about the environment as well as how it evaluates that environment based on new information or the results of experimentation. It can program itself.
An individual's search terms are more important than her location, which is more important than her age (detect). When people use six or more words in a search, their propensity to purchase is so high that a discount is counterproductive (deliberate). Once it is noted that women under the age of 24 are not likely to purchase, regardless of words in a search, an experiment can be run to offer them free shipping (develop).
THIS IS YOUR MARKETING ON AI
The tools are not supernatural. They are not beyond the understanding of mortals. You owe it to yourself to understand how they are about to rock your world.
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change.
The companion website for Artificial Intelligence for Marketing: Practical Applications can be found at: AI4Marketing.com.
Acknowledgments
I am forever grateful to the many people who have blogged, tweeted, published videos on, and answered my questions about artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Specifically, thanks go to Barry Levine, Bob Page, Brent Dykes, Brian Solis, Christopher Berry, Dan McCarthy, Dave Smith, David Raab, Dean Abbott, Dennis Mortensen, Doc Searls, Eric Siegel, Gary Angel, Himanshu Sharma, Ian Thomas, Kaj van de Loo, Mark Gibbs, Matt Gershoff, Matthew Todd, Michael Rappa, Michael Wu, Michelle Street, Pat LaPointe, Peter Fader, Rohit Rudrapatna, Ron Kohavi, Russ Klein, Russell McAthy, Scott Brinker, Scott Litman, Tim Wilson, Tom Cunniff, Tom Davenport, Tom Mitchell, Tyler Vigen, Vicky Brock, and Vincent Granville.
And, as always, Matt Cutler.
CHAPTER 1
Welcome to the Future
The shovel is a tool, and so is a bulldozer. Neither works on its own, “automating” the task of digging. But both tools augment our ability to dig.
Marketing is about to get weird. We've become used to an ever‐increasing rate of change. But occasionally, we have to catch our breath, take a new sighting, and reset our course.
Between the time my grandfather was born in 1899 and his seventh birthday:
■ Theodore Roosevelt took over as president from William McKinley.
■ Dr. Henry A. Rowland of Johns Hopkins University announced a theory about the cause of the Earth's magnetism.
■ L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in Chicago.
■ The first zeppelin flight was carried out over Lake Constance near Friedrichshafen, Germany.
■ Karl Landsteiner developed a system of blood typing.
■ The Ford Motor Company produced its first car – the Ford Model A.
■ Thomas Edison invented the nickel‐alkaline storage battery.
■ The first electric typewriter was invented by George Canfield Blickensderfer of Erie, Pennsylvania.
■ The first radio that successfully received a radio transmission was developed by Guglielmo Marconi.
■ The Wright brothers flew at Kitty Hawk.
■ The Panama Canal was under construction.
■ Benjamin Holt invented one of the first practical continuous tracks for use in tractors and tanks.
■ The Victor Talking Machine Company released the Victrola.
■ The Autochrome Lumière, patented in 1903, became the first commercial color photography process.
My grandfather then lived to see men walk on the moon.
In the next few decades, we will see:
■ Self‐driving cars replace personally owned transportation.
■ Doctors routinely operate remote, robotic surgery devices.
■ Implantable communication devices replace mobile phones.
■ In‐eye augmented reality become normalized.
■ Maglev elevators travel sideways and transform building shapes.
■ Every surface consume light for energy and act as a display.
■ Mind‐controlled prosthetics with tactile skin interfaces become mainstream.
■ Quantum computing make today's systems microscopic.
■ 3‐D printers allow for instant delivery of goods.
■ Style‐selective, nanotech clothing continuously clean itself.
And today's youngsters will live to see a colony on Mars.
It's no surprise that computational systems will manage more tasks in advertising and marketing. Yes, we have lots of technology for marketing, but the next step into artificial intelligence and machine learning will be different. Rather than being an ever‐larger confusion of rules‐based programs, operating faster than the eye can see, AI systems will operate more inscrutably than the human mind can fathom.
WELCOME TO AUTONOMIC MARKETING
The autonomic nervous system controls everything you don't have to think about: your heart, your breathing, your digestion. All of these things can happen while you're asleep or unconscious. These tasks are complex, interrelated, and vital. They are so necessary they must function continuously without the need for deliberate thought.
That's where marketing is headed. We are on the verge of the need for autonomic responses just to stay afloat. Personalization, recommendations, dynamic content selection, and dynamic display styles are all going to be table stakes.
The technologies seeing the light of day in the second decade of the twenty‐first century will be made available as services and any company not using them will suffer the same fate as those that decided not to avail themselves of word processing, database management, or Internet marketing. And so, it's time to open up that black box full of mumbo‐jumbo called artificial intelligence and understand it just well enough to make the most of it for marketing. Ignorance is no excuse. You should be comfortable enough with artificial intelligence to put it to practical use without having to get a degree in data science.
WELCOME TO ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE FOR MARKETERS
It is of the highest importance in the art of detection to be able to recognize, out of a number of facts, which are incidental and which vital.
This book looks at some current buzzwords to make just enough sense for regular marketing folk to understand what's going on.
■ This is no deep exposé on the dark arts of artificial intelligence.
■ This is no textbook for learning a new type of programming.
■ This is no exhaustive catalog of cutting‐edge technologies.
This book is not for those with advanced math degrees or those who wish to become data scientists. If, however, you are inspired to delve into the bottomless realm of modern systems building, I'll point you to “How to Get the Best Deep Learning Education for Free”2 and be happy to take the credit