The impact has been tremendous, “an authentic revolution.” Both in the relationship between brands and customers and their user experience, as well as in inventory and demand management. But what was clear in the Super PuroMarketing Day – Retail Edition is that AI “has come to stay” and that “there is still a long way to go” in the sector. It is time to integrate its “almost infinite” capabilities into the business and impact with ever more precision and foresight.
Artificial intelligence helps to continue transforming the sector, and although its ‘generative’ variant is still “very incipient”, it seems proven that with it the ‘retailer’ is “more efficient.” This is how I defended it Fran Gallego (cchief operating officer in Royal Communication) during the PuroMarketing congress table dedicated to the integration of this tool in the field retail.
Gallego already stated in his initial intervention what will be the “important challenge” for the future in terms of AI and retail media: analyzing the data well to “forecast the demand” for both the online store and the physical space. For now, there is a clear impact on both the end user and the brand or agency, stressed Royal Comunicación.
On the one hand, positions are approaching with a consumer who wants a simple purchasing process, regardless of the channel. For the brand or agency, the change is noticeable “in productivity,” said Gallego, as well as in the generation of content, “trusting the algorithm” for campaigns in Meta or Google, “microsegmenting…”. All this “with a better return.”
It is there, in millimeter segmentation, where AI is having the most effect so far, which in the end means that the retailer can “recommend” its products much better, he said. Victoria Ibanez (team lead, strategic account manager in
Amazon Ads). And taking into account that the consumer can receive up to 3,000 impacts per day, it is really useful to have AI to add “that layer data crossed with touchpoints to, in just seconds, be able to make an impact,” explained Ibáñez.
I agreed in this sense Ismael Garcia (CMO in Civitatis) that works with other aggregator platforms and has to find a way to find users on them to match them with their tourism products. “Audience prediction to be relevant,” she summarized.
“One-to-one” campaigns
The head of Civitatis marketing came up with another key: work very well on timing to improve the user experience. “We work a lot on it, there is more and more anticipation,” he acknowledged. In its modus operandi They attend to consumer behavior: García stated that many times tourists see what they want to do before knowing the destination they want to go to. “We believe that the time of purchase is being brought forward: sometimes they reserve the tour before the flight or hotel.”
Having this information at the right time is crucial, which is why it is necessary to “segment a lot” to generate content and campaigns “almost one by one,” he added. Move quickly and to the indicated profile, which can also be focused as they do from Amazon Ads, where they first target broader audiences to work on that prior consideration (generating that top of mind on the consumer).
They do it with “users not directly related to the product, but who can be potential consumers in my campaign,” Ibáñez explained. This is how you encourage, for example, the purchase of a product when it has a discount.
Although for Gallego all this “must go further”, especially in “personalization”. The user must go to the online store and say ‘this is the first time I go to the beach with a baby, what do you recommend?’, and have the retailer itself add it to the shopping cart. “We are not that far from that,” he assured.
Hype and ethical challenges
And yet, the best thing about AI for him is not all this, but “its ability to integrate with other technologies.” Adding to Blockchain, to the IoT… We are in an incipient moment, but this “is here to stay”; either to have “optimized campaigns in real time” or to generate one’s own ‘ChatGPT’ with which to be more competitive, said Amazon Ads.
Of course, you have to remember a couple of things. First, “we are digital natives, not AI natives,” García pointed out. In his case, it is especially visible how they are adapting with help in the generative part and with chats like ‘LucIA’ to take advantage of their millions of users and be at the right time. Customer service and experience are their fields of improvement, where they will have to adapt to future customer interactions with these partners.
Nor can we forget other challenges such as algorithmic biases or privacy dilemmas in the collection of user information. In full approval of the AI Law in the European Union, Ibáñez advised “transparency” and “exhaustive monitoring” when collecting this data. And, if possible, apply a “global approach” with AI creators instead of what happened with the GDPR, where “Europe goes one way and then there is the Wild West,” Civitatis clarified.
Predictive audiences
What can we expect next in this integration of AI in retail media? According to Ibáñez, there is more trust in the algorithms and the tool is simply allowed to “optimize.” “Brands are already beginning to position their products in relation to AI,” he said, and “predictive audiences” are being created, in addition to digital functionalities for the user (such as virtual try-on or 3D furniture in your living room).
In the store of the future we will see more of an interface, García ventured, with more and more technology to “make our lives easier.” And one of the next steps will be the normalization of the virtual assistant, which makes the purchase for us as well as prepares a trip for us based on something we saw on networks. “We have to get used to not interacting with people” for these tasks, he said.
Meanwhile, we will see if facial recognition arrives to make purchases cashless and cardless, or who knows if holograms that get your number at the delicatessen, as I glimpsed from Amazon Ads. What is clearer is that there will be a communion, a synergy, between off and online mode. Ibáñez even believes that if we look at one more thing for ‘x seconds’ it will automatically be added to the wish list… More personalization in the short term and a more holistic contact with retail in the long run, Gallego summarized.
