Go to any marketing trade show these days and you are guaranteed to find at least one session or panel discussing the subject. As advances in artificial intelligence continue to be made, the price is coming down, and availability of advanced data analytics tools is growing. The power of artificial intelligence is demonstrated by its ability to analyze data from various sources and identify patterns that can give managers an even better and integrated view of things. There’s even a name for this process, it’s called “meta-analysis” and it is a key tool that enables managers to make informed decisions better than before. But analyzing and producing output for managers to use in decision making is just the beginning. Artificial intelligence is on the path of not only providing information to use in decision making, but actually making the decision on its own. In its basic form, artificial intelligence is already a decision-making tool, it’s just continuing to get better at it. In the near term, one use for more advanced artificial intelligence in the marketing industry might be to make decisions that aren’t as important and free up time for executives to make the more important decisions. In the long term who knows where this may lead. It may not be too long before entire marketing campaigns are run by artificial intelligence.]]>