Has AI arrived full force in MarTech? Although its use has advanced over the past few years, is it ready for prime time? 

The most common use for AI in marketing to date has been in analyzing data rapidly on a large-scale basis. This use has mostly focused on:

• Conversion prediction and customer lifetime value. AI can predict conversions from campaigns, both with individuals and in aggregate. By looking at purchasing behavior over time, prediction models can assist in estimating lifetime value of individual customers. These models are expected to increase in use over the next several years.
• Trend identification and anomaly detection. AI can help marketers with better insights into customer behavior at every step in the marketing funnel, which helps to improve decision making. An example of this application is Google’s Analytics Intelligence. This type of application can also be used to measure email performance.

As AI becomes more mainstream, some of its potential uses include:

• Content creation. As language prediction models have progressed, the ability to quickly generate long-form content has improved. AI-powered text generation can produce marketing copy, sale emails, blog posts and even SEO-friendly content for the web. This allows for faster content creation with more precise targeting of potential customers. However, AI-generated content still requires human oversight to ensure authenticity.
• Media monitoring. AI provides the ability to detect industry trends quickly, which can allow for fast response to real-world developments. As we learned during the COVID-19 pandemic, this ability is invaluable.
• Advanced campaign optimization. Platforms like Google and Facebook, among others, continue to develop their abilities to optimize campaigns, giving their advertisers access to a large volume of AI-powered options to improve targeting and delivery. Research has shown that marketing teams using machine learning and other forms of AI experience 89% higher rates of conversion. AI also allows for content personalization of smaller and smaller segments and delivery optimization of those smaller segments. The ability to generate personalized content on a very large scale is not far away.