Can Causal AI be The Ultimate Marketing Measurement Tool?
Causal AI is a breakthrough methodology for the marketing industry. At its core it’s simply the science of cause and effect. But it is enabling marketers to measure every marketing tactic continuously without the need for experiments or A/B testing.
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Accurate marketing measurement has been a sore point for the industry. In the wake of increased privacy legislation and specifically the deprecation of third-party cookies, brand marketers have struggled to measure their campaigns effectively without user-level data.
Many have turned to Media Mix Modelling (MMM) as a replacement for user level tracking. Yet, MMM lacks granularity and doesn’t have the capability to glean the everyday insights marketers need to see how different versions of ads are performing across different channels.
Others have sought solutions in device fingerprinting. But this technique is as much a violation of user privacy as the cookie, and consequently, we’re seeing all the big players such as Google and Apple enforce the ban over this practice.
Many marketers are therefore being forced to tread new ground and find a marketing measurement tool that can give them precise insights into how their spend is performing, without breaching user-privacy. Step forward Causal AI.
What is Causal AI?
Causal AI is a breakthrough methodology for the marketing industry. At its core it’s simply the science of cause and effect. But it is enabling marketers to measure every marketing tactic continuously without the need for experiments or A/B testing. This is crucial because experimentation means marketers are forced to pause one channel or campaign for a period of time to ‘test’ which is the best performing. Meaning that brands could lose days or weeks of potential sales.
Causal AI utilises day-to-day operational changes as “micro-experiments” rather than demanding a large shut off of advertising channels for the sake of measuring those. But the “wow” factor is added by a causal discovery process, a methodology allowing the algorithm to provide precise measurement, even while two or more changes, in different directions, happen at the same time. Causal AI models are not calibrated or customised, as the AI component learns the variables and runs the causal discovery on its own.
How are brands benefitting from Causal AI?
The great thing about Causal AI is that it can measure performance across all channels online and offline, including iOS, Android, Web, TV, CTV, Influencer marketing and OOH. It works for brands across all industries but we’re seeing FinTech and gaming companies really take the lead in this space.
A major FinTech company, known as one of the world’s leading blockchain and cryptocurrency infrastructure providers, faced the challenge of optimising marketing performance amid dynamic market trends. Its marketing performance was intricately tied to market volatility, demanding a solution that could adapt to dynamic trends and effectively allocate ad spend. The challenge was to measure performance value, especially in the face of market fluctuations, and make strategic marketing decisions based on actual value.
Integrating INCRMNTAL’s Causal AI solution proved to be a game-changer. By incorporating market data and leveraging always-on incrementality insights, the company gained a valuable tool for measuring performance value. The implementation empowered them with a holistic view of incrementality insights across all channels and countries, irrespective of the advertising medium. As a result, it was able to quickly identify scaling and efficiency opportunities globally and jump on these to grow its business.
Causal AI’s impact on the industry
For now, Causal AI is still in its innovation stage but as privacy laws become stricter and the cookie finally dies out, this technology will become even more popular. Within the next few years, we expect increasing numbers of brands to jump onboard. Many marketers are already beginning to recognise that their current measurement solutions are not providing them with the insights they need, so are looking for more accurate alternatives.
What’s great about certain Causal AI tools is that integration is simple. INCRMNTAL’s platform can integrate with any data source. There is no code, SDK, pixel or tag to be implemented, and all of the integration work can be done using the user interface.
Unattributed aggregated marketing data can also be pulled from a CSV, S3 bucket, BigQuery table, or even a simple Google Sheet. While advertising spend can be integrated directly from over 100 ad platforms in a process that takes minutes.
Quite simply, Causal AI is the future of marketing measurement and brands that adopt these solutions now will reap the rewards.
