The ad agency of consulting firm Deloitte, Heat, has launched what it describes as the first-of-its-kind AI-powered practice to predict short-term online trends that will grow in popularity over the next 72 hours.
Call Heat AI, the service employs proprietary tech and patented algorithms to analyze 100 million posts daily from 50,000 online sources, such as social networks, news sites and blogs. A million predictions are generated every half hour to target trends and keywords that will show heightened engagement.
Not the first AI for marketing predictions
The key goal of these predictions is to inform brands’ selections of keywords and of creative choices for ads or marketing. Deloitte claims Heat’s accuracy rate is 70%.
Heat AI co-head Jocelyn Lee said in a statement that, to date, “no one has employed AI-derived predictive insights to develop impactful, emotional resonant creative.”
The Deloitte service is not the first to use AI for marketing-related predictions. The technology is frequently used by various tools and platforms to predict which prospects are most likely to become customers or which offers are the most likely to close a deal.
AI has also been employed previously for various trend-forecasting platforms. Back in 2013, for instance, MIT researchers created an AI model that could predict engagement with a given tweet, in the form of retweets, within minutes of its posting.
In 2016, startup Tilofy announced its automated trend forecaster and Boston-based video analytics service Visible Measures launched a tool to predict future trends in video viewership 30 to 60 days out. In 2017, a new AI-powered social marketing tool called PI was unveiled by startup Post Intelligence to predict social engagement – and even write a post to achieve that engagement.
Heat AI’s potential differentiator
Ad management/serving platform Sizmek is one of several with dynamic creative optimization that has used various forms of intelligence to predict which kinds of creative in ads would generate the most response.
The potential differentiator for Heat’s new service is the use of AI to determine short term trends, on very quick turnarounds, that can impact such daily decisions as keywords for search campaigns or image choices in an ad campaign.
Deloitte Digital bought the San Francisco advertising agency Heat in early 2016, with the intention of creating what Deloitte described at the time as the “the world’s first creative digital consultancy.”