The future is machine learning, say two leaders in programmatic marketing, but the robots need their hands held every step of the way say two leaders in programmatic marketing.
“It is mind-boggling the amount of data our media consumption generates across all our devices. Making sense of it all becomes very difficult with a human-sized brain—you get lost in the details.”
Nicolas Bidon is Xaxis’ global president and he’s talking about the future of programmatic at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. MWC is an apt setting for discussions on The Future. Inspiration, creation and tech stuff the vast halls—new handsets, personalised drones, wifi innovation, hifi innovation and, naturally, marketing innovation. Away from these gigabytes of invention, the calm of Xaxis’ networking garden is cool relief.
So, how has programmatic evolved and what’s next for the industry? Bidon believes that machine learning—artificial intelligence—is creating the greatest shift in programmatic’s capabilities. “Computers are great at processing large amounts of data using various algorithms to identify what is significant and what is noise. The next wave is how you apply artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies to improve your campaign.”
With Bidon sat Bob Walczak—the newly appointed EVP of Global Products for Xaxis. Walczak agrees: “Machine learning starts increasing performance beyond what a human can handle on an individual basis. A human operator can handle six to 10 campaigns, for example, but AI is going to eventually allow them to do some of their manual tasks at scale and set up 5,000 or 10,000 campaigns. Self-learning systems are going to take it to a much larger scale.”
