IBM and Facebook Join Forces to Augment Personalized Marketing Campaigns

August 21, 2015

In case you haven’t noticed, marketing and ad campaigns on the Web are continuing to become more and more personalized, thanks to advances in targeting technology and an ever-growing mass of consumer data. One of the pioneers in this area is of course Facebook, which has access to an unfathomably large and growing user base willingly supplying a wealth of personal data that serves as the basis for its Custom Audience insights for marketers.

Technology giant IBM now plans to expand its own marketing tools and services with the recent signing of a deal with Facebook. Under the agreement the two companies will collaborate on merging their data to form a more comprehensive and effective version of the IBM Marketing Cloud campaign management platform. The goal is to address the three components of a successful campaign that must come together in order to attract the most business: ads should be personalized and friendly, only delivered to users it will be relevant for and delivered at an opportune moment.

The Marketing Cloud platform relies heavily on retail data such as purchase and item viewing history. By correlating this data with users’ Facebook data, marketers have access to a much broader range of information for personalizing ad campaigns and meeting the aforementioned criteria. As a result ads can be better targeted to specific market segments and tie in seamlessly with activity on retail sites.

The two companies will work together further in the brand new IBM Commerce THINKLab, of which Facebook is the first member. THINKLab is a research and collaboration effort dedicated to working directly with brands to develop beneficial new technologies and techniques for creating customized customer experiences.

This announcement reflects IBM’s interest in rethinking its business model and expanding support for newer technologies and trends in the industry. The company also signed a deal with social media service Twitter to incorporate its immense store of data into Watson, IBM’s cutting edge artificial intelligence platform. Now the company can focus on helping marketers develop successful ad campaigns that are more personal than ever without coming off as creepy to unsuspecting social media users.

IBM and Facebook Join Forces to Augment Personalized Marketing Campaigns