AI Transforming Surveys, Segmentation, and Ad Creatives
The advance of AI accelerates the pace at which companies can arrive at the Nirvana of one-to-one marketing. But the sharp focus on how AI and automation can improve, scale and tailor lead-activation campaigns (primarily through the mass production of what cartoonist Tom Fishburn calls “infinite words nobody wants”) blinds marketers to the real benefit of AI: detecting patterns to understand people better.
This is because AI tools are great at delivering very smart but very similar results.
And whether it’s AI-generated or human-generated, sameness is not a winning strategy.
The bottom line: Companies can’t break through the clutter by adding to it.
That’s why I am watching the early signs of the Second Wave of AI and how AI is evolving to help companies stand out. It was also the topic of my keynote at App Growth Week, the largest digital event on iOS marketing organized by Splitmetrics. My talk (Mobile Futurescape: the AI-enhanced Roadmap for Mobile Marketing 2030) looked at AI-powered approaches that drive customer connection and conversion by treating people as humans, not numbers.
3 remarkable ways AI is changing the rules
Based on my first-hand observations and conversations (20+ years in the industry; 9 books in collaboration with companies including SAP, IBM and InMobi; dozens of ebooks and white papers; and hundreds of interviews, podcasts and candid chats with experts and thought leaders), I uncover 3 remarkable ways AI is changing the rules and shine a light on the industry pioneers.
#1 Surveys
If you want to acquire your audience and keep them coming back, you need to understand what they want, how they want it and when they want it.
You can ask outright through a user survey or focus group, but this is an exercise built on human assumptions about the best questions to ask in order to measure what the company intends to measure.
It’s an approach that has infinite faith in the ability of humans to come up with valid and consistent questions and constructs. But any reader of Nudge knows a lot can go wrong.
This is where AI makes a worthwhile contribution, bringing companies a giant step closer to a profound understanding of their most valuable users and personas.
Solsten harnesses AI to power its human insights engine. The company combines AI and adaptive psychometric assessments to produce deep player insights for product, marketing, and research teams.
Thanks to AI, this isn’t a poorly drafted survey; it’s a superpower.
Teams are equipped with a scientifically valid construct to ask individuals the questions that matter, measure what is intended and assess the responses—at scale. The AI also learns from how each individual answers to adapt the actual question bank and then compares answers to a comprehensive collection of psychological data to check randomness, bias and outliers.
Joe Schaeppi, Solsten CEO, tells me his customers (many in mobile gaming) use this to improve how they target media investment towards the most valuable users. Joe is on the books for a PG.Biz podcast with me in Q1, and I can’t wait to learn how adaptive assessment is helping heavyweights like Supercell and the NFL increase critical KPIs.
#2 Segmentation
AI liberates marketers from their preconceived notions and biases around what they think customers are “supposed” to do or like. More importantly, AI adapts marketing and messaging to people’s actions and what these actions really say about what we humans genuinely consider attractive and valuable.
It’s the bottoms-up approach that Aampe champions by clustering users by their exhibited behaviors, as well as the sequence of events that prompted these behaviors and actions in the first place. Here, Aampe ingests app event data to detect the patterns in user behavior that lead to businesses’ desired outcomes. This equips marketing and engineering to predict future customer actions. The dynamic is ongoing as AI uncovers still more triggers, giving marketers even more options and ways to engage.
In this scenario, AI is 1) conscious that people don’t follow rigid routines and 2) contextually aware of what’s going on in users’ lives. The outcome is a living and learning single source of truth that draws on human actions to inform segmentation and messaging to engage and retain customers at scale.
Think of it as managing messaging the way you would manage a stock portfolio.
Yes, you could do this manually, but why would you want to? With AI at the helm, marketing can place its bets with high confidence and win big.
#3 Super-cool creatives
My final AI transformation trend comes via the UA Society Summit, the high-caliber event I will never miss, and Kenjy Vanitou, Lead Creative Manager at Voodoo, who told us how AI is helping his company ramp up skills, polish games and deliver ad experiences with real and measurable impact.
Take the case of one effort to find the winning app icon for a game. Working with AI, Kenjy reveals his team chalked up:
- Harder – +300% A/B testing
- Better – 30x cheaper
- Faster – 4000x delivery speed
- Stronger- +10% conversion rate
You’ll have to tune into the video below to see how Kenjy harnessed AI (working with Replai) to develop more than icons. From music to lyrics and character voices to character types, AI is the source of inspiration and impressive results.
The AI Futurescape
So, let me leave you with my view of the future of marketing and the DNA of the future marketer:
- There can be no UA without AI. (My mantra since I wrote about in Forbes back in 2018 😱)
- Adaptive approaches across the lifecycle deliver sustainable competitive advantage.
- And AI will not take your job – but someone who can use AI will.
Thanks again to the great folks at Splitmetrics—especially Olga Noha and Lina Danilchik—and I look forward to joining them again next year. (Maybe for my 3rd keynote?)
Of course, virtual events are great, but if you want to meet up IRL, let’s make it happen!
- PGC London – Jan 22-23 (live podcasts and more)
- Gamesforum Barcelona – Feb 7-8 (and don’t miss my opening Unfiltered UA panel to open the event)
- E-commerce Berlin Expo – Feb 22 (tracks, talks and a panel on conversational commerce)
- Mobile World Congress – Feb 26-29 (video interviews in partnership with marketing pundit John Owen and Mobile Marketing Magazine)
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