Month: April 2017

LoopMe recently worked with The Story Lab; the entertainment division of Dentsu Aegis, to develop an effective mobile video marketing campaign for the new Microsoft HP Spectre x360 Convertible laptop, a campaign which was the first globally to combine AI brand optimisation in real-time with a programmatic buy.

We were delighted to see that our combined work has been shortlisted at The Drum’s Digital Trading Awards for ‘Best Use of Video’ alongside Amplifi (for William Hill), Engine Media (for Standard Life), Latittude Digital Marketing (For Emaar Properties), Teads (for O2 / War Child), the7stars (for Bulldog Skincare and Current Account Switch Service).

The Drum Digital Trading Awards 2017, recognise and highlight the best examples of digital trading in practice. This years theme is Living the Dream – Programmatic everywhere.

The campaign

The Story Lab teamed up with LoopMe to create a mobile video campaign which would distribute 15 and 30 second teasers of video content to a wide audience, adding scale and driving users to the full-length content which was produced in association with Conde Nast. Most importantly, Microsoft wanted to drive purchase intent for their new HP Spectre x360 laptop.

LoopMe devised a strategy that combined AI to optimise towards the KPIs with programmatic delivery via an Amnet PMP to ensure The Story Lab had visibility on delivery, performance and brand-safety.

To deliver on brand objectives, LoopMe’s award-winning product PurchaseLoop was implemented. PurchaseLoop uses AI modelling to optimise to brand metrics in real-time while the campaign is live. By layering AI, 1st and 3rd party data, PurchaseLoop ensured Microsoft’s creative was delivered to consumers who displayed the highest probability of performing against their brand objectives of increasing purchase intent.

A questionnaire was devised with The Story Lab and Microsoft to effectively assess customer purchase intent which was served to users exposed to the HP Spectre content and a control group. The exposed group was further split out into an exposed with AI optimisation towards positive respondents, and one without, so that the product effectiveness could be fairly assessed.  The campaign also benefitted from work by LoopMe’s in-house creative team who designed bespoke creative to complement the content and increase brand association through further co-branding.

For effective distribution, Amnet overlaid third party audience targeting in three planned strategies: Fashion & Beauty Interested, Tech Enthusiast and In-Market for Laptop / Tablet to ensure that it reached relevant consumers.

The combination of dual targeting using a programmatic PMP and artificial intelligence resulted in impressive results, in a campaign that was unique to the market. The campaign’s CTR rose by over 160% (from exposed to AI optimised), while VCR was boosted by over 15%. The use of PurchaseLoop also increased purchase intent by over 40% – driving consumers closer to the point of purchase.

We’re delighted to see this campaign recognised by the judges at The Digital Trading Awards and look forward to 31^st May when the winners are announced. Best of luck to all shortlisted!

Today, we were announced as one of The Leap 100 2017, a community of the most exciting, fast-growth companies in the UK – launched by London law firm Mishcon de Reya, City A.M. and nominated in partnership with Seven Hills and The Entreprneurs Network.

For the third year running, The Leap 100 will support entrepreneurs with masterclasses and with features in CityAM through regular polls, entrepreneur profiles and expert commentary.

As explained by Kevin Gold in today’s City AM, ‘we’ve chosen 100 companies on the cusp of greatness. They have been selected based on their leadership skills and ambition, as well as the quality of their team and money raised,’ and while this isn’t a definitive list ‘we believe these companies are critical to the future success of our country’.

We’re delighted to have been nominated alongside many household names including Mr and Mrs Smith, Bloom & Wild, Art Finder, Tortilla, MOO and many more! Since our founding in 2012, we’ve grown from strength to strength, with further funding, new hires and award winning products which has bought Artificial Intelligence to brand advertising.

Pick up your copy of CityAM and find the full shortlist here.

Watch this space for more on our #theleap100 experience.

After our recent success at the Digiday Video Awards Europe, we’re delighted to have been shortlisted at The Drum’s MOMAs in the category ‘Best use of rich media / video’ in association with our clients Publicis Media and Birra Moretti.

The MOMA’s celebrate the best marketing on mobile, looking for evidence of strategic thinking, innovation, effectiveness, tangible results and transparency and we’re thrilled to be shortlisted alongside Gameloft, Havas and News UK. You can view the entire MOMA shortlist here.

We worked with Publicis and Birra Moretti to create a rich media and video format that would drive Birra Moretti’s authenticity as an Italian beer brand.

