jon epstein - lac 2017 - disruptive technologies: ai and the future of marketing technology

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EVOLUTION OR EXTINCTION?HOW MARKETING CAN THRIVE IN THE AI-ERA

Jonathan EpsteinChief Marketing OfficerSentient Technologies

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.

If anyone's familiar with survival of the fittest, its all of you in the audience.

After all, you are in constant competition for the same scarce resources traffic and clicks.

In an ecosystem with only so much "food," being on the cutting edge of performance and statistics can be the difference between thriving and going extinct, much like our friend here.

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TECHNOLOGY DISRUPTIONS DEFINE OUR LANDSCAPE


Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.And similar to how we have made big discoveries in our solar system, we have also made big technology discoveries

The InternetSocial MediaBig Data Analytics

And if you werent able to stay on top of the rapidly changing technologies, youd be out of business by now.

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BUT WEVE SQUEEZED THE LAST DROPS OF VALUE FROM THESE TECHNOLOGIES


Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.And now as marketers, we have reached a point where weve squeezed as much value as we can out of these technologies. We need a new competitive advantage.

One that will allow is to leapfrog our competitors and help us work more efficiently.

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BUT THE BIGGEST DISRUPTION OF ALL IS COMING


Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.AI is the new planet-forming asteroid which will change the marketing landscape forever creating a new AI-First Era.

This asteroid is hurtling towards us with greater speed and velocity than ever before thanks to new breakthroughs in both algorithms, compute capacity and in the way AI can make autonomous decisions.

This is allowing AI to accomplish impressive tasks

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AI is the new UI. Accenture Technology Vision 2017

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.Your AI will be a key point of distinction for your business vs. your competitors. Accenture Technology Vision 2017

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.AI is no longer about how you do things; It's who you are. Accenture Technology Vision 2017

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.AI or artificial intelligence is the simulation of human intelligence processes by machines, especially computer systems. These processes include learning (the acquisition of information and rules for using the information), reasoning (using the rules to reach approximate or definite conclusions), and self-correction. Accenture Technology Vision 2017



IBMs Watson beat Ken Jenner at Jeopardy and then Google Deepmind won at Go.

In the business world HPs Autonomy with its Bayesian reasoning created opportunities for enterprises to better manage and search their data.

At Sentient, we believe AI can solve much broader problems, problems that require autonomous decision-making. To do this, weve built a robust AI platform that brings together many different forms of AI

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THERE ARE MANY FORMS OF AI

Deep LearningEVOLUTIONARY ALGORITHMSNEUROEVOLUTIONBayesian


DEEP LEARNING is good at perceptual challenges of structured and unstructured dataEA - is good for evolving decision-makers and applying to optimization problems.NEUROEVOLUTION good at training and creating deep neural networksBAYSEASIAN for reasoning

But all this AI is no good without the compute power to run it on.11

5K2M4KCPUsGPUsSITES


At Sentient we have developed one of the largest distributed compute platforms in the world dedicated to AI. We use it to train our our AI incredibly quickly, and in so doing solve intractable problems in many areas, such as finance, healthcare and commerce.12


Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.It follows the OODA Loop

The OODA loop observe, orient, decide and act is a methodology developed for US Air Force fighters, to optimize their chances of victory in the lightning-fast environment of aerial combat. This methodology has proven successful in other business endeavors, and our artificial intelligence systems are designed to enable the full loop.

The OODA loop in AI has been applied to advertising, fraud detection, HFT and other areas. Were working to solve even bigger problems and one specifically in intelligent commerce which I will touch on shortly.

To be most useful, AI at scale will be able not only to observe and parse structured and unstructured data but also to orient it in the context of the world around it, make the best decisions, and then act on those decisions. Every step of the way there is iterative feedback and updating.

Why is this important for you, as affiliate marketers?

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AFFILIATE MARKETERS HAVE LOTS OF DECISIONS TO MAKE


You have a lot on your plate and a lot of decisions to make.

Whats the best source of traffic? How much should I spend to get them? What creative should I put in front of them? What product(s) do I pitch when they hit my site? Will a special offer help? What words, images and layouts will close my prospects best?

AI can help alleviate this burden. But how?14

HOW DO YOU ENGAGE WITH AI?

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.How do you even begin to contemplate using AI?

There are lots of options out there:

Open AI Tensor Flow, PowerAI, etc.

Hire your own team, but an easy way is to work companies that are already experienced in this area.

You know what creative resonates with various audiences, you know who your customer are, but finding exactly the right combinations and when to show them can be hard, costly and time consuming.

So just like everything else you outsource, you should turn companies combining expertise in AI with domain expertise.

