"AI is one of the most important things humanity is working on. It is more profound than electricity or fire…We have learned to harness fire for the benefits of humanity but we had to overcome its downsides too.….AI is really important, but we have to be concerned about it." While science fiction often portrays AI as robots with human-like characteristics, AI can encompass anything from Google's search algorithms to IBM's Watson, to autonomous weapons. Everyone is excited about AI, and everyone has a view on AI. AI is no longer the preserve of an Alex Garland screenplay, it's a reality and being used in multiple ways.

European adtech company ADYOULIKE, which offers a AI-driven native advertising platform, today launched a US operations in New York, along with debuting a new server-to-server (S2S) header bidding solution. The company said the new solution assures native ads are placed with the maximum contextual relevance available and is the first to incorporate semantic targeting powered by IBM Watson. Among the first companies to offer S2S for native ads, and the first to leverage AI to enhance their solution, Adyoulike said the development of the new S2S solution is a continuation of the company's ongoing commitment to using emerging technologies to drive advances in programmatic advertising. Publishers using the solution to manage their inventory will have the ability to create private marketplaces and package deals for buyers that include more precise targeting based on context and sentiment. This added relevance, says Adyoulike, increases value both for the publisher, and for the brand.

Even the biggest businesses start out small. The sale last month of Skyscanner, the travel industry start-up, is just another example of British entrepreneurial success, built over a number of years – and defies those who bemoan the country's failure to produce big winners. But which are the businesses to watch in 2017? Well, while picking winners from smaller companies is fraught with difficulties, here are five young British companies tipped for big things over the year ahead. Captify is an insights-driven advertising technology company founded in 2011 that, via its purpose-built Search Intelligence platform, analyses more than 15 billion online searches each month.

IBM's ground-breaking Watson artificial intelligence software is now, for the very first time, being used to create better semantic targeting for native advertising. A demo is available here: http://preview-25.ayl.io/ As part of the platform, Watson scans all the publisher pages in ADYOULIKE's global network of premium publishers and analyses them in the same way as a human mind would: looking contextually for topics, sentiment and semantics rather than just scanning for simple keywords. This allows the platform to deliver native content in-feed in the most relevant and targeted way possible. Watson looks at where, why and how the existing editorial content on each site is'talking about' subjects and ensures advertisers are dynamically delivering the best native content to fit.