Member Article

Webgains to Work with IBM Watson

**- Webgains to bolster engagement across the performance marketing value chain with AI - **

Affiliate Marketing Network, Webgains, today announces that it is leveraging cognitive insight to create an artificial intelligence and machine learning solution to optimise the digital advertising channel and help online retailers advertise more intelligently.

Responsible for the intelligent placement of brand content across a range of advertising platforms, Webgains is the first affiliate marketing network in Europe working with IBM to develop cognitive solutions for their business. Harnessing the power of IBM Watson’s cognitive technologies, Webgains’ clients will be able to make more informed decisions about their marketing strategy, improving existing sales figures and ROI. Armed with intelligent insight, Webgains is looking to increase both the efficiency and efficacy of digital ad placement.

The new Webgains AI strategy aims to develop cognitive solutions to help online retailers advertise more intelligently across a range of digital publishing partners, signifying a move away from a traditional reliance on manual advertising placement. With the right insight, Webgains will be able to present the right content across the right medium to the right consumer, at the right time, ensuring that consumers are met with the information they desire and that advertisers are making the most of their digital spend.

Webgains will be working on a suite of products and APIs from IBM. The first phase will see Webgains develop a Virtual Assistant to support staff and clients with front line customer service tasks. Relying on several APIs from the IBM Watson Developer Cloud portfolio including Watson Conversation, AlchemyLanguage, Retrieve and Rank, and Tone Analyzer, the Webgains virtual assistant will be trained in English, German, French and Spanish and will be able to help with not only basic tasks and questions, but also uploading promotional assets or answering questions about invoices.

Richard Dennys, Webgains CEO, commented, “The introduction of AI into Webgains’ suite of technology is all about giving clients, publishers and our staff more flexibility. With this technology, we’re enabling our account managers to be more efficient and make more intelligent decisions. This is an investment that’s going to have a real impact on clients’ results and profit, and make our service more valuable than ever before.”

Learning over time, the virtual assistant will not only improve customer service in terms of response time and efficiency, it will also provide the opportunity to analyse customer intent and trends and to feed these learnings back into future service. Webgains will build, test, configure and train the virtual advisor in conjunction with IBM Enterprise Services, working with Watson experts to maximize the full potential of AI within a high-growth organisation. This marks the beginning of a project designed to explore how cognitive capabilities can transform the affiliate marketing operating model and foster stronger growth in campaign performance and reach.

The second phase will see Webgains focus on intelligent ad placement. Processing a full range of both structured and unstructured data, including prevailing external trends, web queries, user data and social media insight, Webgains will be deploying IBM Watson’s cognitive technologies to decipher trends, patterns and behaviours that give brands and retailers new insights about their ad spend.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Richard Dennys .