MAM
55% marketers make better decisions with machine learning: iProspect report
MUMBAI: Digital agency iProspect has released its third annual Future Focus whitepaper geared to examine how machines and technology are impacting marketing and advertising in the year ahead. The paper takes a look at how brands can make the most of machines in 2018, from facilitating seamless consumer experiences to delivering greater efficiencies.
iProspect interviewed 250 of its global clients, including FTSE 100 and Fortune 500 companies, and used real-time feedback to outline key insights and priorities necessary for businesses to thrive in our fast-moving, high expectation digital economy.
Feedback shows that the transformative impact of voice, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) is being felt across the entire business landscape with 55 per cent of marketers surveyed agreeing that ML will allow them to make better decisions in 2018. 56 per cent of the marketers surveyed highlighted effective management of large data sets to deliver personalisation and relevant one-to-one experience as their main priority in 2018.
The 2018 Future Focus whitepaper discusses some new machine rules. Brands enhanced customer experience by closing the gap between consumer expectation and brand reality. While 2017 was about understanding how best to connect data to understand consumers better, 2018 will be the year where marketers put consumers firmly at the centre of communications.
The concept of ‘consumer moments’ will become widespread in 2018, encouraging marketers to seek out data signals that help them understand not just who their customers really are, but what are the moments that matter most as those consumers interact with brands at different stages of the purchase journey.
Digital assistants have become the new gatekeepers and are set to fundamentally change the relationship between brands and consumers. According to market intelligence company Tractica, more than 700 million people use some form of digital assistant today, be it Siri on their mobile phone, or Amazon’s Alexa via a home device. With word error rate now at parity with humans, digital assistants can understand us better than ever, and usage of assistants is expected to soar to almost two billion by 2021. Within the next five years, most of the developed world will be using a digital assistant in one form or another to automate and manage many aspects of their daily lives.
And it’s not just millennials who are early adopters of this technology. Forrester estimates that while 66 per cent of 18-24 year olds are using digital assistants, almost 40 per cent of the 70+ age group are also engaged. For marketers, this represents a new challenge in 2018 and beyond on learning how to market not to the consumer, but to the machine.
AI & ML have transformed marketing and it is time for brands to get ahead of the intelligence curve. Simply put, AI aims to emulate human cognitive capabilities through artificial systems. One of the specialities of AI is machine learning, which enables computers to solve a problem by themselves, learning through examples, rather than being programmed especially to solve a distinct problem. If AI and ML capabilities are sought-after by tech companies, it’s because those companies understand the benefits for customer experience (eg., personalised recommendations on Netflix), security (eg., fraud detection on Paypal transactions), or product development (eg., autonomous cars for Uber).
In 2018, we can expect mainstream brands to truly start testing the potential of AI and ML in advertising, taking marketing efforts to the next level. ML has the power to improve efficiency, help scale personalisation, and predict consumer behaviour with greater accuracy. As a result, 2018 will bring greater investment and experimentation in this area.
VR will take commerce to new horizons and the distance between inspiration and conversion is now smaller than ever. Global e-commerce sales reached nearly $1.9 trillion in 2016, and are forecasted to grow to $3.9 trillion in 2020. As consumers expect to be able to buy everything, everywhere and at any time, this staggering growth will be increasingly supported by ecosystems which weren’t designed to be transaction first, but are now developing commerce features.
There will be a rise of Amazon, the ‘everything store’. There can be little doubt that 2017 was a significant year for Amazon, as its seemingly irresistible expansion broke new ground across some of the biggest categories in the world. Amazon’s enormous capital power and evident knack for winning in any division it turns its attention to means it truly is becoming the oft-quoted ‘everything store’, apparently achieving the impossible — major, simultaneous expansion without sacrifice of either product or profit.
