Five (5) Data Science & AI roles reshaping the advertising industry
Discover the critical impact of five technical and scientific positions on data-fueled modern marketing practices
Context
The progression of data-driven marketing is increasingly demanding technical roles focused on data gathering, analysis, and interpretation. Data Science is one of the fastest-growing careers and marketers are becoming more aware of the critical importance of this practice in obtaining essential insights into consumer behavior and preferences.
These insights are crucial for crafting effective channel strategies, accurate customer segmentation, targeted lead engagement, or sophisticated lead scoring, among other uses.
This scenario raises a question for marketers: What key roles should a marketing team adopt to stay ahead in data-centric and AI-driven advertising?
Let’s delve into the 5 key roles that we have identified as poised to transform the advertising industry.
1. AI Advertising Strategists
AI-driven marketing revolves around the use of a tool that automates various aspects of the marketing process, functioning silently in the background. Before implementing such tools, it’s crucial to have a deep understanding of their underlying principles, which is essential before investing in software licenses and deploying technological solutions.
AI Advertising Strategists employ their combination of scientific, technical, and marketing knowledge to develop strategies that smoothly incorporate AI into advertising efforts, thereby improving the efficiency and engagement of campaigns. They are responsible for comprehensively understanding the application of AI across the entire marketing “supply chain,” including improved ad targeting, personalization, and performance tracking.
2. Marketing Data Scientists
Marketing research, while not new, has drastically evolved with Twitter, Facebook, and Google, providing a wealth of consumer preference information. These platforms, heavily reliant on digital advertising for revenue, transformed marketing into a data-rich field. This abundance of data requires skilled data scientists to improve advertising effectiveness and media investment returns.
Modern marketing has shifted from purely creative to a blend of science, with marketing data scientists employing techniques like ML, clustering, and regression. These professionals use tools such as SQL, Python, Tableau or Graphext to analyse customer data, identify patterns, and develop predictive models for consumer behavior and marketing campaign optimisation.
While the role of a marketing data scientist isn’t always explicitly defined in job titles, as data science evolves, more specialized roles like this one are emerging. Marketing data scientists not only support strategy and campaign analysis but also contribute to the development of new products and services, collaborating closely with marketing teams.
3. AI Advertising Ethicists
As AI advertising becomes more advanced, it raises important ethical issues like privacy, bias, and transparency. To address these concerns, a new role has emerged: the AI ethicist. This role combines technical knowledge with an understanding of the social, moral, and legal impacts of AI, ensuring that AI in advertising is used responsibly and ethically.
This position involves guiding ethical practices in AI development and use, ensuring compliance with any upcoming legislation or regulations by establishing and uphold ethical standards.
4. Ad Customisation Specialists
From defining the perfect target audience to crafting hyper-personalised ad experiences, the use of AI redefines targeting possibilities.
Businesses will need to leverage professionals that are able to make the most out of algorithms for programmatic customisation as these will take the advertising industry into a whole new level of precision targeting and unmatched personalisation.
These specialists may have a Data Science background or may work hand in hand with Data Scientists to be able to exploit AI’s capabilities in order to tailor ads on a large scale by cohorts and preference groups. By employing different sets of algorithms, they craft highly customised and targeted campaigns, optimising content, context, timing, and channel selection for each consumer group and buyer persona. This methodology allows boosting conversion rates, improving saturation curves and customer satisfaction.
5. Customer Experience Analysts and AI Interactive Designers
These specialists are responsible for designing and executing strategies around the interaction of customers at every touch point. By merging data analytics, customer psychology, and insights they are able to enhance the overall customer journey, making it simple and enjoyable, while elevating the brand experience across channels.
After working with data engineers and data scientists on implementing data-fueled mechanisms that ensure a top-notch experience, they also rely on analytical techniques to monitor and analyse customer satisfaction metrics to ensure constant improvement.
Intrinsically related to the previous position, the proliferation of AI-driven customer journeys will depend on the right interactive interfaces that can support and result in engaging, user-friendly customer journeys and pleasant experiences. The role of these creative AI Interactive Designer roles will be to improve the interface of any digital consumer touch point with AI-based ads, improving the overall brand engagement and advertising efficacy.
