Few of us fully appreciate how dependent we are on data to make our lives easier and more efficient. Data helps us find new shows to binge watch, routes us around traffic during our morning commute, and even makes helpful suggestions while online shopping but pretending to work.

In other words, data and analytics have crept into nearly every corner of our daily lives, both at work and at play. In the particular case of digital advertising, big data and the overwhelming power of predictive analytics have quickly transformed the way the entire industry views everything from bidding and distribution to creative design and testing.

Advertising Isn't What It Used to Be

Of course, there are some people, even within the advertising industry itself, who still prefer to think of the entire process as something that is exclusively best suited for the collective, subjective whims of a well-seasoned creative director and team. However, the best ad campaigns have long since stopped being born from smoky, bourbon-fueled boardrooms. In the digital space, they can now leverage the soothsaying insights steered by innovations in data and artificial intelligence, a collective notion that has helped both create and steer permanent changes in consumer behavior.

To use a quick analogy, say you decided to be spontaneous and take a weekend trip to a secluded spot that was one of your favorites a decade or two ago. Halfway there, however, you realize some recent road construction has significantly changed the route, and you suddenly find yourself a bit lost.

A handful of people will always insist on stopping at the ancient gas station to ask the limping and weathered manager -- the very same one who's been there since the Eisenhower administration -- for directions, simply because he's been there so long. However, given the ease and accuracy of the GPS unit sitting within arm's reach, most would rather rely on technology to get them to the secluded spot rather than the kind but aged manager who offers well-worn familiarity to the solution but lacks agility and real-time information.

Big Data and Predictive Analytics: A True Power Couple

Advertisers have not been lacking for consumer-based data. However, it wasn't until processing power advanced enough to transform all of that data into something potent and insightful that big data and its associated technologies became such a powerful tool to an advertising campaign. Data and the algorithmic wonders of AI have irreparably changed how ads are created, sold and distributed for the good.

Predictive analytics, in particular, imparts an efficiency and effectiveness in a campaign's ability to find, engage and convert an audience that was the fuel of an advertiser's daydreams not so long ago. Integrating AI into the creative process can now turn those dreams into reality, as vast amounts of data can be mined and transformed to accurately predict consumer behavior relative to a nearly endless stream of market scenarios. In essence, the combination of AI and data can tailor creative to maximize its impacts on a customer base, virtually down to the individual level.

Evolve or Perish

Furthermore, the very nature of the digital landscape requires a high degree of agility and customization that is simply too cumbersome and inaccurate when relying on a more old-fashioned, traditional advertising process. Between computers and mobile devices, streaming platforms and organic search, creative must be able to instantly mold itself to a variety of different formats without losing its impacts.

If creative cannot successfully navigate such diverging paths within an extremely splintered marketplace, it will ultimately fail to engage the consumer and miss the conversions it was designed to foster in the first place. To reach an audience in the digital age, ads must find the audience according to their preferred platform and then appeal to them in the most impactful way possible.

Ads Aren't Born From a Mystical Potion

This isn't to say, of course, that there won't always be a place for a creative director and team of skilled, highly imaginative individuals. In many respects, human intuition is an intangible quality that is not easily replicated, even with the most advanced technologies. Given the complexities of the digital marketplace, however, it's clear that the combination of human intuition and forward-looking precision of an AI platform is what is needed to successfully target and engage an often distracted and disparate audience.

The merging of human and machine has become a statistical necessity, as traditional models can no longer keep up with the pace of an ever-evolving advertising landscape. AI-based creative isn't about a science fiction fantasy or the onslaught of a faceless cyborg army. Instead, it leverages the innate power of consumer data to establish a reliable framework that truly engaging creative can be born from. An advertiser's message can no longer spring from the singular, mystical and unquantifiable depths of a director's intuition if it hopes to engage the audience. The marketplace is too complicated to rely on such a process with any degree of certainty.

A Fortune Teller for Your Creative

ReFUEL4 has quickly become a market leader in providing such creative solutions to many of the most prescient, innovative companies within the dynamic marketplace. Taking a deliberate, calculated approach that is based on data and proprietary algorithms and metrics, we are able to generate creative that will engage, appeal and convert at all points along the funnel.

Stop asking that kind, older gentleman at the gas station for directions to get you where you want to go. Our innovative approach will maximize your ad spend, lower acquisition costs and get you to that secluded hideaway faster and more efficiently than you ever thought possible.