Jeff Bullas, who has been named by Forbes one of the world's top social marketing talents, has published a helpful article for all those who want to find out how social technologies add value to their daily life.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the opportunities it brings are hotly debated among marketing and communications professionals right now. Although the hype surrounding AI has often still very futuristic visions, many companies are keenly interested in AI and its value in everyday communications and marketing.

According to a study of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich we are already at the point where readers can’t recognize anymore if an article is written by a human being or artificial intelligence (AI). On the contrary, the texts of robots had even greater credibility in the test group, the study revealed. But writing texts is not the only creative area in which AI advances. More and more start-ups feed their servers with data and build innovative services thanks to machine learning.

Looking at the Swiss full-service digital agency Namics’ predictions, we feel that we are on the right track with many of the trends we forecasted to gain momentum in 2019, including the following:

Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) allow to send push notifications or provide offline access to an app's content, just like native apps do. But unlike native apps, content in PWAs is accessible to search engines, so that the same online marketing strategies could be used for PWAs just like for traditional websites.

The Account Based Marketing (ABM) automation provider, Engagio, announced the launch of its Sales Activation Tools, a powerful and scalable set of capabilities that provide customized and relevant real-time account insights to marketing and sales teams.

The Coalition for Better Ads announced that it will expand the Better Ads Standards for desktop and mobile web to all countries and regions worldwide to improve the online ad experience for consumers.

Modern digital assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa, Google’s Siri and Microsoft’s Cortana, are constantly evolving, but let’s be honest, nevertheless it’s still in its infancy and quite limited. Basically, these systems can only respond to previously learned commands and use technology that's been around in cars for a dozen years.

The interest in gaining a competitive advantage with the help of Artificial Intelligence (AI) runs through a wide range of industries, such as e.g. health care, production, automotive or military, which are investing billions into the technology. The marketing industry certainly started to test various fields of application, where the use of AI could advance the business. The Salesforce State of Marketing Report 2018 already provided an insight into how widespread the use of AI has become, although the authors of the study emphasize that all in all no dominant use has yet emerged. The study shows, however, that 39% of marketing decision makers rely on AI and 29% of respondents already use AI-based systems to personalize their offers via email.

Today, inbound marketing no longer means that the potential customer is calling immediately, rather that the prospective customer searches for information on the Internet first.

RTB House, a global company that provides state-of-the-art retargeting for top brands worldwide, announced it will begin the alpha testing phase of its first MarTech innovations developed in its AI Marketing Lab, a new research division it launched in May with an initial annual investment of USD $5 million.

The way the user will communicate with computers in the future is in for a big change. After keyboards, mice, touchscreens, gesture and voice recognition, the avant-garde computer research relies on so-called brain-computer interfaces. The novel interfaces should allow the user to control more complex applications directly with the power of thought. Background of the development is the invention of ever more powerful artificial intelligence (AI).

Experian just released its Global Identity and Fraud Report Asia-Pacific (APAC) research which highlights that trusted online relationships are based on businesses providing both a secure environment and seamless consumer experiences. With insights from almost 6,000 APAC consumers, the report found that the majority (71%) value ‘security’ as the most important element of an online experience, followed by ‘convenience’ (20%) and ‘personalization’ (9%).

As you can imagine, the digital disruption in sales stirs up existential fears, even among long-established distributors, since intelligent sales support in the form of software, apps and artificial intelligence are often not in place. The traditional methods of conducting sales negotiations need a fresh push as well this year, considering that analogue and digital communication will at best converge to a 360-degree dialogue competence. So, expect the winners of disruption in distribution to be companies and vendors that recognize this development potential and acquire new strategies.