17.10.31 AI Is Changing Marketing As We Know It, And That's A Good Thing

Artificial intelligence (AI) seems to be the current business hot topic, including in marketing. It seems nearly impossible for any kind of marketing/advertising industry event or conference to not have at least one (or likely more!) session or panel discussion on the subject. Are we at "peak AI" or is this trend of great interest in the topic set to continue? The AI revolution in marketing, which I'll focus on in this post, has been spurred by the influx of affordable and accessible advanced data analytics tools (typically based on machine learning methods), the availability of increasingly rich (albeit still noisy) and extensive datasets, and a growing acceptance among marketers of the potential power of data-driven approaches to marketing decision making. The winds have been blowing in this direction for some time, so this is not a new phenomenon.