As part of Lufthansa's ongoing global #SayYesToTheWorld brand campaign, it has become the first airline to launch a Watson Ads campaign, joining other brands such as Lego, Behr Paint, State Farm, Best Western, and TruGreen Lufthansa's AI-powered ad helps consumers plan their next international adventure in Europe, showcasing a specific location and helping a consumer explore the city by providing local travel facts, and tailored image galleries or videos. The campaign, which will run from 10/1 - 11/25, will help Lufthansa to discover new insights about consumers and their travel planning needs, which can inform future marketing efforts. The AI-powered ad is available to US consumers on weather.com, Featured cities include: Athens, Barcelona, Berlin, Budapest, Copenhagen, Florence, Frankfurt, Krakow, Milan, Munich, Oslo, Paris, Prague, Rome, and Stockholm. The campaign focuses on exploring a world of new possibilities and saying yes to the unknown. The interactive ads, powered by IBM Watson, provides consumers with the opportunity to interact with Lufthansa for general airline questions and for travel content across 15 European destinations.

The CMO Performance Report 2018 report, from digital marketing challenger agency, QueryClick, surveyed over 150 Chief Marketing Officers for UK consumer brands with a revenue of over £150 million and an e-commerce offering, found that 66% of CMOs for large retail brands have plans to invest in machine learning to enhance their digital marketing strategies within the next 12 months. The survey also found that over half (53%) of retailers will invest in voice search technology within the next 12 months. By 2019, the voice recognition market is predicted[1] to be a $601 million industry, and its value is set to accelerate even further as research predicts[2] 50% of all searches will be voice searches by 2020. Overall, 75% of CMOs said their brand will change its SEO strategy to ensure it appears in voice-led search results. Of those, 43% said they would do this within the next 12 months.

The system is powered by Google Cloud technologies and works on any HDMI-ready display that serves as grocery store aisle "end caps", restaurant menu boards, and even interactive cinema posters. The system can be used to offer custom branded video, e-coupons to shoppers. The technical solution uses DoubleClick's ad-serving software to distribute targeted messaging, which opens up many of the approaches familiar to web marketers. The promotional content can range from brand campaigns to store-specific promotional offers, or even app-guided shopping lists, in a move that is widely expected to mark a step-change in the role of point of sale. Integration with other retail systems lets the same approach deliver inventory and sales data, creating both messaging that is more valuable to the shopper, and data that is more valuable to the retailer.

The study involved 149 ads across 35 brands and 22,334 people in six countries. Realeyes measured how people felt while they watched the ads by using artificial intelligence to analyse their facial expressions through their webcams (with their consent). The study was designed in collaboration with the Mars Marketing Laboratory at the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science. Realeyes' emotion data was cross-referenced with Mars, Incorporated's known sales lift data for each ad to investigate the relationship between emotions and sales performance. This created the largest emotional dataset linked to real business outcomes currently in existence.