Dive Brief:
- During Q4, Cosabella relied on Adgorithms’ AI marketing platform, named "Albert," for digital advertising, marketing and online sales in the U.S., U.K., Australia, Germany, Italy, France and Canada. The AI push contributed to a 155% climb in revenues and a 336% bump in return on ad spend, according to a press release.
- The biggest impact was seen on Facebook, where the brand’s return on ad spend jumped 565% in one month and, for the entire period, purchases originating from Facebook skyrocketed 2,000%. In Q4 overall, Cosabella’s year-over-year return on ad spend rose 50%, website sessions grew 37%, new users swelled 30% and 1,500 more transactions were recorded.
- Cosabella is now teaming with Albert to launch Valentine’s Day and spring campaigns. Following the AI platform’s insight that consumers quickly grow tired of seeing the same creative, Albert will also regularly refresh content for paid social media.
Dive Insight:
In the marketing face-off between people and technology, the latter is proving its ability to crunch data and take on the more mundane tasks of digital advertising. Cosabella’s three-month experience with Adgorithms’ AI marketing platform Albert provides evidence of why: expertly wielded AI technologies can lead to better returns for a brand’s digital ad dollars without the burden of human errors and false assumptions. As an Adgorithms video promoting Albert put it, “Sometimes a computer is just better.”
Given the positive results from AI marketing efforts so far, it’s no surprise that a recent Forrester report found that while AI spend today is comparatively low, marketing and sales lead nearly 50% of these initiatives.
Cosabella Chief Executive Officer Guido Campello acknowledged the importance of human imagination and inspiration in marketing while being blunt about his decision to depend less on professionals with pulses to handle the technical side of digital marketing. “I would never hire a human to manage the technical aspects of our ad campaigns ever again,” he said. “We’ll leave the tech stuff to the tech and hire humans for the high-level strategic and creative.”
The brand’s shift to AI signals where digital advertising might be headed. In fact, it may not be too long before AI is playing a bigger role in ad creation, something Coca-Cola is reportedly looking into.
The stuff of yesterday's sci-fi is more and more simply everyday stuff. Now, it’s up to organizations, corporations and governments to figure out how to police AI practices. Google, Facebook and IBM have joined forces with the Partnership on Artificial Intelligence to do that. Robots can’t quite supervise themselves yet.
