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| Weather Co. is rolling out Watson Ads that people can communicate with. |
Most people don’t seem to want to click on Web ads. Do they want to talk to them?
Maybe if Watson— IBM’s supercomputer perhaps best known for its Jeopardy prowess—was the one talking back?
Weather Co. believes so. The media company, all of which was acquired by IBM last October except for its traditional TV channel, is planning to roll out digital ads that people can communicate with this fall. Using Watson’s artificial intelligence software, advertisers will be able to produce display ads that invite people to ask Watson questions about their products, either by speaking or typing into a search box.
For example, an allergy medication brand could enable visitors to Weather.com to ask questions about whether the product is appropriate for children or what sort of side effects it might cause. Or a food brand may encourage people to ask about potential recipes.
Weather Co. has already signed on Unilever, Campbell Soup Co. and GSK Healthcare, a unit of GlaxoSmithKline, to start running Watson-powered ads on both desktop and mobile devices this fall. The company isn’t saying yet which individual brands will implement the ads.
Initially, Watson Ads will only be available on Weather Co.’s properties, including Weather.com and Weather Underground. But Jeremy Steinberg, Weather Co.’s global head of sales, said the company is open to having these ads eventually run on other websites and apps—and the technology could even find its way to other media, such as billboards and even TV ads.
“We believe this capability is going to be completely transformative to the industry,” he said. “Cognitive advertising is the new frontier. With Watson Ads, we believe that we are humanizing the ad experience for consumers.”
Digital ads—increasingly dominated by algorithms and automated exchanges—could surely use some humanizing. Mr. Steinberg emphasized that unlike ads tied to keyword searches, Watson ads should pick up on the nuances of natural language, and are meant to respond to more conversational queries like “Is this medication right for my son?”
This isn't the first time IBM has leveraged Watson for advertising. Earlier this year the company helped Kia find relevant social influencers to promote its Super Bowl ads. And Turner is working with IBM to use Watson to sift through various sources of marketing data in an effort to sell more ads. Despite publicity surrounding the artificial intelligence unit, IBM has yet to break out how much revenue Watson brings in.
The question is whether people want to interact with online ads, considering consumers’ history of trying to avoid advertising altogether.
Carl Fremont, global chief digital officer at the WPP-owned media agency MEC, said the fact that people will be able to use natural language to communicate with Watson Ads is key, considering how people are gravitating to products like Apple’s Siri and Amazon’s Alexa.
“It’s going to be the way we interact with multiple devices in an Internet of Things world,” he said.
Theresa Agnew, chief marketing officer for North America at GlaxoSmithKline, which is working with Watson Ads, said that having enough content to feed a campaign with enough questions and answers won’t be an issue.
“Brands today are publishers,” she said. “We are very rich in content. And this is a huge advancement over an old-school banner ad.”
Mr. Steinberg acknowledged that the early Watson campaigns will be highly experimental in nature and that it may take time to figure out exactly how the technology will be best used.
Weather Co. and IBM see the benefits of this technology going well beyond just helping brands improve the performance of their ad campaigns. The questions people end up asking Watson ads could be used to guide future messaging and even product development, Mr. Steinberg said.
“We think this will really help improve all digital advertising, and really all advertising,” he added. “But I think it can also help brands figure out what their customers really care about.”
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