While the flying cars and machine-fueled maid service from your favorite cartoons of old have yet to be perfected, machines have definitely made their mark in today's society. Specifically, with the integration of machine learning in your everyday life, automobiles can now spare you the embarrassment of parallel parking failures and mobile applications can salvage your morning commute by routing you around rush-hour traffic.

In terms of advertising, machine learning has proven to be just as transformative, making nearly every facet of an ad campaign, from genesis to distribution, far more efficient than ever thought possible. In fact, machine learning is quickly reinventing how your advertising is defined and practiced.

In creative development alone, machine learning is able to couple big data and predictive analytics to create incredibly insightful models to use as a platform for testing as well as mid-campaign changes. From your particular perspective as an advertiser, the most exciting part of machine learning is that the technology is just getting started.

The Heart of the Matter

Though all machine learning is a form of AI, not all AI is machine learning. While it might seem like a matter of semantics since the two terms are often used interchangeably, there are distinctions between them by definition.

In essence, machine learning is a specific sector of AI that utilizes algorithm-based computer programs to build sophisticated models from data. With further use and additional data, the systems continue to learn, refining their precision. As an advertiser, machine learning can take reams of consumer-based data and create models to better help your campaign test different combinations of creative, timing and tone to generate the most lasting impact and level of engagement.

Know Thy Customer

Of course, all the consumer data in the world does your campaign no good without the ability to interpret it in a way that provides actual insights into the marketplace. While trend modeling has been in use for decades, the older forms of such statistical marvels only scratched the surface of the immense power data can hold for an advertiser.

With advancements in processing power and algorithmic modeling, machine learning can completely transform your campaign's ability to harness data's inherent power into tremendous insights on both present and future consumer behavior.

More specifically, the new incarnations of predictive analytics take the old premise of trend modeling built on data and reinvent it to match the fast-paced, sometimes short-sighted marketplace, granting your campaign the real-time data and insight needed to make fully informed, real-time decisions.

While the intricacies of human behavior are still a work in progress for even the most advanced machine learning platforms, there will be a point in the not-too-distant future where algorithms will be able to integrate the complexities of individual taste, maybe even emotion, into consumer models, providing you the predictive abilities advertisers have long dreamed of.

When combined with the equally powerful forces of its technological cousins, all falling under the umbrella of artificial intelligence, the power of machine learning is even more potent. Coupling sophisticated trend models with the ability to time a particular message to the ideal point in the sales cycle, your campaign can provide the ROI and conversion rates that have always been the lofty pinnacle of your advertising dreams.

Finding Identity in a World of Endless Devices

Gone are the days when your campaign only had a handful of outlets to dispense a message. Now, consumers own multiple devices specific to their individual tastes and interests. To fully leverage the insight and impact afforded to your ads in the digital age, you need to know which devices belong to which consumers to best distribute a precise, targeted message. While cookies and other such rudimentary tools have been useful for well over a decade, their collective abilities don't come anywhere near the level needed to actually identify device ownership and use in this digitally splintered world.

With machine learning, however, your campaign can be much better at matching particular devices with particular users or groups of users, taking advantage of the computing power now available to perform the countless data-based iterations of probability factors to determine likelihoods. Although that might not sound like such an earth-shattering ability, given the number of consumers in the marketplace and devices per user, the statistical analysis needed to perform such functions factors in the billions of potential combinations.

Machine learning significantly streamlines the tedious and laborious process of matching identity to a device, allowing you to distribute your message to an individual or shared devices. Of course, matching a device with an owner means you can tailor your approach to the behavior set gleaned from device usage, substantially amplifying the impact and potential for conversion to sales with each ad.

Save Cost, Time and Effort From Multiple Angles

Even the most thorough, insightful trend modeling and strategies are useless unless they reach the proper target at the proper time. Given the inescapable inefficiencies of the manual buying and selling of ads, automation of the bidding process was ripe for the picking. It wasn't until machine learning entered the picture, however, that such an endeavor was possible with any degree of success.

Now, with data and metrics providing some guidance, automating bidding optimizes and even revolutionizes that old-fashioned bidding process, aligning the audience with your message in the most financially efficient manner.

Similarly, machine learning and its capacity to interpret data can significantly enhance your ability to capitalize on look-alike audiences, removing inefficient redundancies by magnifying the power of a message and distributing it to individuals and groups with similar tastes and behavior.

In an era when all industries, advertising included, are looking to technology to stretch budgets and optimize operations, being able to exponentially extend the impact of an ad through look-alike targets exemplifies the amplified ROI that both you and client companies are thirsty for.

Creative for the Modern Age

Machine learning's impact on the creative within your campaigns cannot be overstated. AI-based innovations can now transform the data into forward-looking models that can find the ideal match of creative and medium for your ads. It can save you time, money, effort and frustration by taking a completely streamlined, efficient approach to the testing process, providing clear guidance for both initial and ongoing strategies.

Furthermore, the ever-present issue of ad fatigue can be greatly reduced through the integration of current data into machine learning systems. As consumer tastes, attention and interests evolve over the course of your campaign, machine learning can provide mid-campaign insight to significantly extend the lifespan of your message by swapping out or rotating creative in the most impactful manner possible. In other words, machine learning can continue to breathe new life into your campaign.

Machine learning has arrived in advertising with a discernible and lasting impact, affecting nearly every aspect of the industry. While predictive analytics mines vast amounts of data to create incredibly insightful consumer models, machine learning also provides extreme efficiencies to ad bidding and distribution. Its impact on the creative aspect of your campaign can be absolutely revolutionary, substituting the patchwork estimations of old with unparalleled precision and power. In short, the technology is already overhauling advertising at almost every level and your campaign can be immensely more engaging because of it.