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How may AI help you? Marketing in the era of digital assistants

October 2018

  • Research
  • White paper

The rapidly increasing pace of digitization and growing number of connected devices—20 billion by 2020—is giving rise to some big trends. It is opening doors for marketers to understand their customers like they never have before so they can connect with them on a much deeper level.

There is a new opportunity emerging to engage consumers in their home, car and across these many smart, connected devices with voice-controlled digital assistants—like Cortana, Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri. The adoption rate of smart speakers in households is outpacing smartphone adoption.

We think digital assistants are going to change marketing as profoundly as mobile. There is an opportunity right now for marketers to evolve their modern marketing strategy to include this important medium.

Marketers will need to consider assistants uniquely and not try and approach them with a traditional advertising model in mind. Companies that came of age during the mobile phones era are winning today because they didn’t have to agonize over shifting their business model to accommodate mobile customers; they were mobile from birth and looked at that medium differently rather than retrofitted their existing business model.

We surveyed consumers and businesses to give marketers insights into how best to approach engaging customers through digital assistants, the opportunity to take your branded skill to the next level, and what consumers view as the most important aspect of digital assistants in their lives so brands can meet their needs.

This report is based on research done by eConsultancy, with references to other relevant studies in the area.