It’s exciting to help IBM Watson unlock AI-driven, predictive dynamic creative for more relevant advertising that gets smarter over time.”

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