Yet the company remains highly secretive, rarely announcing its intent or offering strategic insight. This means that as Amazon claims not only more net shoppers, but also creates new shopper behaviours, the onus is on today’s marketers to be proactive, rather than reactive, in developing their understanding of it. The good news is that there’s no more opportune time to learn than now. As Amazon finally turns its attention to the long dormant opportunity in ads by outlining plans for it to become a major income stream, marketers should seize the opportunity to get in at ground zero and start including it on media plans today.
iProspect global chief strategy officer Shenda Loughnane says, “Advances in ML will allow for greater effectiveness and efficiency in marketing communications, freeing both marketers and agencies to focus on adding strategic value. Brands will need to understand how to balance the human versus machine elements of their business in order to leverage the full value of both.”
iProspect India CEO Rubeena Singh adds, “In an increasingly complex digital economy, ML is set to play a pivotal role in our ecosystem. In India, we are already feeling these forces of change are driving better data understanding, enabling personalised conversation at scale and delivering greater efficiencies. We are at an inflection point where brands need to learn how to marry human capital and machines in order to succeed in the transformation that lies ahead.”
Advances in ML will allow for greater effectiveness and efficiency in marketing communications, allowing both marketers and agencies to focus on adding strategic value, whilst allowing machines to take on more of the more complex administrative tasks associated with digital optimisation.
Brands
Zscaler, Airtel launch India AI Cyber Research Centre
New hub to boost cyber resilience and trusted AI use
NEW DELHI: As India’s digital engine roars ahead, so do the risks riding shotgun. In response, Zscaler, Inc. and Bharti Airtel have joined hands to launch the AI and Cyber Threat Research Center – India, a national initiative aimed at strengthening the country’s cyber defences and accelerating responsible AI adoption.
The centre is designed as a multi stakeholder platform that brings together industry, government and academia. Its mission is clear: protect critical sectors such as telecom, banking and energy, shield everyday digital users, and future proof India’s fast expanding online ecosystem.
India has long been a major innovation hub for Zscaler, with a substantial portion of its cyber research talent based here. With this new centre, that footprint evolves into a national collaboration engine. The idea is simple but ambitious, build in India, for India, and help power the country’s journey towards a secure and digitally self reliant future.
The timing is telling. India is building digital systems at population scale, not just enterprise scale. That scale has widened the attack surface dramatically. At the same time, cyber criminals and nation state actors are deploying AI to scan, probe and exploit vulnerabilities in minutes.
Zscaler’s research arm, ThreatLabz India, reports millions of infiltration attempts every month. These include espionage campaigns linked to regional geopolitical tensions, 1.2 million intrusion attempts from 20,000 sources targeting 58 Indian digital entities, and a rise in zero day exploit attempts across multiple industries.
In such an environment, perimeter based security models are struggling to keep pace. The new centre aims to push a shift towards secure by design systems and Zero Trust architecture.
Its strategy rests on four pillars: protect through real time intelligence, remediate by working directly with government agencies, facilitate adoption of AI driven security and Zero Trust frameworks, and build a stronger cybersecurity talent pipeline through specialised certifications.
As founding members, Zscaler and Airtel will combine global threat intelligence with local network visibility. Zscaler will deploy a dedicated India focused research team and draw insights from its Zero Trust Exchange platform, which processes over 500 billion daily transactions worldwide. Airtel, meanwhile, will contribute deep visibility into IoT and mobile traffic, helping detect suspicious activity faster and coordinate response across the ecosystem.
Bharti Airtel executive vice chairman Gopal Vittal, said the partnership extends Airtel’s commitment to safeguarding customers and the nation’s digital fabric. He added that the collaboration would address challenges unique to the Indian market and encourage secure and confident digital engagement.
Zscaler chief executive, chairman and founder Jay Chaudhry, said India’s digital ambition cannot be secured with legacy firewalls and VPNs. He noted that a modern Zero Trust architecture is essential for a hyper connected world and that the new centre would harness the scale of Zscaler’s global security cloud while empowering a new generation of Indian cyber defenders.
Additional members from critical public and private sectors are expected to join the initiative in the coming months, expanding its scope and deepening collaboration.
In a world where threats travel at machine speed, India’s answer is to think faster, collaborate wider and build smarter.
