The Ultimate Beginner's Guide to AI in Marketing 

This guide will help you understand AI and how to use it in your marketing—fast.

 
 
Beginner's Guide to AI in Marketing

Research On AI

Why would you want to spend a bunch of time combing through research reports on AI? You don’t. That’s what this section is for—to save you the pain of reading hundreds of pages of reports. (We’ve done that, and it’s not pretty…)

Seriously, though, there are a number of projections and estimates you need to know if you’re going to convince bosses, colleagues, and stakeholders that AI is the real deal. Because the disruptive opportunity presented by AI is almost too big to be believed—until you put it in numbers. Take a look at the report summaries below (with links to the full reports). In just a few minutes, you’ll have a better idea of why we’re so excited about AI in marketing.

 

Research

Artificial Intelligence Index Report 2019

December 2019

AI leaders from MIT, Stanford University, Harvard University, OpenAI, McKinsey Global Institute, Partnership On AI and SRI International came together to research and examine some of the biggest trends shaping the AI industry. As a follow-up to the 2018 report, this report's key highlights include: Globally, investment in AI startups continues its steady ascent. From a total of $1.3B raised in 2010 to over $40.4B in 2018 (with $37.4B in 2019 as of November 4th), funding has increased at an average annual growth rate of over 48%. Autonomous Vehicles (AVs) received the largest share of global investment over the last year with $7.7B (9.9% of the total). 58% of large companies surveyed report adopting AI in at least one function or business unit in 2019, up from 47% in 2018. In the US, the share of jobs in AI-related topics increased from 0.26% of total jobs posted in 2010 to 1.32% in October 2019, with the highest share in Machine Learning (0.51% of total jobs). AI labor demand is growing especially in high-tech services and the manufacturing sector. Enrollment continues to grow rapidly in AI and related subjects, both at traditional universities in the US and internationally, and in online offerings.At the graduate level, AI has rapidly become the most popular specialization among computer science PhD students in North America, with over twice as many students as the second most popular specialization (security/information assurance). In 2018, over 21% of graduating Computer Science PhDs specialize in Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning.

Funding for AI-Powered Sales and Marketing Companies Exceeds $5.2 Billion

January 2019

According to our analysis of Crunchbase data, there are 1,141 companies that fit into the category groups of both “Sales and Marketing” and “Artificial Intelligence.” These are predominantly software companies selling sales and marketing solutions, of which 488* have raised funding totaling more than $5.2 billion (in USD). Let’s dig into the data on these 488 funded companies to see what else we can learn: 2018 Funding: 147 companies raised funding in 2018 totaling $1.07 billion. Categories: The most common categories within the Sales and Marketing group are: advertising (141 companies), predictive analytics (130 companies), marketing automation (119 companies), digital marketing (74 companies), CRM (64 companies), mobile (48 companies), sales automation (48 companies), e-commerce (42 companies), brand marketing (37 companies), and social media marketing (33 companies). Headquarters: San Francisco is the most popular headquarters with 54 companies calling it home. Those SF-based companies have raised $978 million. New York is second with 47 companies at $610 million and London is third with 40 companies at $352 million. Paris is a distant fourth with 14 companies at $145 million. Status: Of the 488 companies, 57 have been acquired and eight have held an initial public offering (IPO). Employees: 11-50 employees is the most common range at 46.9% of companies. 1-10 is next at 30.1% of companies. Only 10.9% companies have 101+ employees. Founding Year: 2018 saw a significant drop in number of AI-powered sales and marketing companies founded with only 13, raising a combined $8.6 million. This was down from 49 companies founded in 2017, which have raised $71.2 million to date. 2014 and 2015 were the peak years for AI-powered startups with 67 companies being founded in each of the years. Funding Rounds: The companies have 1,303 combined funding rounds for an average of 2.7.Distribution of Funding: 111 companies have raised $10 million or more. 56 companies have raised $25 million or more. 27 companies have raised $50 million or more. Six companies have raised $100 million or more.