Machine learning is bringing us self-driving cars, medical diagnoses, and language translation, but how can machine learning help marketers improve marketing decisions? Machine learning models predict extremely well, are scalable to “big data,” and are a natural fit to analyze rich media content, such as text, images, audio, and video. Examples of current marketing applications include identification of customer needs from online data, accurate prediction of consumer response to advertising, personalized pricing, and product recommendations. But without the human input and insight—the soul—the applications of machine learning are limited. To create competitive or cooperative strategies, to generate creative product designs, to be accurate for “what-if” and “but-for” applications, to devise dynamic policies, to advance knowledge, to protect consumer privacy, and avoid algorithm bias, machine learning needs a soul. The brightest future is based on the synergy of what the machine can do well and what humans do well. We provide examples and predictions for the future.

机器学习为我们带来了自动驾驶汽车，医疗诊断和语言翻译，但是机器学习如何帮助营销人员改善营销决策？机器学习模型的预测非常好，可以扩展到“大数据”，并且非常适合分析富媒体内容，例如文本，图像，音频和视频。当前营销应用程序的示例包括从在线数据中识别客户需求，准确预测消费者对广告的反应，个性化定价和产品推荐。但是，如果没有人类的投入和洞察力-灵魂-机器学习的应用将受到限制。创建竞争性或合作性策略，生成创意产品设计，针对“假设”和“针对”应用进行准确定位，制定动态政策，提升知识，为了保护消费者的隐私并避免算法偏差，机器学习需要灵魂。最光明的未来是基于机器可以做什么以及人类可以做什么的协同作用。我们提供了示例和对未来的预测。