With a wealth of video content that Birra Moretti and Publicis wanted to distribute, LoopMe’s in-house team developed creative with clear calls to action for users to ‘Discover more’ and swipe between the three videos embedded in the rich media unit. This resulted in an impressive 13% engagement rate.

The campaign benefited from PurchaseLoop (patent pending), which uses look-alike artificial intelligence modelling to optimize video and rich media campaigns to brand metrics like brand affinity, purchase intent or in this case – brand authenticity. It resulted in a significant uplift and a more effective advertising solution, as impressions weren’t wasted on those less likely to engage or change their mind.

Well done to all shortlisted and we have our fingers crossed for May 11th!

Learn more about our award-winning PurchaseLoop product.

We open the blog to Michal Szczesny, COO at Artfinder. Artfinder is the art marketplace which connects people to artists and art. Michal will be speaking at our event in London on April 11th. The last few tickets remaining are available here. 

We’re an art company. Or at least, we used to be. That’s not strictly true – Artfinder has always been a tech startup first and foremost, but we’re a tech company that is providing a solution to a very human problem – connecting independent artists directly with customers around the world who would love to buy original art, but either didn’t have access to artists or didn’t know they could afford originals (which are very affordable when you take out the middleman – i.e – the gallery).

We first started investigating AI when we realised that we reached a critical volume of work on the site (we’re at 350,000 pieces now, that’s more than MoMA). A vast majority of those are unique, one-off pieces that cannot be recommended multiple times after they sold. That amount of art is brilliant and exhilarating, but we can also see that for users it could be overwhelming. We’ve always had search filters on the site, plus text search, but to search for a ‘large blue landscape painting for £100 – £200’ and to find 50,000 results isn’t an especially encouraging experience. There seems to be this mindset that once you’ve put in search criteria you have to look at *every single result* to make sure you find the best one – and most people would rather give up than look through 50+ of pages of search results.

So, this left us with the ‘needle in a haystack’ problem – the need to match customers up as quickly as possible with a manageable selection of artworks that they love. For us, this problem is compounded by the ‘I know it when I see it’ mindset, which is that shopping for art is not like shopping for shoes or books, where you usually know what you want or can describe it with words. Art shoppers tend to start from either a complete lack of knowledge about what they want or a with a visual idea which is very difficult to put into words.

Enter Emma

We knew we had to solve the ‘needle in a haystack’ problem in a creative way. And art taste is such a subjective, personal topic – we want our users to feel that Artfinder knows and understands your taste, without ever being judgmental or intimidating, like an art gallery might be.

We began our AI journey with personalised recommendations driven by machine learning and graph database software, Neo4j. From 10,000 artists, 350,000 artworks and 600,000 users we have a huge amount of data to feed into the graph, plus several different levels of relationship between products, artists and users. Users and artists can view or ‘love’ an artwork, ‘follow’ an artist or user, or of course buy an artwork. Those relationships can then be weighted (purchase is stronger than ‘love’ for instance) and we can calculate product recommendations for you based on what similar users have liked.

Those personalised recommendations are great, but obviously you need to have got as far as looking at an artwork on the site before they become useful. In the meantime we had also built an onsite feature called ‘more like this’ – which uses open source visual similarity detection software called LIRE to ‘match’ any artwork on the site to up to 400 others. The same software is used by the police for facial recognition from CCTV cameras. It looks at visual structures on a deeper level than similarity that could be described with text like colour or subject matter.

But we still needed a way to engage users who weren’t even on the site, and who didn’t know what they were looking for beyond a visual stimulus.

Emma fulfilled all of those criteria. Users can tweet any image at her (a photo, an artwork, a selfie) and she will reply with Artfinder artworks that are inspired by your image. She’s a really easy, good fun way to dive into our catalogue without having to even think about what you’re looking for. She’s also, of course, a little bit cheeky – there seems to be this conception that buying a piece of art is a very serious and considered thing, something you might need an advisor for – and what we’re trying to do is shake people out of that.

Buying art can be all of that, if you want it to be, but it can also be as easy as buying a pair of shoes, or a cushion or a pot plant. Art will always be valuable, and will always be something to love and care for, but that doesn’t mean it has to be expensive. Emma is helping us communicate that to our users.

As we go further and further on our machine learning journey, Emma will recommend art you’ll love with (hopefully not too) scary precision, drastically reducing the ‘needle in a haystack’ problem.

