American Film Market 2024 Taps Predictive AI as Part of Its Global Visitor Marketing Campaign

Buyers, filmmakers, producers, writers, directors and other industry professionals from an estimated 80+ countries will converge in Las Vegas this November for the annual American Film Market (AFM) for six days of deal-making, screenings, conferences, networking and parties.

Encore collaborated with its client, AFM, on using several new digital advertising tools this year to attract visitors, and in this blog post we highlight one of them, a predictive artificial intelligence (AI) audience targeting solution from LinkedIn called “Predictive Audiences”.

What is Predictive AI?

Predictive AI uses machine learning and complex algorithms to analyze huge amounts of data, identify patterns and make predictions.

It is different from generative artificial intelligence (genAI) which dominates the headlines and you may be more familiar with due to the popularity of genAI platforms such as ChatGPT, Gemini, etc.

While genAI can help you write compelling copy, create visually engaging ads and develop other marketing content, predictive AI can help you identify new audiences who are more likely to convert and buy tickets to your event. 

How does it work?

AFM identified an audience it wanted to replicate: people who have taken conversion actions on its website and purchased passes, and uploaded this first party audience seed data to LinkedIn.

LinkedIn then combined this seed data in a privacy-compliant manner with the millions of engagements it sees on its platform and used predictive AI to create custom audiences that are most likely to take the same actions that audiences did in AFM’s seed data.

The predictive AI identifies new audiences which don’t just look like AFM’s audiences but have a propensity to convert, which differentiates this solution from lookalike targeting.

Why did AFM decide to use it?

Advanced digital advertising has been a key part of AFM’s global visitor marketing program for many years.  We have run more than 150 million programmatic ads for multiple editions of AFM so leveraging LinkedIn’s new predictive AI audience targeting solution fit well with AFM’s strategy of embracing data driven targeting and new technologies.

AFM is using this predictive AI solution to…

– Find and reach new high-intent audiences at scale.

– Boost bottom of the funnel efforts with audiences more likely to convert.

– Activate its first party data.

– Pursue privacy-first targeting tactics and reduce use of third-party cookies.

– Leverage LinkedIn’s massive B2B audience and social sharing.

How are the results so far?

While we are still in the middle of the campaign for AFM 2024, results so far are very promising. 

Predictive AI ads currently have the highest engagement rate of all paid prospecting campaigns AFM is running on the LinkedIn platform and the highest CTR for all paid prospecting display campaigns AFM is running across any platform for the 2024 show.

Audience insights analysis and tracking of website actions indicate these campaigns are also reaching new audiences outside of existing target sets and driving conversions.

Some best practices to share

To maximize ROI from predictive AI ad spend, we worked with AFM to…

– Supply high quality audience seed data aligned directly to the behaviors (conversion actions/ticket purchases) we wanted to model so the new predictive AI audience would have the highest purchase intent.

– Execute A/B tests against different types of audience seed data and compare performance for predictive AI campaigns against other targeting types.

– Layer geotargeting on top of the predictive AI audiences to best focus the ad spend.

– Run these campaigns for several months enabling the predictive AI to learn from real-time data creating a positive feedback loop and optimizing performance.

As privacy changes reduce the availability of traditional online signals, such as third-party cookies, predictive AI offers an exciting new way to embrace the changing digital landscape.

***

Follow us on LinkedIn or subscribe to our eNewsletter for more marketing ideas, or contact us for info on our visitor marketing, advertising & media buying services!

Posted on September 3, 2024