From using motion capture tech to allow the Indian cricketing star Rahul Dravid to give personalised coaching tips for children to an algorithm trained on Shakespeare's handwriting powering a robotic arm to rewrite Romeo and Juliet, artificial intelligence is rapidly revolutionising the global advertising industry. Those AI-created adverts, for the Cadbury's drink brand Bournvita and the pen maker Bic, were produced by agency group WPP, which is spending 300m annually on data, tech and machine learning to remain competitive. Mark Read, the chief executive of the London-listed marketing services group, has said AI is "fundamental" to the future of its business, while admitting that it will drastically reshape the ad industry workforce. Now Read has announced he is to leave at the end of this year, after almost seven years as chief executive and more than 30 at WPP, as the company struggles to keep pace with its peers and also counter moves by big tech to muscle in to the AI-driven future of advertising. For ad agencies, the upheaval originates from a familiar source.

Usually, the economy of scale, size, and reputation win the day, but this spunky and highly adaptive ad agency competes with AI plus better processes to put more pressure on the large ad agencies. I think this will be a trend in many industries with the upstarts starting to scare the incumbent "big dogs." The hourly agency model favors longer times and complex hierarchies to create more billable hours, and as a result, more clients are bringing this work in-house. This proves to be an excellent opportunity for a smaller agency to apply technology to outmaneuver the big dog players in the ad business. By automating the ad creation process by applying AI and automated processes together, big gains are being experienced.

Imagine you're a video editor in 2019. You're handed a script and given thousands of shots to craft a 10-second pre-roll ad, promoted on social media to viewers with specific interests and viewing habits, living across North America and Europe. You crack your knuckles and get to work: You sift through hours of footage, you slice the whole thing together, you bundle it up and send it out. The client approves it the next day, uploads it onto various social channels and suddenly millions of people are watching it across the western hemisphere, responding in different ways. A data team nods along at the analytics streaming in, deliberating whether it's worthwhile to reshoot and recut another video to minimize moments where the viewing masses drop off, optimizing those sacred few seconds your audience is actually watching.

What would you think if I told you IBM was the biggest ad agency in the world in 2015. Perhaps roll your eyes and ask what the punchline is? IBM was the largest global ad agency in 2015. They had US $1.9 billion dollars in revenue. Now I imagine you are asking yourself, how the heck?

Artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning have long been part of PPC -- so why are AI and machine learning all of a sudden such hot topics? It is, in part, because exponential advances have now brought technology to the point where it can legitimately compete with the performance and precision of human account managers. I recently covered the new roles humans should play in PPC as automation takes over. In this post, I'll offer some ideas for what online marketing agencies should consider doing to remain successful in a world of AI-driven PPC management. According to the authors of the book "The Second Machine Age," chess master Garry Kasparov offered an interesting insight into how humans and computers should work together after he became the first chess champion to be defeated by a computer in 1997. The first point is covered in my previous post, and it is the foundation for why smart PPC managers will learn to collaborate with AI rather than compete against it.

NEW YORK – Why did you splurge on that new pair of shoes? More and more advertisers are trying to tap into the unconscious to divine the invisible forces that drive those spending decisions. Using gadgets to track eye movements, computer maps of faces to capture a momentary grin (approval) or squint (anger), and sensors to measure perspiration or monitor brain activity, companies are mining consumers' raw emotions for information. Ad firms have traditionally measured the success of their campaigns through consumer surveys, but that technique has its limits. "It's not that people won't tell you, they actually can't tell you why they're making the decision they're making," said Jessica Azoulay, vice president of the market intelligence practice at Isobar, a digital marketing agency.

Headquartered in the US, with ecommerce sites in the UK, Australia, Germany, France, Italy and Canada, Cosabella decided to engage Adgorithms (the creator of Albert) out of frustration with its digital ad agency. "We know our brand best and communicating it to the advertising agency became time-consuming and difficult," Courtney Connell, marketing director of Cosabella, said, declining to name the agency as they really were "very lovely people" who she had no wish to disparage. Connell grew concerned when the retailer went through a flat quarter. "It was very scary, particularly when we enjoyed double-digit growth all the previous quarters." After parting ways with the agency, Connell looked around for alternatives and decided to try using an AI platform instead of building up a larger in-house team.

Advertising is all about tapping into consumer markets, finding out what makes them tick, and using that info to create convincing ad campaigns. This is much harder than it sounds, especially when entire demographics are proving impossible to reach. For example, millennials are notoriously difficult to connect with – and there's a lot of them. In the U.S., they make up 25% of the population. How can marketers make the most of market research and come up with captivating campaigns? This is where Artificial Intelligence comes in.

George Orwell's novel "1984" is hitting the bestseller lists again, having been moved in bookstores from the "dystopian science fiction" shelves to the "current affairs" section. But today let's talk about another iteration of "1984": Ridley Scott's television commercial that year for the then-new Apple Macintosh. As we reported in 2014, on its 30th anniversary, the "1984" ad aired on national television in its full 60-second form only once, during Super Bowl XVIII on Jan. 22, 1984. It became a legend almost immediately. More to the point, it established Super Bowl TV commercials as a thing, garnering almost as much PR attention as the game itself.

This article is by Mark-Hans Richer, founder and president, Richer Inc., and former CMO of Harley-Davidson. It's post-CES season and naturally all the buzz is about cool, futuristic things that will change the world as we know it. And nothing is more buzzy than AI and Machine Learning (VR and AR are so 2016...). Most of those who strolled the wide alleys of Las Vegas' convention halls earlier this month--and especially the creative marketing community--buzzed about what they saw as cutting-edge cool, the zeitgeist that every creative person wants to be on the edge of. But what if the tech that is so attractive suddenly turned on its acolytes?