British ad tech company Unruly has turned to IBM Watson to create a new cognitive powered psychographic targeting tool to increase the effectiveness of digital video ads. Unruly DNA combines the company’s emotional intelligence tools with IBM Watson’s machine learning capabilities to help identify and engage the people most likely to increase a brand’s sales.

Unruly is tapping Watson’s Personality Insights service from the Cloud to help advertisers to learn how and why people think, act and feel a certain way. The Unruly DNA tool analyzes social media and other digital data from consumers and learns personality traits such as empathy, trust, assertiveness and imagination.

Devra Prywes, Unruly’s SVP of Marketing and Insights, says, “As marketing tech becomes even more sophisticated, brands shouldn’t forget about the basics – the opportunity to grow sales from light buyers. The challenge is to identify and target them. Unruly DNA uses artificial intelligence to reveal the socio demographic characteristics and psychographic traits of light buyers for individual brands. We then use these insights to launch video ads programmatically across the open web.”

Unruly’s new audience targeting tool creates profiles of light buyers, who, according to academic research, are more likely than heavy buyers to increase sales because they have a greater capacity to purchase more. Unruly DNA then generates a recommended list of third-party audience segments based on these characteristics, which can be used by advertisers to improve the efficiency of their targeting.

Unruly’s new tool is built on large scale consumer panel studies with more than 10,000 respondents combined with insights from social media accounts of participating consumers. By tapping IBM Watson, Unruly DNA uses a mix of linguistic analysis and machine learning to determine the sociodemographic and psychological profile of each panelist, clustering and aggregating the profiles based on buying patterns and purchasing frequency.

For example, Unruly DNA has uncovered that Maybelline shoppers are highly imaginative, Glaceau shoppers like to explore new things and Tresemme shoppers are particularly agreeable. Through the same AI technology, Watson describes popular figures like Oprah as analytical and emotionally aware and Pope Francis as genial, helpful and active.

“The future of marketing lies in unlocking insight from vast amounts of digital data – from emails, to tweets, to social media posts and purchase history,” said Harriet Green, Global Head of IBM Commerce. “Luckily Watson is there to help: it plays the role of a dedicated analyst, assistant and trusted advisor helping marketers to make better, more informed decisions. We are delighted that Unruly is leveraging the power of Watson to open the way for more targeted and accurate marketing campaigns which are better for retailers, FMCG brands and consumers alike.”

All people participating in Unruly’s online consumer panel provided personal data with their express permission and consent. In Unruly’s internal and external reports and analysis, all personal data is anonymized and aggregated. When targeting adverts, Unruly uses anonymous third-party cookies which are not linked to any personally identifying information and enable users to opt out.

According to recent research by Weber Shandwick, in association with KRC Research, more than half of global CMOs expect artificial intelligence to have a greater impact in marketing and communications than social media ever had.