The Founder and CEO of AddNewer shared an insight on data and AI-based marketing.
The annual three-day ‘World Innovator Meeting (WIM) 2019’ conference was held in Beijing, from December 6-8. This event was hosted by EO company, under the supervision of China Enterprise Confederation (中国企业联合会), with ‘Science and Technology 4.0: Building New Global Future Together’ as this year’s theme. Over 6,000 innovators from around the world participated and discussed world technology trends and industrial innovation in 2019 and in coming years.
Ten sub-forums were organized during the event, among which was the ‘Industrial Internet Innovation Forum.’ Members from representative companies, investors, scholars and officials working in the fields were present, among which were UiPath, Pivotal, Jivox, Ritase and Ritase.
In this article we’ll look at the keynote speech that was delivered by Yin Zijie (尹子杰), Co-founder and CEO of AddNewer (加和科技), titled ‘How AI + traffic management can accelerate marketing innovation.’
Enhancing data optimization
Established in 2014, AddNewer is a software-based platform enterprise focusing on the construction of new channels for digital services. It also provides smart marketing services for enterprises across multiple industries. Throughout the years, AddNewer has successfully launched a number of platforms including ReachMax, CampaignMax and Marketing Cavas, which serve as the core of its business intelligence ecosystem.
AddNewer is promoting its latest two creations, the Smart Traffic Management (STM) platform and Marketing Multi-Media Hub (MMH). AddNewer’s Smart Traffic Management is a cloud platform that utilizes big data and AI to enhance consumers’ all-domain experience. This platform is capable of selecting suitable models for differing marketing purposes and conducting real-time traffic optimization, achieving more efficient use of traffic.
MMH on the other hand was developed to provide integrated one-stop digital marketing solutions, aiming to build a more agile business process for enterprises.
Evolution of marketing through technology
In the past few decades, we have seen a tremendous transformation in the way companies advertise their products. Although digital marketing has matured since the late 20th century, the birth of smart gadgets has accelerated its next phase of development.
Marketing in the early days relied on traditional data analytics. Marketing efficiency, specifically in terms of advertisement, was largely achieved through data analysis and advertisement transaction negotiations, with a huge emphasis put on costs. This type of strategy has limited customer reachability and an understanding of consumers’ buying behavior.
The introduction of the Internet in the 1990s allowed digital marketing to thrive. At this stage, advertisement began to turn to more interactive through clickable banner ads. Since then, digital marketing has evolved rapidly and also diversified its channels.
The next development stage is through the incorporation of big data and AI into the digital marketing industry. With big data, consumers’ behavior can be analyzed with greater depth; companies are now able to achieve higher accuracy when targeting specific groups of people to advertise their products. Precision is hugely emphasized at this stage. AI on the other hand, prioritizes the effectiveness and efficiency of content generation.
Market size in China alone exceeds 800 billion
There is a need to address China’s advertising and marketing industry, which saw a positive outlook for the past few years, reaching CNY 800 billion in 2018. Yin Zijie later noted that this does not represent the entire market as not all traffic is in the form of advertisement transactions; hence the market should be larger than CNY 800 billion.
Major internet platforms are the primary driver of this enormous market. The most well-known search engine Google, which is also the world’s largest advertising company, is basing its marketing strategy on users’ entered keywords. Facebook, Tencent and Alibaba all have a similar approach. However, these platforms have different pathways to do their operations. For instance, Tencent has Tencent Advertisement platform while Alibaba has zhitongche (直通车). These platforms can support huge traffic, which adds to the appeal of their free services for consumers. The acquired traffic is their means to generate revenue through advertisement. Therefore, various technological innovations are implemented to improve the efficiency of their operation.
Swift marketing
Enterprises are shifting towards technology-driven concept. Data taken from Gartner shows that enterprises in Europe and America are reinforcing their investment in technology. In the 2017-2018 period, money poured into labor, paid media and agencies decreased, while marketing technology surged by 32%.
First-generation AI software is not able to support the new advertising, with millisecond-counting elements, rather, new models of ‘super-AI’ are required. The latest metric for analyzing the decision-making process in the ad industry is 0.1 seconds, which is equivalent to 100 milliseconds.
However, this was not the most crucial point. There are three additional points followed: the first concerned the capability of generating mass data, enabling us to observe possible controlled variables. Next came the matter of building system synergy, where different systems are integrated for ease and more efficient control. Last but not least, real-time decision making is crucial, as businesses in this sector are progressive and evolving very quickly.
Benefits of intelligent traffic management
Through well-managed traffic, enterprises can solve several fundamental issues. First and foremost is the consumer experience. Through AI, appropriate and relevant content can be displayed only to particular consumers who have a need for a particular service or products. This will improve the ROI at the same time.
Secondly, companies often promote a wide variety of products with different SKUs. In earlier days, these different products were treated equally, to weaker effect. With the help of intelligent traffic management, better-selling products can be given more attention or a higher budget.
Thirdly, intelligent traffic management promotes intelligent business simultaneously. For instance, in the past, choices on ad delivery and the number of ads to be posted on each media channel were based on sales data collected each month. Therefore advertising could only be planned on a monthly basis as well. With smarter business systems, this type of assessment and adjustments can be done in just minutes, for varying time segments.
Finally, ‘smart’ marketing has been established as the defining trend. Previously, marketing was regarded as a product-centric tool to achieve higher KPI. Today, however, smart marketing has evolved to be much more than that. Not only does it help us to generate and apply data, smart marketing is a 2C interactive link that is consumer-centric, helping us to fully realize the value of the innovative smart network.