Mumbai: Artificial intelligence (AI)  has been a buzzword for a long time now! From content creation to customer support, AI is now everywhere. Interestingly, AI has also touched down the marketing industry. And to discuss the importance of AI and data in the marketing sector, the second day of IndianTelevision.com's CAMM Summit and Exhibition 2022 witnessed an insightful panel discussion on the topic: 'AI & Data - Your Tools for Better Efficiency.'

Moderated by Pixis chief executive officer (Europe & APAC) Neel Pandya, the panel had marketing leaders including WATConsult managing partner Sahil Shah, Ferns N Petals chief technology officer Vasanth Kamatgi, Timex Group head of marketing & e-commerce Ajay Dhyani, and BFSI global technology leader Suresh A Shaan.

Experts believe that AI can be very helpful in improving the data analysing speed and also to increase the efficiency of marketing campaigns. To begin with, Pandya explained his idea of AI. He feels AI is everywhere.

How marketers look upto artificial intelligence?

Taking the discussion further, he asked Dhyani if the Timex Group has ever integrated artificial intelligence approaches in their marketing campaigns?

To which, Dhyani said that Timex Group has not used artificial intelligence in its marketing campaigns so far but they have come across various case studies and reports on how artificial intelligence is emerging and how companies across the sectors are using it.

“We are excited to see the efficient use of artificial intelligence and are clearly looking to integrate it in our marketing campaigns,” he highlighted.

Adding to it, Ferns N Petals' Kamatgi said, “AI is a very powerful tool and it will change everything, from the way we live to the way we operate our business.”

He further stated that Ferns N Petals started using AI back in 2018 for better product recommendation.

Sharing the outcomes of using AI as a tool, he said, “we experienced mixed results, right now we need to work a lot to get better results because efficient use of AI requires smart applications and filtration of data and we are working in this direction.”

He also told that Ferns N Petals recently concluded its annual business plan and artificial intelligence is going to be the biggest investment of the company. "We have a pipeline of 28 news cases that are supposed to go live in coming times. However, we have not decided the estimated time yet but we are working on it,” Kamatgi asserted.

Explaining how they will integrate artificial intelligence in their marketing plan, he further said, “we will be applying AI for efficient product recommendations, classification of products, better search, product sequencing, multi-labeling and so on.”

After listening from the marketers how they are using and planning to use artificial intelligence, Pandya highlighted how artificial intelligence has been helping the marketers. He said, "artificial intelligence is largely doing three simple things- automating the bidden budget which is currently planned manually, better customer targeting and creating more and more personalisation for the potential customers."

Metaverse - The next big thing in adtech world

Shifting the conversation to the vision for the next step in the internet's evolution - metaverse, Pandya asked WATConsult’s Shah, “Is metaverse or meta just a buzzword or are marketers really trying to do something which will help them and the industry?”

“Metaverse is a fad to me,” Shah noted. “I am not sure if the metaverse is going to be there for a long time or not. We will get to know it with time.”

He also said that after talking to a lot of gaming experts he realised that the term has suddenly become so popular after Facebook named its parent company as Meta. Otherwise the gaming industry has been operating in the metaverse for a long time.

Furthermore, he shared how marketers are using metaverse. He said, “If we look from the marketing perspective, a lot of companies are now investing in metaverse. For example Nike opened a store which is just amazing. But the question is how many people are going to use it? And what is the return on investment in metaverse?”

“The only concern here is the critical masses and consumers are not headed towards metaverse as of now,” he highlighted.

How will marketers cope up with the cookie-less world?

In the next part of the conversation, Pandya moved towards the most critical concern of marketers that is the removal of cookies. There’s been a lot of talk around how this announcement by Google will make it difficult for marketers to do audience profiling and reach out to the right audience at the right time.

Throwing the next question to BFSI global technology leader Suresh A Shaan, Padnya asked, “how do you think a cookieless world is going to affect the ad and marketing world and how marketers will cope-up with the change?"

Shaan answered, “now marketers need to switch to personalisation to a greater extent. People easily connect when the campaign is derived from an emotional perspective. Hence personalisation will emerge as a helpful tool for marketers.”

Other panelists also agreed to him and shared how they are adopting personalisation. Sharing how marketers are going hyper personalised Shaan highlighted a few campaigns from Flipkart where the e-commerce company hired regional celebrities to go personalised for their consumers.

Will artificial intelligence lead to job cuts?

Concluding the session, Pandya asked one quick question to panelists, “Will artificial intelligence take away human jobs in the coming time..?”

While Shah and Dhyani think that artificial intelligence will not take away jobs, Kamatgi thinks that it will definitely take away a few jobs. “I think in urban areas it will lead to a job cut but in rural areas it will not,” Shaan opined.

“Well! I also think that artificial intelligence will not take away human jobs; rather it will add more power and liberty to manpower,” Pandya commented.