During this webinar, industry experts discussed where AI in marketing was heading in the future. We’ve included a short transcription of the webinar, beginning at 44:40 of the webinar.

Michael Weiss, Ai4: As you might imagine, AI in marketing future-focused. So what's the future? It's 2020. What's it going to be like in 2025? What are your marketing programs going to look like?

Ashish Agarwal, Humana: I would say what we are working towards and what keeps me really excited is a scenario going back to my earlier point, where different point solutions that we have been using as marketers for the customer journey, they're actually talking to each other. A lot of things like next best action, next best message and all of that actually have become a reality. 

The reason they are still in the nascent stage is because of some of some of the data infrastructure opportunities that Mert talked about. Those are the things in next 5 years given the pace of disruption and the investments that organizations are making, you are seeing basically customer journeys, marketeers thinking about customer journeys, and managing customer journeys and with data flowing longitudinally and across decision models. And actually leading or nudging the customer towards the next best action versus right now Point Solutions working at different points.

Jaap Ruoff, Gradient Ventures: I agree with that. I think in any company, especially large organizations, that sequence is very disjointed and there are a lot of companies looking to tie those pieces together, especially from the analytics perspective. We see a lot of emerging companies working on very specific marketing solutions like the communications themselves, the campaign's themselves, but at the end of the day starting with the actual customer analytics is really where the intelligence lies and with the most valuable pieces for the marketer. Then from there onwards, if from within those types of engines you can find plugins to run the actual campaigns, that will be really strong combination, but it's a complex landscape and there's a lot of change recently in terms of what is technologically possible. So, I think we're going to see a lot of movement in terms of new companies coming up and growing in the next few years.

Mert Bay, Uber: I agree with both of you. It's about the customer journey and intervening at the right time with the right offer, guiding them and doing this in real time at scale. 

Michael Weiss, Ai4: Do you guys think voice is going to be a bigger part of your marketing efforts? I have multiple Alexa's for example. Is voice part of what you think about for the future? Like are people ordering more rides on Uber or buying health care stuff through voice? 

Ashish Agarwal, Humana: I believe it will be however, there is a caveat around there. I think from a consumer behavior perspective, the classical tension between hey, I know it's very convenient, but I don't understand the privacy part because I don't know what Alexa is hearing, which is the classic concern that any coffee table conversation. So yes, there is something around that, but I think businesses have to educate consumers and inspire confidence. But yes, I think engagement with voice devices and engagement through voice. I think that's the future. That's where it's going.

Jaap Ruoff, Gradient Ventures: Yeah, I think there will be a lot around voice. That's said, I think voice will be seen as one other channel and at the end of the day, voice itself is not where the actual intelligence lies; where again where you can actually do the customer segmentation that is so important as a discipline. So I see it more as a different channel that can be activated and something that's really changing marketing as a discipline at its very core.

 

Learn more and watch the full video on YouTube: https://youtu.be/JQsWgvsV5Xk.