What Happened
In an industry first, Turner Broadcasting, owners of cable networks such as TBS, TNT, CNN, and HLN, has enlisted IBM’s Watson, the cognitive computing service, to help support its ad sales efforts. With Watson’s data-crunching power, Turner will offer marketers automated recommendations on optimizing TV campaigns, based on a wide range of data sources including Turner’s in-house data on its advertisers, publicly available and purchased data sets, news and analyst reports, social media posts, and more.
What Brands Need To Do
This marks the latest example in brands and media owners partnering with IBM to tap into Watson’s computing power. Previously, Under Armour used Watson to help it analyze user data to generate fitness and health suggestions, while Kia used it to find the right social influencers for its Super Bowl campaign this year. Last May, Facebook signed a similar deal with IBM to get some help from Watson to boost its ad targeting capability. As data analysis becomes an increasingly crucial part of the ad business, we expect to see more media owners and brand advertisers to enlist outside services like Watson for better market insights and ad effectiveness.
Source: Wall Street Journal
