Conference introduces marketers to AI uses

CLEVELAND — Erik Jensen came to Cleveland to learn where artificial intelligence is headed and how to use the technology in his business.

Jensen, 33, the vice president of client services for Wisconsin-based marketing firm Predictive ROI, attended the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Conference on Wednesday at the Huntington Cleveland Convention Center along with about 300 other marketing pros.

“Artificial intelligence and technology is just something you have to pay attention to if you’re going to be in the world of marketing,” said Jensen. “Everything shifts quickly and you have to stay ahead of the curve if at all possible.”

If you don’t, your clients are going to be asking about it, he said. Your competitors are going to be using those tools.

“And pretty soon you’re going to be left behind,” he said.

Anthony Bacopoulos, a 15-year-old high school sophomore from North Canton, came to the conference because he wants to implement AI in the marketing business he started two years ago. His company, Anth.tech, does web development and video production for growing companies, including a medicinal cannabis facility and sports training facilities.

He wants to implement AI into his business so his company “can stay ahead of the game and not fall behind,” he said.

The conference, which ran through Thursday, was a Cleveland first, organized by Clevelandbased marketing CEO Paul Roetzer.

Artificial intelligence can help marketing professionals boost performance, Roetzer said. Right now, most marketing professionals don’t utilize AI, he told cleveland.com. He believes the technology will rapidly affect the business.

Marketers spend their days making predictions, Roetzer said.

“Will they read this? Will they react to this? Will they buy this? Will they click this button, versus that button? You’re trying to predict things,” he said.

Artificial intelligence machine learning works by taking large amounts of data, and making predictions. And it excels.

“Al enhances us. It augments what we’re capable of doing," Roetzer said Wednesday during his keynote address at the conference. “We’re not here to talk about us all being out of a job in five years. We’re talking about how our job could actually get better. We can focus on doing things we actually love to do instead of repetitive things we don’t like to do.”