There AI companies that specialize in AI for Ads

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AI FOR ADS

#2016 Sentient TechnologiesYou don't need me to tell you SERP ads are an extremely competitive area. Chances are, either someone on your staff is dedicated to maximizing your ad spend or you're using an agency who specializes in exactly that.Ad performance is moved by a complicated series of levers. Snappier copy can help. So can more efficient bidding and smarter targeting, among other factors. Finding the right combination of all factors is what makes for the best possible performing ads and, of course, getting more and better traffic for lower prices is an ideal that doesn't need to be explained.

Artificial intelligence is particularly well-suited for the task. Because machine learning is skilled at finding subtle relationships and patterns that elude even the most seasoned data scientists, a smart AI can find the exact mixture of ad copy, audience targeting, and spend that produce the best leads and customers. AI that learns with every ad served means your campaigns change and improve 24/7, constantly optimizing towards better performance, even while you (or your agency) is taking a well-earned dinner break. Want to see whats going on in AI in advertising? Check out companies like Algorithms, Blackwood Seven, Rocket Fuel, and others.

Another area in which AI is very effective is in customer engagement.

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AI FOR ENGAGEMENT

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.What happens if a user comes to your site and doesn't immediately know what to do? What if they want to use your service but can't find an offer that looks right for them? What if they want to reach out and ask you a question?Chances are, if you're like most affiliate marketers, you don't have customer service reps standing by. And, even in the off chance you do, they aren't working at 11 p.m. when a user clicks an ad to place a bet.More and more sites in a variety of industries are looking to chatbots to address this very problem. Chatbots are natural language AIs that can carry out conversations in real time with users. And, because they aren't people, they can be on the clock all-day, year-round. You can train them to tell users about new offers, lead them to preferred sites, help with billing, or really any questions you think they should know the answer to. And a little guiding light can be the difference between a conversion and a bounce. Check out Wizeline and Inbenta for some of the latest work in AI chatbots.

We have an engagement product that analyses visual products to help people shop, but thats perhaps less relevant here. Perhaps most relevant is AI for optimization.

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AI FOR OPTIMIZATION


For a lot of marketers, conversion rate optimization (CRO) has long been a smart way to test and evolve strategies that work better than the current status quo. If you're unfamiliar, CRO is the practice of trying new ideas on your site, evaluating which performs better, and then implementing those winning ideas moving forward. These ideas can be anything from changing the headline or image on your homepage to the affiliate offer you present your visitors. It's about finding the right content to close the most sales.Many people think of CRO and A/B testing as synonymous, which is understandable. After all, A/B testing is the most popular flavor of conversion rate optimization. But advances in AI are poised to give forward-thinking affiliate marketers a leg up on their competition, even those that are actively testing right now. Artificial intelligence unlocks a type of optimization that has long required a team of dedicated data scientists far outside the budget of most affiliate marketers. It's called multivariate optimization. And it's the best and fastest way to find the content that maximizes the traffic you work so hard to get.Multivariate testing means trying not just A vs. B but all your marketing ideas at once. It means plugging in new content on every levelfrom the headline copy and image size to the offer itself. The AI will immediately start testing those ideas and finding which are promising. It can then use a branch of AI called genetic algorithms to really start evolving your site. It combines all those promising ideas, trying different mixtures, testing and tweaking constantly until the AI settles on the best combination of the ideas you gave it. This can amount to thousandseven hundreds of thousands!of potential combinations, the stuff that would take years to test. And in the end, sites typically see double-digit growth in key KPIs. Sentients own Ascend product applies AI to enable this new approach to conversion optimization.

We have a product, Sentient Ascend that does just this. Let me show you a demo of what it has done for one of our clients, Abuv Media.

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FULL-FUNNEL TESTINGOptimize your entire funnel

Adapts to Your AudienceAlways optimizing to the audience even if it changes

BETTER RESULTS, QUICKERDo a years worth of A/B testing in a single monthTest MoreTests dozens of ideas at once, and all of their combinations too

Test FASTER10-100X faster than traditional A/B or MVT

FULLY AUTOMATEDAscend manages the entire testing program so you can focus on ideas, not administrationASECNDS AI TESTING VS. A/B TESTING


So to summarize. Ascend is..

And here are some of our recent successes in this area.

40,000Visitors in 3 weeks434%Increase in CTR28,800Test combinations

13% Increase in average order value16%Increased conversions to the checkout page3Weeks of testing

4Page funnel tested

38%more conversions16015changes testedpossible designsBest-performing design:CUSTOMER SUCCESSES


So.21

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.So you know the AI asteroid is coming- Do you want to evolve into a bird?22

Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.Or go extinct like a dinosaur?

AI will help your business evolve and take off.

If you want to know more come talk to me.23

Thank youJon EpsteinChief Marketing OfficerLearn more at sentient.ai @SentientDAI


Copyright 2017 Sentient Technologies LLC. All rights reserved.So do you want to Ascend like a bird or24

jon epstein - lac 2017 - disruptive technologies: ai and the future of marketing technology

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