As the pace of modern life continues to accelerate, creating engaging content that performs and drives a higher return on investment has become increasingly challenging.

Content is king; it’s the first thing that hits users on the Internet and, with 65% of people ignoring ads, you need to remarket your target audience based on in-depth personalization of content to engage with users. So, whether you are a brand or an agency, if you don’t build content that appeals to your audience, you will never succeed.

In that context, the need for an intelligent creative engine able to develop content that per- forms well at the lowest possible cost are vital. There is no question that brands and agencies can build such an engine. Some are already doing it with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), which takes on the burden of the work and creates relevant, inspired, engaging, and different material. Content creation is no longer confined to those who have the creativity and resources to produce it on their own. Even the smallest businesses and agencies now have access to large pools of data, algorithms, and AI solutions that can help influence, inform, solve problems, and create content. Artificial intelligence is impacting not just specific channels, but entire ways of doing business.

Intelligent content that delivers

While the demand for customized solutions has increased, marketing teams have been overwhelmed with the processes involved in designing such solutions. Indeed, content creation is immensely challenging. Businesses, brands, and agencies spend vast amounts of time, effort, and money on it. However, they are often not rewarded well enough for their efforts. The content tools to make brands stand out are limited, but artificial intelligence is poised to solve that.

The advent of cognitive technologies like natural language understanding, AI translation, and automatic transcription, has set the stage for a completely new era in content creation. At the intersection of creative content and technology exists the opportunity to build a full range of intelligent content. You can create videos, publish articles, and even design prototypes.

Thanks to its fast-growing domain knowledge and vast experience repository, artificial intelligence can be used to create content that reaches, influences, and converts like never before. It can assist key stakeholders by monitoring and analyzing consumer behavior patterns, based on which it can deliver content with little to no human involvement or effort, reducing the amount of time needed to develop this content and letting content teams focus on elevating the quality, relevance, and impact.

By automating the writing process, AI allows you to generate relevant and timely content at scale, in an engaging manner. The best part about it is that it allows you to scale your efforts and efficiently test ideas with less of an investment.

Multichannel smart content

Today’s brands need an approach to content creation and distribution that will allow them to distribute their message effectively across multiple platforms, including social media, websites, apps, and retail environments. AI applications for content creation and distribution hold promise for solving this challenge. AI is used more and more for emotional experiences, even in industries that you might not think of. With its help, it’s possible to not only craft top-quality content but also to devise surprising new distribution strategies that were unthinkable before. It’s now possible to also ensure good content’s value generation.

Outsourcing to AI allows brands and agencies to execute their existing content plans (video, infographics, articles, and more) at a granular level with great efficiency and accuracy. And this technology is not just for building; it can also be used to work on research, ideation, and strategic planning. An intelligent creative engine helps identify repetitive patterns across data sets which can be utilized by an agency’s full team to develop new content, enabling clients and agencies to build better quality material more frequently.

Artificial intelligence is slowly but surely revolutionizing all aspects of our lives and is an integral part of almost every technology or service in use today, both for businesses and consumers. It makes it easier for users to find what they are looking for online and leverages machine learning, from email accounts to how our smartphones operate. It is disrupting the advertising industry in a way that no one could have dreamt of just a few years back. What was perceived as a far-fetched concept has become an integral part of advertising. For brands, it raises the hope to build better and more engaging content, among many other things.

No wonder that, in recent years, we’ve seen more and more brands, agencies, and startups try to generate content through AI. A brand running this initiative holds AI as one of its core values. Some companies are providing services to create content for other companies profitably; others are building tools in-house that repurpose existing content and personalize it or make it contextual with the help of AI.

Content is not a commodity. It’s the fuel that powers brand engagement and affinity. The opportunities for content are limitless, making it an ideal delivery mechanism for brands to interact with their target audience in a relevant and context-aware way. Yes, AI still isn’t perfect. Like most aspects in marketing, leaving everything up to the machine isn’t ideal or optimal and still requires a human brain to curate and shape the content in a meaningful manner. So, as automation continues to infiltrate every industry, how companies and agencies can unlock the true and full potential of content through AI remains to be seen.

This article was published in Communicate's latest issue.