There has been a significant advancement in AI and other technologies, especially neuro-tech. James Brooks, founder and CEO of GlassView, discusses why this year may be a watershed moment for neuro-tools to enhance marketing research metrics beyond AI integration.
Elon Musk has been a constant in the news cycle lately. He’s been trying and failing to dig Hyperloops, attempting to conquer Mars exploration, (maybe) launching the Cybertruck, and, oh yeah, buying Twitter for better or worse, depending on whom you ask. These are all big, splashy products and experiments for the world’s richest man. But Neuralink, one of Musk’s lesser-known projects, could be poised to inspire bigger changes than he or any decision-maker could fathom in the years ahead. The convergence of advanced AI, increasingly granular metrics, and a paradigm shift in neurotechnology signals that 2023 may be the beginning of an equal shift in marketing.
Announced in 2016, Neuralink plans to make devices to implant in the brain and enable a direct link to computers. Around the same time, Meta (then-Facebook) also announced Opens a new window it would dip its toes into neurotech that allowed users to type with their brains. At the same time, Google futurist Ray Kurtzweil used a 2018 SXSW appearanceOpens a new window  to predict that scientists will connect our brains to the cloud within two decades. These are all pie-in-the-sky predictions of personal technology, but it’s important to look at how these guesses that would have once been squarely within the realm of science fiction could gradually become part of our day-to-day lives.Â
We’re just now starting to be able to apply neuromarketing learnings at scale without being too self-serving. Currently, facial recognition technologies, MRIs, and various wearable techs can read our emotions to varying degrees, both for personal use and medical and technical functions. The next logical step is for brands to continue refining how marketers could use these tools to serve ads to targeted audiences at the most optimal times beyond their current AI functions.Â
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Refocusing AI and Other Optimizations
AI has already been a valuable tool for using historical data to identify the right target audiences and A/B testing. AI will continue to take over aspects of the creative process, like writing scripts and whipping up derivatives that change aspects of an ad, such as color schemes and image positioning, to allow for mid-flight, real-time optimizations. From a marketing standpoint, we’ll continue to see this getting more refined. AI technology will show marketers more than just an automatically updated background for a creative, but also an analysis of what works from an engagement level.Â
It will continue to give marketers the answers to questions like does an ad work with a particular character as the focal point? What demographics engage more with a particular product? What is the optimal frequency for audiences to be shown an ad over a one-day or one-week period? It will also most likely optimize so-called vanity metrics like optimal clickthrough rate, post-impression clickthrough rates, post-click conversion rates, and more.
Yet these are already the optimization levers in place to maximize conversions or whatever KPIs (key performance indicators) are most important to marketers. It all depends on what converts. If we see that conversions are spiking because attention is increasing when there’s a certain metric that stands out, then marketers can implement algorithms that will do everything in the ad to optimize in real-time towards that detail, driving greater attention to conversion. But let’s think ahead.
What if a marketer can notice that the mu waves in a brain are spiking because someone sees empathy in an ad or there’s a mirroring neurological reaction to a given creative detail? What if marketers were measuring the neural activity and responsiveness to creatives and determining what drove those conversions directly from audiences?
The AI that optimizes toward beneficial metrics will continue to get stronger. But use cases in the near future will be taken a step further. It’s those KPIs themselves that will change. That’s not changing the AI; that’s changing what you measure and applying AI that’s existed for 20 years. Additionally, assuming advances in neuro-marketing will increase, brands will have more of an ability to target conversions with even more details to measure given these next technological breakthroughs. But with more targeting comes more competition.
The Time Is Right for Technological Advancements
Businesses across every industry go through relatively similar evolutions. Initially, brands find something people want when there are limited entrants in the marketplace. Ideally, there are high margins and immense profit opportunities. As more entrants emerge, profit margins get squeezed, and competition occurs. Normally, brands then diversify their way out by technologically optimizing to defend and grow market share.Â
This is particularly true in advertising. When online media dawned around 20 to 30 years ago, its innovative ability to slice audiences into different demographics and target them more granularly than ever before was revolutionary. Now, it’s old news. It’s now about finding an optimized group of globally like-minded people, regardless of outdated demographic breakdowns, that will drive a given business’s target market. The time is right for technology to bring the industry’s next step.Â
The Opt-in Future of Advertising
Biometrics and other neurotech will come to define the future of marketing and ad placement. But it’s not about automatically optimizing into something that works better. It’s changing the conversation with what companies will measure to get there. That begs the question: how can marketers layer on more and more targeting opportunities? When you think about it, this isn’t as far-fetched or as dystopian as it sounds.Â
People currently want or have access to more personal information than ever before. They want to know their variable heart rate, how many steps they take in a day, or their sleep patterns. With the proliferation of data-intensive wearables, including hardware primed for the Metaverse, neuro healthcare and neuro-athletics will continue to help optimize peoples’ lifestyles and increase well-being. As the adoption of the Metaverse takes off and people get used to putting sets on their heads to live a little bit more of their lives in a virtual or augmented reality, different measurements will be employed to optimize for performance.
This is precisely why consumers would be willing to make the leap from opting into tracking settings on their wearables and devices to ad-based AI capabilities.Â
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From a headcount perspective, this will significantly shift the landscape as well. On a basic level, hiring dozens of account managers who deal with hundreds of examples of creatives and focusing on what performs the best will go away. Instead, there will most likely be one creative by which machine learning will understand which variables and metrics to enlist engagement from target audiences across the board.Â
While most are stuck focusing their attention on media and marketing to last-click conversion optimization, the company that can influence consumer motivation from the source will tap into unprecedented territory. If they can move the needle by five or 10% by capitalizing on better targeting, it will signal a more impactful leap forward than trying to measure on the lower end of the funnel. Changing the conversation around what to measure and optimizing for that using new methods will result in billions of dollars of savings for advertisers and create more opportune buying moments for consumers.
How are you leveraging advancement in AI and other technologies to create more effective marketing campaigns? Let us know on FacebookOpens a new window , TwitterOpens a new window , and LinkedInOpens a new window .
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