Good morning, Marketer, feeling a little illogical today?
When we interviewed Jóhann Benediktsson, Icelandair’s digital marketing manager, for our story on the airline’s successful programmatic campaign, he told us this story about the limits of artificial intelligence.
“We tested out an AI solution through another company. The purpose of it was buying against keywords with machine thinking at the speed of a million people.
“What we found out is that the AI was a bit too rational where we needed to work irrationally. In some cases, the AI would say you shouldn’t spend a lot on your brand name. But there are periods where we have a competing airline really close to our markets which is pitted against our brand and then we go into defensive mode. So then we’d spend a higher percentage than we would normally on defending our own brand.
“And there are times when a destination is underperforming for us. So we would invest more on it, be willing to lower the return on investment where the AI would be thinking like, ‘What are you doing? This doesn’t make sense.’ It’s thinking about the quickest steps towards a goal but that might not be what we need at that point.
“There’s still a need for human beings.”
Constantine von Hoffman,
Managing Editor
