Why Things Sell On Instagram: Black Friday Ready

Published in

Future Marketing

3 min readNov 26, 2018

Issue 6: CognitionX — The Future of Marketing — a weekly round-up on AI and emerging tech

Welcome to this week’s CognitionX briefing — news, thoughts and updates on the use of AI in marketing, straight into your inbox.

Programmatic is one of the fastest growing phenomenons in Adtech. Stats from two Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) reports show its prevalence in Europe, “two thirds of display ad spend in Europe is now traded programmatically”. In Australia, programmatic spend grew from $83.7 million in 2012, to $1.74 billion in 2018 — a compound annual growth rate of 64%.

The IAB report also found that 65 per cent of companies buying media programmatically have brought the capability in-house, Accenture being a case in point earlier this year. We look out for whether this trend develops in other digital functions.

Read on for…

💬 The continued success of sales-bots
🕵️‍♀️ The history of surveillance capitalism
🛍 What makes someone buy on Instagram?

Impact of AI

A year in, Marks & Spencer’s virtual assistant has helped drive £2m in sales
A virtual assistant deployed by M&S, designed to intervene at critical points in the online sales process i.e. entering a voucher, has prevented sales losses worth $2m over a 12 month period. It’s a textbook case of VAs augmenting customer service agent’s capabilities, not replacing them.

Targeting/Privacy

Targeted Advertising Is Ruining the Internet and Breaking the World
Dr. Nathalie Maréchal, writing for Motherboard, takes a deep-dive into the history and now prevalence of ‘surveillance capitalism’. The piece brilliantly outlines the business models of the Silicon Valley media giants, explains the extent to which they target and assesses the impact of policy and regulation.

Artificial Creativity

Lexus launches ad scripted entirely using artificial intelligence
Lexus has premiered an ad entirely scripted by artificial intelligence in what it believes is a world first. The NLG tool, built in partnership with IBM Watson, was trained on (but not limited to) 15 years of award-winning luxury ad data. (Try loading in Incognito)

Watch the video and let us know what you think @cognition_x:

is Artificial Creativity the next big trend in Advertising?

We’ll feature the best answers in next week’s edition!

Personalisation

What makes someone buy on Instagram?
Read or listen to Layla Amjadi’s (Product Manager at Instagram) interview with The Verge. Layla outlines the relationships between advertising and commerce on the app and goes into great detail on the value of paid ads. What makes someone buy on Instagram? #Inspo.

It’s not just a black handbag. It’s that black handbag, the exact one that inspired you.

Education and Advice We Rate

Same As It Ever Was: The Fourth Industrial Revolution And Brand Safety
Jason Alan Snyder, CTO at Craft Worldwide / McCann Worldgroup compares the meditations of David Byrne in Talking Head’s timeless Once in a lifetime to the questions that brand marketers must ask themselves today.

How did we get here?
How do we know what is right and what is wrong
How do we know that the success in digital marketing we hold up as a trophy is genuine?

Inspiration

Jane Maas, a Pioneer for Women in Advertising, Dies at 86
Jane Maas, the advertising titan behind the ‘I Love NY’ campaign and a trailblazer for women in the man’s world of Don Draper and ’60s New York, passed away this week aged 86. Read her NYT obituary.

Last but not least, check out the winners of the Digiday Technology Awards 2018.

CognitionX Research

Our research team can help with your Sales and Marketing technology objectives. Which service would add most value to your team?

Let us know how we can help: research@cognitionx.io