The AI advertising landscape is changing fast.
What used to be cutting edge—AI-powered programmatic advertising, for example—is now commonplace.
Some of the most innovative examples of AI advertising today are in the realm of market research, predictive analytics, and personalization.
One of the best ways to keep up is by closely watching other companies using AI for marketing—and borrowing what’s working for them.
9 AI Marketing Examples
From Ben & Jerry’s to Chase Bank to CVS, here’s how nine companies are using AI in advertising.
Tomorrow Sleep
Tomorrow Sleep, a mattress brand, used AI content marketing tools to outrank more established competitors like Casper for high-impact keywords, helping the company’s organic traffic increase from 4,000 per month to 400,000 per month.
By using MarketMuse, an AI content intelligence platform, Tomorrow Sleep was able to find content gaps and improve rankings methodically. Using AI-driven recommendations, the brand created in-depth content that positioned them as experts.
Use case: Uncover organic traffic opportunities with AI-powered content marketing.
(Image Source: MarketMuse)
Chase Bank
Chase Bank ran a pilot program in 2019 testing the use of AI in their ad copy. They saw as much as a 450% increase in click-through rate on ads generated using AI.
In one test, the original human-written copy was “Access cash from the equity in your home” with the call to action “Take a look.” The AI-written version (“It’s true — You can unlock cash from the equity in your home” with the call to action “Click to apply”) generated 88% more leads.
Since its original pilot, Chase has expanded its use of AI across marketing channels including direct-response emails, online display ads, and direct email.
Use case: Increase click-through rate with AI-generated advertising copy.
Levi Strauss & Co
Levi Strauss & Co, the clothing company, feeds inventory data, sales data, and shopper data into its machine learning system. From there, AI can determine trends and recommend a course of action—like recommending not to discontinue a t-shirt that it noticed was popular with female consumers in China.
AI also guides the company’s pricing and enables personalization of its consumer marketing—especially when it comes to recommendations. Levi’s uses clickstream data, product availability, and historical purchase data to give customers personalized recommendations across the Levi’s website, app, and email.
Use case: Increase revenue with personalized product recommendations based on user demographics and behavior.
(Image Source: Levi.com)
Unilever
Unilever, the parent company of the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream brand, used machine-learning to analyze consumer habits at scale—and found a breakfast-sized hole in the market. Unilever’s AI analysis found that dozens of songs in the public domain include the lyrics, “ice cream for breakfast.” Following up on this data, Unilever’s market research team discovered a number of local ice cream shops were already offering breakfast-themed ice cream flavors.
Ben & Jerry’s spun up a few flavors of breakfast cereal-infused ice cream—Fruit Loot, Frozen Flakes, and Cocoa Loco—and started offering it in stores. The trend caught on, and competitors soon did the same.
Use case: Uncover new market opportunities with AI-powered analytics.
(Image Source: Ben & Jerry’s)
Starbucks
The Starbucks app and loyalty card record the details of each purchase consumers make. The company has data on when you buy coffee, what you usually drink, and whether you buy anything else—they know your habits down to the day and the hour.
Starbucks uses that data to spin up quite the personalized experience: they use predictive analytics and location data to send personalized offers to your phone when you get close to a Starbucks store. The goal is to present you with offers that increase your average purchase amount.
For example, if on Mondays you buy a latte and a muffin—but on other days of the week you just get a latte—Starbucks’ algorithms might send you attractive offers to expand your muffin-buying habit to other days of the week.
Use case: Increase revenue with predictive analysis and personalized offers.
CVS
CVS, the pharmacy chain, used AI to personalize advertising for customers in high-risk flu areas, with the goal of getting them to a CVS store to get a flu vaccine. CVS partnered with IBM Watson to place a contextual “Flu Insights” tool within The Weather Channel’s app.
During the campaign, customers in high-risk areas saw not only the weather forecast on their Weather Channel app, but also a flu forecast (for example, “Watson predicts the flu risk in your area will increase to high on Tuesday.”) This advertising campaign drove 42 million unique visitors for CVS.
Use case: Drive consumer behavior with real-time predictive insights.
(Image Source: IBM)
The Economist
The Economist, a print and digital news publication, used AI-powered programmatic advertising and content personalization to grow its subscriber base by 9% from 2020 to 2021—its largest-ever increase in subscribers.
The magazine used intelligent programmatic advertising to match The Economist-branded display ads to topically relevant articles on other sites. By clicking on an ad, users entered a personalized content hub powered by machine learning. Over time, the hub learned which topics (in which order) made prospects most likely to subscribe.
Use case: Increase engagement and boost sign-ups with personalized content.
(Image Source: Econsultancy)
Vanguard
In industries like finance there’s a unique advertising problem—heavy regulation. Because of the focus on remaining compliant, it can be tough for marketing copy to stand out.
Vanguard, the investment firm, worked with machine-learning firm Persado to create 64 ad variations to appeal to different clients and prospects—all while remaining compliant. This AI-powered ad personalization campaign increased conversion rates by 16%.
Use case: Increase conversion rates by creating personalized ads at scale.
(Image Source: Persado)
The American Marketing Association
The American Marketing Association (AMA) used AI to personalize newsletters to their subscriber list of 100,000+ marketers, increasing their subscriber engagement rate by 42%.
The AMA used “Smart Newsletter” technology from Rasa.io to curate unique newsletters catering to each subscriber’s interests. Not only is the content personalized using AI—the email subject line and the order of the articles are, too. The ability to automate these emails allowed the AMA to increase impressions and website visitors by sending daily (instead of weekly) emails.
Use case: Increase newsletter engagement with AI-powered personalization.
(Image Source: Rasa.io)
The World of AI Advertising Is Changing Fast
A decade ago, the first uses of AI were just entering the world of advertising.
Today, advertising has already been transformed by artificial intelligence—and the pace of change is only speeding up. AI is helping brands publish content faster, launch more creative ad campaigns, and understand customers like never before.
In this transformative era, advertising techniques that worked 2-3 years ago are already out of date. Make sure to watch what your competitors are doing closely—and keep experimenting so you don’t get left behind.