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Unruly turns bots onto campaign managers as AI shapes messages

News Corp video company Unruly has launched a targeting tool aimed at convincing buyers to double their consumption of products.

Unruly is using IBM’s Watson as part of its offer to advertisers.

Unruly’s global vivre president for insight, Ian Forrester, told Mumbrella the move to target advertising using IBM’s powerful cognitive thinking system  Watson would give the video business the ability to isolate people who were only occasional purchasers.

He said the method of identifying light buyers would eliminate waste where brands were spending money to influence people who were already higher users of a product.

“It has three core principals. It identifies light buyers, it separately profiles light buyers and and enables us to target light buyers,” Forrester said.

“If you are heavy Coke buyer, buying 20 cans a week you are probably not going to buy any more. Your consumption is saturated. With light buyers these guys do not buy nearly as much as the heavy buyers.”

Ian Forrester: Identifying light buyers would eliminate waste where brands were spending money to influence people who were already higher users of a product

Unruly is the latest company to tap into IBM’s Watson with the product called Unruly DNA, which will use a 10,000 strong panel combined with linguistic analysis and insights gleaned from social media accounts.

It goes further to “determine the socio-demographic and psychological profile of each panellist, clustering and aggregating the profiles based on buying patterns and purchasing frequency”.

The system breaks people down into five personality types when can then be used by brands to target messaging.

“We are looking very closely at using this date to not only power distribution but to power content creation,” Forrester said.

“If you can identify the light buyers and their personality then you can create content which is suitable for that personality type.”

The use of the Watson-based system to create content specific to individual groups could be just months away.

Unruly Australia and New Zealand CEO Lance Traore said the introduction of Unruly DNA was a big step for the business.

“We’re really at the beginning of the journey when it comes to using cognitive technologies in advertising,” Traore said.

“Machines can be a powerful tool for marketers to recognise human desires and aspirations. We’re really excited to be at the forefront of this new world with integrating Watson capabilities into our Unruly DNA tool.”

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