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Marketers' relentless focus on customer experience has pushed customer relationship management (CRM) into the background. At its most basic level, CRM is a customer database but it should be the glue that holds everything to do with the customer journey together. So before embarking on a mission to overhaul the customer experience with shiny new things like chatbots and augmented reality marketers have got to get the basics right and that means getting legacy technology like customer relationship management fit for purpose. According to Gartner, $40bn was spent worldwide on CRM software in 2017 and it is predicted to be the fastest growing software market in 2018 at a rate of 16%. However, CRM is perceived as a key business driver for only a third of businesses, according to figures from this year's CRM Barometer by Wiraya, which also reveal that in the UK only 35% of companies have fully integrated CRM systems.

Since time immemorial, humans have longed to learn what the future holds for them. Soothsayers, fortune-tellers and clairvoyants have targeted that particular market with gusto, with hundreds of discredited and often absurd methods. Think reading tea leaves, consulting tarot cards, numerology and phrenology. In Ancient Rome, there were even religious officials called haruspex who interpreted omens by inspecting the entrails of sacrificed animals. Whatever form fortune-telling takes, the basic outcome is the same: seeking meaning in random patterns and phenomenon.

I have written a number of articles about machine learning recently for Marketing Week and Econsultancy. This interest is fuelled by consumer tech – if you were to play word association, 'AI' might be followed by'Alexa' or'self-driving cars' – as well as bullish claims about the potential of deep learning in medicine. As marketers we should be much more prosaic in our thinking. That's not to say that voice interfaces aren't going to have a big impact on your brand and the discovery of your content – you will have to consider what your brand's persona will sound like, and how you will answer user searches directly. But the more immediate and broader concern is how data analysis and decision making can be improved.

The recent Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang was a marvel of human endeavour. Years of hurt, training and willpower culminating in all-too-brief moments of blood, sweat and tears. From the early morning anticipation as the curlers exchanged ends, stones and'the hammer', to sense-defying spins over the half-pipe, what was on display was nothing short of miraculous. If an exploratory alien species had happened to pass over South Korea to witness the Czech Ester Ledecká taking unprecedented golds in both the super-G ski and snowboard giant slalom events, we would no doubt have gone up several points in their estimation – and likely made them reassess their pending invasion plans. Ledecká's was not the only world-first at this year's Games.

Dale Lovell, chief digital officer at AdYouLike and author of Native Advertising, says: "In an ad marketplace where context is increasingly the criteria for success, the more data – and learnings from that data garnered in real-time – the greater the performance will be. "High-performing native advertising units combined with AI offer a deeper semantic understanding and granularity on campaigns. In fact, by the end of the year, any platform or partner without an AI capability for ad targeting will start to look increasingly dated." In addition to AI, marketers are turning to dynamic creative optimisation (DCO) to transform their digital ad experiences: a display ad technology that creates personalised ads based on data gleaned at the moment of serving the ad. DCO makes it possible for brands to engage in one-to-one conversations with users where situational data, environmental factors, time of day, weather, live information and user data, can all be added to increase the campaign relevance and performance. "We'll see more and more marketers embrace this in 2018," says Lovell. "Forget wider fads and spin – this is what now sits at the core of advertising innovation." Yet with technology's incredible ability to immediately and efficiently meet our consumer needs, comes a huge demand for brands to deliver impeccable customer experience. "The internet of things (IoT) has created a rise of'invisible digital', where technology is hidden in everyday objects and behavioural triggers generate data or output," explains Shirra Smilansky, CEO of Electrify Worldwide Ltd and author of Experiential Marketing. She adds: "2018 is the age of ultimate choice, where consumers expect authenticity from brands.

I have written a number of articles about machine learning recently for Marketing Week and Econsultancy. This interest is fuelled by consumer tech – if you were to play word association, 'AI' might be followed by'Alexa' or'self-driving cars' – as well as bullish claims about the potential of deep learning in medicine. As marketers we should be much more prosaic in our thinking. That's not to say that voice interfaces aren't going to have a big impact on your brand and the discovery of your content – you will have to consider what your brand's persona will sound like, and how you will answer user searches directly. But the more immediate and broader concern is how data analysis and decision making can be improved.

Adidas has ramped up interest in its recently launched female-focused community space Studio LDN, by using a chatbot to create an interactive booking process. The studio, which opened earlier this year, offers a series of weekly free-to-attend fitness sessions especially for women, with the ultimate goal of boosting brand engagement. The Facebook Messenger chatbot, created by marketing technology agency Byte London, is the only way to find out about sessions and register, so it has been integral to driving awareness and the success of the initiative. "One of the main appeals of a chatbot was that it allows for ongoing, deeper engagement with our consumers through regular one-to-one conversations," Sarah Gower, managing editor at Adidas London Newsroom, tells Marketing Week. "It also offers agility in a fast-paced social landscape with new broadcasts being published weekly."

Tom Fishburne is founder of Marketoon Studios. Follow his work at marketoonist.com

As we learned during the general election, political campaigns now routinely involve paid social advertising utilising a variety of data to identify likely supporters or swing voters. Such'social scoring', whether done manually or by an algorithm, is concerning to some. Professor John Rust of Cambridge University's Psychometric Centre told the Guardian: "The danger of not having regulation around the sort of data you can get from Facebook and elsewhere is clear. With this, a computer can actually do psychology; it can predict and potentially control human behaviour." He finds it "incredibly dangerous" that people's "attitudes are being changed behind their backs".