IBM, Weather Co. bring Watson AI to ads
IBM Watson has talked tennis with Serena Williams and music with Bob Dylan. Now it wants to talk to you — via online ads.
The Weather Company, acquired by IBM in January, will begin bringing Watson-enhanced interactive advertisements to The Weather Channel and Weather Underground apps on Android and iOS and to weather.com and wunderground.com this summer.
The ads, powered by Watson's artificial intelligence, will prompt consumers to ask questions such as "What would be good to cook for dinner?" or "Is this medicine safe for my child?" The first companies with Watson-enabled ads will be Campbell Soup, GSK Consumer Healthcare and Unilever.
Consumers will be able to engage with Watson advertisements using voice or text questions.
Ads that The Weather Company and IBM Watson teams have tested for Campbell Soup and Hellmann's mayonnaise, a Unilever brand, allow consumers to ask Watson questions such as “What can I make for dinner?” Watson may respond by asking "'What do you have in your pantry?' and Watson will create a recipe, said Domenic Venuto, The Weather Co.'s general manager for consumer products.
If the consumer doesn't like the resulting recipe, they can modify the request, perhaps suggesting a flavor profile, he says. And, when relevant, Watson can access weather data for seasonal foods and health care recommendations.
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Watson is IBM's platform for artificial intelligence, which it calls cognitive technology. Watson can process large amounts of data such as countless recipes and food combinations — or when it comes to health care, medical databases, for instance — assessing, learning and responding in natural language.
The goal is to make interactive ads that consumers willingly interact with, Venuto says.
The hurdle is steep: consumers go to great measures to avoid ads and are increasingly installing ad-blocking filters. In her internet trends report, analyst-turned-venture capitalist Mary Meeker noted 420 million people use mobile ad blockers globally, up 94% in the past year, according to PageFair.
"If there was ever a call to arms to create better ads, this is it," she said at the Code conference.
IBM and The Weather Co. think artificial intelligence will help advertisers cut through consumer apathy. The effort is the latest development in the booming field of artificial intelligence, experienced by consumers who talk to Apple’s Siri on an iPhone or Amazon’s Alexa via Amazon’s Echo home speaker. So far, consumers have only seen IBM's Watson talk to stars such as Williams and Dylan in commercials. In the past, Watson defeated human champions in Jeopardy!, too.
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Google, a pioneer in AI, recently unveiled its Google assistant, which will answer questions in a new messaging app Allo and video chat app Duo. Both are due this summer, as well as the in-development voice-activated Google Home device.
These super-smart assistants are getting good at connecting consumers with businesses, as well. Amazon's Alexa already lets you order Domino's Pizza and check your bank balances with Capital One. And Facebook announced in April that in-development AI-powered Facebook Messenger chatbots could connect users with companies such as 1-800-Flowers.
As communication evolves, so must marketers become more sophisticated in attempting to connect with consumers in ways that don't interrupt daily behaviors, says Forrester Research analyst Michele Goetz. "IBM Watson takes this new paradigm for interactive marketing to the next level by humanizing the engagement to feel natural and less invasive ... (by) understanding questions, wants, and needs in a customer's own words," she said.
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Advertisers such as GSK Consumer Healthcare hope to better serve customers and learn from what Watson learns from them, says the company's Chief Marketing Officer Theresa Agnew. Should a parent have a question about its Flonase nasal spray, for instance, "rather than them having to use a particular keyword and insert it, they can ask the question the way they are comfortable asking it ... in their own words," she said.
Watson "humanizes the whole experience of interacting with a brand," Agnew said. "It’s a really unique new technology that we wanted to be the first movers in."
As part of the deal announced in October 2015, IBM acquired The Weather Co. brand, its data and digital properties including weather.com, forecasting operation Weather Underground, and Weather Services International, a division that sells software to business customers. The Weather Channel -- owned by the Weather Co.'s original owners, a consortium comprising the private equity firms The Blackstone Group and Bain Capital, and NBCUniversal -- licenses its forecast data and analytics and its brand from IBM under a long-term contract.
Venuto expects Watson Ads to expand soon with additional advertisers in retail, automotive and other food sectors. And, eventually, the ads will be available beyond IBM-owned properties, be shareable on social media and delivered to TV and in connected cars.
The Watson Ads project "really brings the promise of the two companies together in a very tangible way, and relatively quickly," Venuto said. "We’ve only been part of IBM for 120 days."
Follow Mike Snider on Twitter: @MikeSnider