Just 10 years ago, the concept of a mobile advertising industry was almost non-existent. With the explosion in mobile consumer devices and content tailored for the mobile experience, mobile advertising has become a major advertising phenomenon. It is rapidly becoming the dominant form of all digital advertising.
Why is this interesting for analytics? The amount of data. We are acutely aware of how our mobile phones are glued to our person. Sam Adler’s recent Irresistible explains how some consumer segments check their phone over sixty times per day. The mobile phone has become a cauldron of data on each individual.
The Number Game:
Rajiv Bhat, Senior Vice President of Data Sciences and Marketplace at InMobi and Avi Patchava, Vice President of Data Sciences and Marketplace at InMobi spoke on these lines at Cypher 2017, India’s most exciting Analytics summit.
“We have to draw the top talents from Data Science and Artificial Intelligence into AdTech. They have to know that there are challenging problems here that they can solve and make impact today,” said Patchava during the session.
Combine this with the necessity for advertising to achieve segment of one targeting, and the fact that the mobile advertising global marketplace is closing on a level of complexity and speed matched only by the financial trading system. One can quickly see the scope of impact from analytics, and AI-enabled systems.
Bhat and Patchava also explained the unique characteristics of the mobile advertising value chain, and why it is a fertile ground for innovation in consumer-focused artificial intelligence. They also talked about the game-changing use case opportunities in automated campaign management, creative design, and personalised advertising via chatbots.
Person Vs The Persona:
Information such as how many influencers is a person surrounded by, whose opinion they care about, make for the real, more usable digital personality of the person.
“That leads to my way of thinking where it is not about individuals as segments, but personas,” said Patchava.
He went on to explain that the in the AdTech industry, artificial intelligence also plays an important role in showcasing relevant advertisements to these “personas”.
Giving an example, Bhat said that if a person has had a laptop in his cart on an e-commerce website for quite some time but hasn’t yet purchased it…which ad would we show him? If we know he’s a regular traveler, a movie buff and other details, the decision would be more nuanced and personal, rather than just pushing generic offers.
“It is overwhelming how the AI and ML have managed to reach right into the human psyche, where machines can now determine if an ad would ‘work’ or not, or if it is appealing to the human eye or not,” added Patchava.
