We read about artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionizing marketing, but most marketers are still asking “What is AI? And what exactly is it doing for marketing?”

One very practical answer is that AI has accelerated market testing. Obsolete are the elegant, three-month experimental designs — the pre-test, post-test, test-market versus control group. Today, AI enables marketers to test in real time and take advantage of the rapidly changing market/channel environment.

Control Groups In The Cloud

Much of the rigor of market testing comes from defining comparable test and control groups.

Back when TV advertising was the main marketing weapon, control and test markets were geographically defined — areas of dominant influence (ADIs), where TV advertising could be managed. Today, thanks to data mining and computer algorithms, test and control groups can be very accurately defined and maintained in cloud-based data sets.

Control and test groups can be created in which for every member of one group, a mirror image, twin customer is found for the other.

Comparability is also much more refined today. Computers armed with AI capture the hundreds of characteristics and behaviors of each customer as they occur moment by moment and segment customers by finding the patterns of demographic and behavioral characteristics. Computer learning algorithms, another modality of AI, continually sift and sort and analyze the roiling sea of digital transactions.