Digital Marketing AI Test Lab: 5 Tools We're Piloting in Q1

As the digital marketing landscape continues to shift, embracing innovation is essential for success. OX’s Digital Marketing team has kicked off the AI Test Lab, which aims to test and pilot various AI tools to find innovative ways to enhance our client work and internal processes.

We are exploring a diverse range of AI tools and studying their unique capabilities in different applications.

Here’s a quick look at our lineup:

• Claude (General): Claude is an AI assistant who can answer questions and generate content. 
• Albert.ai (Media): Albert.ai helps buyers streamline and optimize campaigns.
• Akkio (Data): Akkio is a tool that structures and visualizes data.  
• Factors (ABM): Factors can help make sense of diverse customer data. 
• Attention Insight (UX): Attention Insight generates attention heatmaps of sites and apps to optimize user experience.
  

We view these pilots as a strategic move to integrate AI across all facets of digital marketing. Testing a diverse range of capabilities will provide the necessary insights to determine the best way to leverage AI to stay at the forefront of innovation and drive results.

Claude
Let’s tackle the big question first – Claude who? Yes, Claude may not be as popular as ChatGPT, the most well-known and talked-about AI. We get it. However, as we’ve started exploring how Claude might support brainstorming sessions, proofing our writing, and creating draft outlines for presentations, we’ve uncovered something great. The writing Claude produces is natural and conversational, and avoids the mechanical tone you often get with AI-generated content.

Claude’s smooth, human-like style has been a game-changer. We’re using more of what it generates, largely because it feels more ‘us’. GPT is no slouch on innovation, but the way that Claude speaks, listens, and adapts when asking for outputs has made it an indispensable tool for our team’s daily work.

Albert.ai
From a media buying perspective, Albert.ai has proven to be a valuable tool to test and integrate into our daily media workflow. With natural language processing capabilities, Albert.ai provides key features to enhance media buying and management:

• Audience development and interest targeting to refine audiences and improve campaign alignment with buyer personas 
• Campaign performance analysis and budget recommendations to optimize spend and results 
• Process selection for purchasing digital and trade advertising space to automate and improve media buying 

With capabilities like Albert.ai, we can scale our collective expertise, streamline workflow, and drive improved media buying outcomes. Integrating solutions like this into daily media operations is key for teams aiming to maximize value from AI.

Akkio
When we first tried Akkio, we assumed it would just enable quick, chat-based exploration of data sets. Rather than manually creating pivot tables, we can now upload spreadsheets of data and then use their “explore” chat to discuss and pull out insights. This can provide some efficiency, though we discovered the tool’s true value is in building predictive data models.

Akkio’s ability to analyze the data, learn from it, and build a predictive interactive web model which lets team members or clients submit parameters and see how it would land within the data.

When experimenting with Akkio, we found the user interface very straightforward. However, we learned that providing the tool with well-formatted, high-quality data is crucial. Akkio could not extract valuable insights from just any dataset we uploaded. With robust, reliable data in place, we were impressed by Akkio’s output and ability to pull insights and apply predictive modeling. This tool didn’t immediately make us drop all of our existing dashboarding technology, but it did provide a new value we weren’t expecting.

Factors
Think back to a time before the GPT and DALL-E revolution. Hard to imagine, isn’t it? Amidst the buzz and hype of newer technologies, there’s Factors – a tool that had its roots planted well before the AI boom. We’re exploring how we might leverage factors in our client work, especially in piloting ABM strategies.

What sets Factors apart is its cost-effectiveness, especially when compared to enterprise-level tools like 6sense. It offers a taste of what comprehensive, integrated account-level data can do, with AI working behind the scenes to identify high-intent accounts. This enables targeted and effective execution across sales pipelines.

Sure, it might not have the flashy allure of being able to generate a photo of your boss riding a horse through a shopping mall, but where it truly shines is in its ability to harness smart technology for even smarter marketing strategies. Factors proves itself to be a reliable tool that delivers the ROI our clients are looking for.

Attention Insight 
We were apprehensive about Attention Insight at first, especially since it creates AI-assisted attention heatmaps without having any analytics data. We tested it by generating heatmaps for a luxury shoe brand’s site and key competitors, and we were pleasantly surprised. After uploading either a screenshot of the page or the website URL, it not only generates a predictive attention heatmap but also an attention score for each website section.

This capability allows our marketing team to quickly gauge the impact of various design elements on user attention, enabling them to make data-informed decisions about content placement, design modifications, and overall marketing strategies. Similarly, our UX team can use these insights to refine user interfaces, ensuring that important elements catch the user’s eye, enhancing the user experience, and potentially increasing conversion rates.

When we compared this data to some user testing data of the same websites, we found a strong alignment between the two. While it’s not a perfect match, the tool provided valuable directional insights into attention patterns. Attention Insight proves itself to be a great tool when it comes to quickly generating attention heatmaps, even in the absence of analytics data. It greatly supports and enhances the efficiency of our research efforts.

Our journey through the Digital Marketing AI Test Lab continues to be a great learning experience. By piloting these five diverse AI tools – Claude, Albert.ai, Akkio, Factors, and Attention Insight – we are actively exploring cutting-edge AI technology and uncovering practical applications that have the potential to revolutionize our approach to digital marketing. The insights from this ongoing pilot are important for fully leveraging AI and keeping OX at the cutting edge of digital marketing innovation.