WHAT ARE CHATBOTS?
A chatbot, also known as a talkbot, interactive agent, or simply a bot, is software that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to engage in live, automated one-on-one dialogue with humans. Brands are using chatbots for customer and user interaction by integrating them with apps or websites to facilitate conversational interactions that create value for customers and prospects.
WHY SHOULD MARKETERS CARE?
Adoption and use of chatbots is accelerating rapidly as technology matures and consumer acceptance grows. Millennials readily interact with chatbots: over half report using chatbots to dialogue with a brand. For millennial and Gen Z consumers, technology channels are often preferred for interacting with brands. In this climate, chatbots are emerging as an integral tool for engaging consumers.
HOW CAN IT HELP YOUR BUSINESS?
Brands are constantly seeking better ways to engage customers. Chatbots represent a new service layer that extends and projects brand values, serving as a virtual brand ambassador that helps create, nurture, and manage customer relationships. Well-designed chatbots are always on and always available to facilitate one-on-one, personalized interactions that enhance the customer experience.
IPG Media Lab works with some of the world’s largest brands to drive innovation in media, marketing, and business models. As the dedicated innovation initiative of the UM family of agencies, they’ve worked with companies of all sizes, across numerous verticals. Chad Stoller and Adam Simon of IPG Media Lab discussed the types of conversations they have with marketers around innovation, gave us a behind-the-scenes look at how IPG Media stays innovative, and asked whether one can truly measure innovation success.
> See all episodes
SEO was a lot simpler in a less-crowded marketplace; you could optimize by keyword for your product, industry, or customer demographics and watch your traffic grow. In 2021, however, not only is the online space left with little metaphorical keyword elbow room, but search engines have gotten smarter to keep up with consumer demand. People search more conversationally due to voice assistants like Alexa and Siri, and AI-powered chatbots learn more as they’re being searched, which also contributes to a natural semantic search style. If marketers want to make sure their SEO efforts are being noticed, there are several ways to do this, all of which embrace this more casual way of searching consumers are employing – “long-tail keywords,” those with fewer search results but a higher conversion rate; “keyword clusters,” which group product identifiers that can single out your brand; “natural language processing (or NLP)” which rely on qualifiers like “what” and “where” to make a search less-robotic, and the overall conversational style that voice search and chatbots have made more prominent as of late.
> See all issues
WHAT ARE CHATBOTS?
A chatbot, also known as a talkbot, interactive agent, or simply a bot, is software that leverages artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities to engage in live, automated one-on-one dialogue with humans. Brands are using chatbots for customer and user interaction by integrating them with apps or websites to facilitate conversational interactions that create value for customers and prospects.
WHY SHOULD MARKETERS CARE?
Adoption and use of chatbots is accelerating rapidly as technology matures and consumer acceptance grows. Millennials readily interact with chatbots: over half report using chatbots to dialogue with a brand. For millennial and Gen Z consumers, technology channels are often preferred for interacting with brands. In this climate, chatbots are emerging as an integral tool for engaging consumers.
HOW CAN IT HELP YOUR BUSINESS?
Brands are constantly seeking better ways to engage customers. Chatbots represent a new service layer that extends and projects brand values, serving as a virtual brand ambassador that helps create, nurture, and manage customer relationships. Well-designed chatbots are always on and always available to facilitate one-on-one, personalized interactions that enhance the customer experience.
Michael Wu, Ph.D.
Chief AI Strategist
PROS
“Machines will begin to understand cause and effect—today, when machines (such as chatbots and virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa) respond to us, it’s purely based on correlations. They do not have an understanding of causation. But as machines are getting more disparate sources of data, they will begin to better understand the causal relationship between a large set of variables. As humans, we learn about cause and effect over time through pure common sense. In 2019, we’ll see this come to fruition with machines as we collect and feed them more disparate data sources that enable them to build conditional probability distribution to understand the direction of causality”
Key Stats
ANA Marketing Futures and eMarketer have come together to deliver key stats and forecasts on the trends that will shape the industry for years to come.
Related Content
Want to take a deeper dive into chatbots? ANA Members have access to brand stories, case studies, and expert webinars you won't find anywhere else.
Say Hello to AI-Enhanced Conversational Marketing
ANA/IBM. June 2019
Frustration with corporate call centers is one of the biggest consumer laments. Brands are responding by implementing chatbots that are increasingly conversant — freeing up live customer service agents to focus on providing more value to the customer in real time.
The Wentworth Rat
ANA. October 2018
Foxtel created a new mobile strategy for promoting broadcast in the era of on demand television and binge-watching, boosting live viewership of its popular show Wentworth.
Building Honda's Shopping Bot
ANA. February 2019
Honda shared the steps that it took to create its Facebook Messenger Shopping Bot and the strategy and execution behind it.
Download Now!
A chatbot is a computer program that engages in one-to-one communication with humans through a desktop, text message, or even voice interface such as Apple's Siri.
ANA Marketing Futures surveyed marketers across industries, and captured key statistics, expert perspectives, and brand use cases in a comprehensive report which explored the implications of chatbots on marketing.
Download the full report today!
Michael Wu, Ph.D.
Chief AI Strategist
PROS
“Machines will begin to understand cause and effect—today, when machines (such as chatbots and virtual assistants like Siri and Alexa) respond to us, it’s purely based on correlations. They do not have an understanding of causation. But as machines are getting more disparate sources of data, they will begin to better understand the causal relationship between a large set of variables. As humans, we learn about cause and effect over time through pure common sense. In 2019, we’ll see this come to fruition with machines as we collect and feed them more disparate data sources that enable them to build conditional probability distribution to understand the direction of causality”
Key Stats
ANA Marketing Futures and eMarketer have come together to deliver key stats and forecasts on the trends that will shape the industry for years to come.
Related Content
Want to take a deeper dive into chatbots? ANA Members have access to brand stories, case studies, and expert webinars you won't find anywhere else.
Say Hello to AI-Enhanced Conversational Marketing
ANA/IBM. June 2019
Frustration with corporate call centers is one of the biggest consumer laments. Brands are responding by implementing chatbots that are increasingly conversant — freeing up live customer service agents to focus on providing more value to the customer in real time.
The Wentworth Rat
ANA. October 2018
Foxtel created a new mobile strategy for promoting broadcast in the era of on demand television and binge-watching, boosting live viewership of its popular show Wentworth.
Building Honda's Shopping Bot
ANA. February 2019
Honda shared the steps that it took to create its Facebook Messenger Shopping Bot and the strategy and execution behind it.
Download Now!
A chatbot is a computer program that engages in one-to-one communication with humans through a desktop, text message, or even voice interface such as Apple's Siri.
ANA Marketing Futures surveyed marketers across industries, and captured key statistics, expert perspectives, and brand use cases in a comprehensive report which explored the implications of chatbots on marketing.
About ANA Marketing Futures
Knowing that marketers are increasingly challenged in their efforts to keep up with the latest trends and technologies, the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) tasked itself with creating a program designed to help marketers anticipate—and prepare for—the future of marketing.
ANA Marketing Futures is what emerged. With a focus on innovative topics and emerging trends, ANA Marketing Futures provides resources that will influence and inform via member cases, research studies, and insight from industry innovators. Check back often to learn about emerging trends and become inspired to take steps toward the growth of your business.
Copyright © 2021 Association of National Advertisers-established in 1910
Contact
10 Grand Central
155 E 44th Street
New York, NY 10017
Phone: 212.697.5950
Email: marketingfutures@ana.net
