The Weather Company, an IBM Business, announced today the launch of the first cognitive ads for the auto industry. Toyota and The Weather Company have teamed up on a new Watson Ads experience to introduce the Prius Prime. Watson Ads for the Prius Prime are available in The Weather Channel App and weather.com.
Watson Ads are an industry-first cognitive ad format that enables consumers to organically connect with brands, and allows marketers to have a personalized, one-to-one conversation with their audiences at scale. The cognitive ad format combines machine learning, natural language understanding, and integrated dialogue tools designed to deliver a personalized user experience. Through Watson Ads, Toyota is harnessing the power of AI to engage and educate consumers about Prius Prime – addressing consumer questions, sharing new car information, and guiding decision making during the purchase consideration stage.
“Toyota has an organized system for their data management along with internal processes, which allowed them to recognize and leverage Watson innovation in advertising. They were quick to recognize the benefits of leveraging Watson Ads to not only engage consumers, but also extract valuable insights gained from those interactions,” said Sarah Ripmaster, head of automotive sales, The Weather Company. “Because Watson Ads learn over time and get smarter with every interaction, this not only helps educate consumers and ultimately help them make more informed buying decisions, but it also helps the brand itself to understand consumer questions, concerns and interests. Those insights can then inform overall planning and strategies – from product to supply chain management to marketing.”
“In the competitive automotive market, the ability to showcase a helpful and beneficial customer experience is invaluable. We are entering the next frontier of marketing, with cognition and AI poised to take consumer engagement to the next level, and Watson Ads is a prime example of that shift and the great potential we have,” said John Lisko, executive communications director, Saatchi & Saatchi. “We have leveraged IBM Watson in other areas of our business such as the programmatic video campaign of 300 custom pieces for Toyota RAV4 and most recently, the Mirai campaign on Facebook in which the tool wrote thousands of ads and we continue to uncover valuable insights.”
Saatchi & Saatchi handles creative as well as media planning and buying for Toyota.
In 2017, eMarketer expects the U.S. automotive industry digital ad spending to reach $10.66 billion dollars. Automotive will continue to rank as the second-largest industry segment in the U.S. for digital ad spending, keeping it near the forefront of digital marketing for at least the next several years. (eMarketer)
Learn more about Watson Ads at watsonads.com.
