Artificial intelligence will have a bigger impact on marketing than Facebook or Google, according to the World Advertising Research Centre (WARC).

More than half of global chief marketing officers expect the impact of AI on marketing and communications to be greater than the impact of social media, the research centre said in a recent report.

But don’t expect the AI of robots and automation seen on the silver big screen, says Jodie Sangster, chief of the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising.

“At the moment AI is misunderstood — people think its robots spitting out information with a mind of their own but that’s simply not the case.

“To change the public perception it is quite difficult, I feel like we are at the first rung of the ladder and there needs to be more education about what it is at both the consumer and industry level.”

One such company looking to cash in on the advent of the bots is OpenDNA, an ASX-listed marketing technology developer that wants to not only map each individual customer’s interests, but also learn “the extent of interest that they may have in any area”.

OpenDNA believes it can carve out a niche among the marketing giants such as Google and Facebook.

OpenDNA’s (ASX:OPN) is described as an “automated psychographic profiling platform designed to enable businesses to better understand their individual users”.

In digital marketing, psychographics are the new demographics. By studying online data, marketers can now measure customer attitudes and interests rather than simple objective demographic criteria such as age or gender.

“The internet has changed the relative importance of demographics and psychographics to marketers in three key ways: by making psychographics more actionable, by making psychographic differences more important, and by making psychographic insight easier to access,” Harvard Business Review reported last year.

This “enables companies to push relevant content or products that a user wants because the system understands users’ intent,” OpenDNA said in a presentation published this week.

“Coupled with additional data sets, such as weather, location, time and date, this helps build very detailed psychographic and behavioural maps.”

“In turn, this empowers and benefits the customer as they receive a very personalised and relevant experience with the businesses they engage with.”

OPN recently teamed up with Endeavour Drinks Group, owner of bottle shops Dan Murphy’s, BWS and CellarMasters to develop an app using the technology – that would catalogue, suggest and recommend beverages based on the user’s profile.

Since listing on the ASX last November, OPN’s shares have traded between 9c and 20 cents.

OPN shares closed at 14.5c on Wednesday.

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