Communications industry leans on AI for driving revenue

Artificial intelligence and operational machine learning will transform communications fields like advertising, public relations, and content creation, according to industry experts.

With implications and implementations in various fields, generative intelligence, and machine learning use cases are likely to impact the USD 8-billion (around ₹66,142 crore) Indian digital advertising industry, according to machine learning company Moloco's General Manager, India, Siddharth Jhawar.

"Advertisers have long pondered the effectiveness of their ads, many relying on intuition alone. Operational machine learning, however, can revolutionise the USD 8-billion Indian digital advertising industry as it can run thousands of mini experiments to decide which ad creative appeals to which type of users," Jhawar said.

This is especially crucial for India where there are multi-language and diverse cultures, he added.

Google recently announced campaign workflows for advertisers and businesses, and auto-generation of advertisements using Learning Language Models (LLM) and generative AI on Google Ads.

Vice president of global ads at Google Dan Taylor said companies like Myntra, Samsung, HDFC, and Tata AIG are seeing up to 18 per cent growth from Performance Max, their advertising tool that combines Google's AI technologies across bidding, budget optimisation, audiences, creatives, and attribution.

Jhawar added that businesses can use deep neural networks which power machine learning for growing revenue through first-party data while maintaining data privacy and ensuring personalisation.

Moloco works with gaming companies like Zupee, Adda52, Mobile Premier League (MPL), as well as a popular streaming app and an e-commerce player to monetise their platforms and for better revenue returns, he added.

"We've achieved hyper-growth in six months, serving ads to 150 million users and expanded with two local offices. Our goal is to sustain this momentum, scaling across various verticals and using machine learning to cater to consumers' desire for personalised brand experiences while respecting privacy," Jhawar said.

Communication software-as-a-service provider Wizikey has launched Imara, an AI Avatar for public relations and communications that will use generative AI to process news data for insights.

The development comes as brands actively engage generative AI for operations, also creating a stir among the workforce.

Archana Jain, Founder and Managing Director of integrated communications consultancy firm PR Pundit, said public relations cannot be left out of this transformation, and is poised for even more disruption in the coming years.

"With AI, PR professionals can analyze large amounts of data quickly and efficiently, allowing them to make better-informed decisions and develop more effective PR strategies. AI is helping us in creating innovative content tailored for a digitally focused target audience. Even in basic tasks of tracking media coverage, AI is enabling greater efficiencies," she said.

The company is using third-party applications for combining AI with human expertise, she added.

Industry rival Adfactors PR trained a thousand of its employees in ChatGPT and AI tools for research through the School of Communications and Reputation (SCoRe).

Jain said she does not foresee AI taking away jobs in the industry.

"The PR industry needs far more talent than readily available and hence we do not foresee that the advent of AI will take away any jobs. In fact, AI will lend a helping hand in the growth of the PR industry," she said.

There have been reports of Google testing a product that can generate news items from ingested information. Pitched as a helpmate for journalists, the product was displayed at The New York Times, The Washington Post and Wall Street Journal-owner News Corp, the report suggested.

Content creator Ankur Warikoo feels, "AI is going to be the only way content gets generated in the future."

A McKinsey study suggests that marketing and sales have the biggest reported revenue effects of AI.