Marketers are faced with a great competition for attention, but they still need to dial it down sometimes, said Anne Ahola Ward, founder of CircleClick. Channels such as social media are like a dinner party, that should not be dominated by business talk, and each company should focus on what they can do well, she told Velocitize Talks.
“Stick with what works for you. I don’t think there is any hard and fast rule of how to be engaging,” she said. “Getting attention in the wrong way doesn’t help you and your brand at all.”
Search has become more sophisticated and performance-driven as more technologies such as mobile and voice make it more conversational and human, said Ward. “SEOs are responding to that,” she said.
As search evolves, privacy has to evolve to match, said Ward. The recent GDPR regulations were well intentioned, but the execution in the U.S. was imperfect, she said.
The notion of privacy has changed over time and it continues to evolve, especially as the value of data becomes more salient and a part of the privacy debate, said Ward.
Technology such as artificial intelligence is still a few hype cycles away from true innovation because data has to evolve to become more useful, said Ward, an IBM futurist. “When I hear Deep Learning, I often think Deep Marketing,” she said.
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