The Future of Marketing AI is Human

It’s 2018 and, for many of us in social advertising, the future is here. Brands are using powerful artificial intelligence (AI) tools to build rich experiences for their target audiences and customers.

AI is quickly becoming a mainstream solution — but there’s a lot more to AI than plugging it into your existing strategy. The most powerful uses of AI for digital marketing and advertising has to be guided by skilled humans.

Keeping Up with the Algorithms

Social media changes all the time — a tweak to a Facebook algorithm, for instance, could make it harder for you to reach your target audiences. That makes hiring or engaging a skilled digital marketer with a concentration in social marketing and advertising a must. Not only will you have someone who doesn’t need to be trained on how to perform social media marketing (using social media doesn’t make you an expert), you’ll have a person on your team whose job is to following algorithm updates. And they’ll likely be responsible for creating social content strategy as well. That’s the kind of expertise whose value goes beyond just minding changes to social channel AI.

AI Doesn’t Know It All

Contrary to popular belief, AI is not omniscient. At least, not yet. And many of the features built into native app ad builders have blind spots when it comes to audience building and targeting. That’s why augmenting AI with human intelligence is so important — you can search for the smaller, more concentrated audiences and verticals the AI might not show you, and tweak ads accordingly.

Protecting Your Investment

Pairing AI with a human is exceptionally cost-effective. That sounds weird, but how many times have you paid for a product that has low adoption and ends up being a waste of money and resources? No matter how you use AI, ensuring that it’s used correctly and often is critical. And the better your marketing team gets at using AI, the more it can deliver for the brand.

2018 will be the year AI becomes mainstream. But without the right people to complement it, brands risk squandering a powerful tool.

Want to learn more about how we can help you get the most out of social advertising and AI? Sign up for Constellation Scorecard and see how your ads stack up against your industry’s benchmarks.

This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 291,182+ people.

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