Turns out, artificial intelligence isn't just helpful for powering chatbots and voice assistants.
It may also be able to help brands create emotionally intelligent ads.
A suite of big-name marketers like Microsoft and Gap have started relying on AI to optimize the content of their ads, tapping into ad-tech startups like Persado to generate personalized ads based on the language a user is most likely to respond to.
Think of it as an AI-powered, automated copywriting machine.
The Persado platform can be used across web, email, text, and social ads. And according to Assaf Baciu, a cofounder, using the right emotional language can help drive huge results for brands, lifting customer engagement and ultimately conversions significantly.
"It's a lofty goal for marketers to personalize messages," he said. "By creating such cognitive content, we help brands motivate and engage with consumers better."
Persado is enabling brands to use AI for narrative storytelling
Persado isn't exactly a new entrant in the ad-tech landscape. Baciu and his cofounder, Alex Vratskides, started the company six years ago, and the company has since had three successful seed funding rounds.
Neither is it the only company trying to automate content creation. Automated Insights, for example, has a software called Wordsmith that's being used by the likes of The Associated Press and Yahoo to craft blogs and sports reports.
And of course there's IBM's famed Watson supercomputer, which has for years promised to make digital ads smarter and more effective.
But while Persado has been helping brands create tailored messages by analyzing marketing data and emotional profiles for a while, it just added what it's calling the most "sophisticated" update to its platform.
Persado could already pinpoint the words or phrases that could maximize engagement for the brand. Now, it can create an entire narrative, incorporating each brand's voice and attributes to each campaign's context, the company said.
For example, a fashion brand looking to launch a new collection could tap into Persado to generate taglines around several themes, from affordability ("the right fashion at the right price") to new arrivals ("just-arrived fashion") to the season ("new season goals").
The algorithm would then detect which elements and phrases make the most impact while ditching the ones that fall flat. Ultimately, it would rearrange everything for optimal positioning, generating a unique marketing message designed to perform better, like "Just-Arrived Fashion For Your #NewSeasonGoals."
"Different people react differently to different messages," Baciu told Business Insider. "Brands can add any tags, attributes, or audience segments to the platform and create compelling storytelling unique to their different audiences."
Brands like Microsoft have started to embrace AI in developing ad campaigns
Data has started to play a big role in how marketers analyze a campaign's performance and results, but it's played a limited role thus far in determining what ads actually look like and say.
But that's changing for brands like Microsoft, whose rewards team, for example, relies heavily on email marketing, sending monthly account statements as well as newsletters.
The team has been using Persado to test a variety of subject lines, dialing up on the aspects that work while getting rid of the ones that don't. The company has found, for example, that using the "checkmark" or "tick" emoji on the subject lines helps drive up the open rate.
"Rewards marketing is very email-centric, but people are inundated with emails, so the need to be able to precisely understand the success of what works is key," said Margaret Knight, a senior marketing consultant at Microsoft, adding that the company had seen an increase of 20% in clickthrough rates.
Adorama, a US online electronics retailer, also recently used Persado to build more meaningful relationships with customers via email and saw its engagement rate rise by as much as 163%, the company said.
The average uplift for brands, according to Baciu, is as much as 41%, with some seeing a return on investment of seven to 10 times.
