You might know IBM's Watson from its famous victory on Jeopardy!, or for revolutionizing data analysis with its ability to crunch millions of pieces at once. Now, IBM is poising Watson to be the next big name in marketing. It's the technological entity behind IBM's new THINK Marketing hub, which is updated with nine pieces of thought leadership content every day. The website is part of a long-term strategy for IBM to position itself as a marketing technology leader, and expand its reach into new client territories beyond the Fortune 500s. As IBM's Chief Digital Officer Bob Lord explains, the company has made big strides in cognitive cloud computing software and services that can fundamentally change the way marketers, entrepreneurs, developers, and many others currently work.

Imagine wanting a cup of coffee and suddenly finding it before you, freshly prepared to your exacting standards. In the not-so-distant future, this will be reality for Muggles, too. In fact, thanks to a surge in consumer data, brands and marketers can already make better inferences about consumer wants and needs, but as AI and machine learning are more deftly integrated, insights will only get better, as will the ability to anticipate consumer needs – and to even make decisions on behalf of consumers without any input from them whatsoever. Like, say, ordering a cup of coffee. As it stands, digital enables brands to customize offers for specific users rather than provide generic solutions.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is now a reality, and want it or not, it soon will be part of our daily lives. In a recent study, Bank of America Merrill Lynch predicted that the artificial intelligence market will blossom to 153 billion over the next five years: 83 billion for robots and 70 billion for artificial intelligence-based systems. Facebook's CEO Mark Zuckerberg believes that virtual robots powered by artificial intelligence are bound to transform the way companies interact with their customers. In a world where disruption has become the norm, super-intelligent machines have the potential to revolutionize businesses while benefiting users and society in general. But as these smart personal assistants blend into our environment, many questions arise.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has made its way into many aspects of our lives, even into toys for kids like Anki's Cozmo, which resembles a roboticized Ewok. But as things go, AI isn't just for devices; it's made and continues to make its way into eCommerce and is out there working to determine what to sell to you, how you shop and ensure you have a good shopping experience. According to Gartner, by 2020 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human, and at the close of 2018, customer digital assistants will recognize customers by face and voice across channels. Investment-wise, in 2014 there were more than 300 million in venture capital invested in AI startups according to Bloomberg. Brands are on board and are using AI to build smarter platforms they hope will create a better online shopping experience for the consumer.

Imagine wanting a cup of coffee and suddenly finding it before you, freshly prepared to your exacting standards. In the not-so-distant future, this will be reality for Muggles, too. In fact, thanks to a surge in consumer data, brands and marketers can already make better inferences about consumer wants and needs, but as AI and machine learning are more deftly integrated, insights will only get better, as will the ability to anticipate consumer needs – and to even make decisions on behalf of consumers without any input from them whatsoever. Like, say, ordering a cup of coffee. As it stands, digital enables brands to customize offers for specific users rather than provide generic solutions.

When Bob Lord announced he was leaving AOL in November last year, most people knew he was going to end up landing a big new role -- not least because he told The Wall Street Journal he wanted to run a public company or a company about to IPO. Lord spent more than a decade at ad agencies, ending up as global CEO at Publicis Groupe's digital technology division, presiding over almost 8,000 employees and 1.8 billion in revenue. In 2013, he left agency land to join AOL as its president, helping to grow revenue from 1.5 billion to more than 3 billion. Verizon, one of AOL's large clients, became so impressed with its programmatic advertising offering that it ended up acquiring the company for 4.4 billion in June last year. Lord is now at IBM, in the newly-created chief digital officer role. Lord hasn't quite replaced Ginni Rometty to run the company, but he has been charged with transforming "Big Blue" into a much slicker operation that he hopes will appeal as much to Silicon Valley techies as its traditional enterprise customers.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced THINK Marketing, a new one-stop destination for marketers to gain knowledge, learn skills and ultimately drive a digital transformation within their business. Designed to help Chief Marketing Officers (CMO) and their teams build proficiency and experience, THINK Marketing delivers news and thought leadership content from the industry's top marketing influencers and news outlets. Through these assets, marketers can gain a deeper knowledge and, when ready, match their needs with solutions from IBM and more than sixty marketing technology companies from around the globe including Sprinklr, Mirakl and MediaMath. THINK Marketing will rapidly grow to include new industry specific content, collections of content on additional marketing functions and double the number of third-party solutions. THINK Marketing will also include a developer marketplace where start-ups and developers can virtually brainstorm, try solutions and also create and bring to market new cognitive and cloud apps that address important marketing challenges.