We’re pleased to say that last night we added another trophy to our collection!

LoopMe were awarded ‘Best Video Ad Tech Innovation’ for our PurchaseLoop product at the Digiday Video Awards Europe.

The award looked for the best in new or improved video technology innovation, showing ability to deliver, measure or support content, as well as specific video advertising campaigns.

PurchaseLoop (patent pending) was launched in September 2016, and since then we have worked with the world’s top brands to deliver their mobile video campaigns to metrics like purchase intent, brand affinity and footfall.

By layering 1^st and 3^rd party data and AI, PurchaseLoop ensures that video ads are delivered to consumers who display the highest probability of performing against the client’s brand objectives. Typically brands receive uplifts 2 to 3 times higher when using PurchaseLoop optimization compared to a standard campaign. This provides better value for brands and agencies, while also creating a better ad experience for users. Find out more about PurchaseLoop here.

We had a great evening and it was fantastic to celebrate with some of our clients who have championed PurchaseLoop from the beginning! Check out the rest of the winners here.

The Best Ad Tech Innovation trophy now takes pride of place on the reception desk – congratulations to all the winners and here’s to more celebrations in 2017!

Named ‘Innovator of the Year’ by Facebook in 2016, ReFUEL4 is the world’s leading AI-driven online creative management platform. Using AI and Machine Learning technology, they analyse, rank and automatically refresh online ad creatives designed by their global pool of 10,000 creative talent.

We’re delighted to have Ross Sheil, ReFUEL4’s EMEA GM join us as a keynote speaker at our conference. Ross is currently busy building ReFUEL 4’s team and operations from the EMEA HQ in London. He has held a variety of leadership roles in tech, from start-up to corporate, most recently as a founding member of Twitter EMEA where he was Head of Mobile. Ross has been honoured with various accolades including Tech Person of the Year #ECA16, Top Mobile Execs 2015 and Top Mobile Keynotes 2016 and is a well known lecturer and speaker on tech and mobile marketing.

Ross will be giving a keynote on ReFUEL 4’s latest AI in Advertising whitepaper, joining Alex Kozloff, Ron Chrisley and more. Check out the rest of our speakers and register your attendance here.

Incorporating a data-driven approach to advertising has until recently been challenging. Creative departments lack access to campaign data and analysis, which are usually only available to their media buying counterparts.

Most creative decisions are made subjectively and many marketers are not sure if their campaigns will work prior to activating them.

The solution? Artificial Intelligence.

While it may seem strange to pair creativity with AI, this isn’t a new concept.

Back in 2015, M&C Saatchi unveiled an “artificially intelligent poster” for an OOH campaign on London’s Oxford Street. Dubbed a “Darwinian” campaign, the poster read the reactions of its audience and adapted itself accordingly. From its initial “gene pool” of pictures and copy, 22 ads were created in each generation, with the poster assessing the level of success of an ad. If successful, a particular ad will move to the next gene pool and be part of the next generation. Those unsuccessful were removed.

ReFUEL4 works with human designers powered by AI and automation to create smarter ads. Our AI engine   provides predictive analysis of each creative before they are even activated in campaigns. Based on each campaign’s AI scoring, advertisers can make better selections on the ad creatives to run.

The creative process will be increasingly informed by AI during the planning stage. Designers can be informed by AI-fuelled insights on creative direction that will produce the best desired results for each target audience, even before they start drafting the designs. This enables a more efficient process where designers already know the ideal combination of elements such as colours, objects, styles and shapes that they should use in their work.

Could a robot take jobs from designers and marketers?

According to evidence from the BBC’s calculator – no. There’s just a 5% likelihood of automation for graphic designers, as coming up with creative and original ideas, for example artists, designers or engineers hold a significant advantage in the face of automation.

On the contrary, AI and automation are going to make marketing more efficient and free up time for marketers to perform human tasks that will, perhaps, never be fully executable by a machine.

What’s next?

AI looks set to play a significant role in the advertising world in the days to come.

You may be familiar with McCann Japan’s ‘AI Creative Director’. Following the analysis and deconstruction of award-winning ads, the AI was fed with data that would help them determine which factors make the perfect ad for any given product or message (check the videos out here). When put to the polls, the human creative came out top for favourability, but it was a close call.

AI is reshaping the marketing landscape as we know it – don’t exclude your creativity from it.

Hear more from Ross on April 11^th. RSVP here.