Kazu Takiguchi, CEO and founder of ReFuel4, asks what Google’s launch of machine learning-powered AdSense ads means for smaller players.

Last week, Google announced the launch a new ad unit for AdSense, which harnesses the power of machine learning artificial intelligence to automate ad placement. The new function aims to maximize monetisation for publishers, by analyzing their existing pages, and suggesting ad placement which will resonate with users, based on hard data, rather than guesswork.But while the announcement is good news for time-crunched publishers, many startupmarketing teams may be unnerved by such a large, established – and well-funded – player pushing ahead in the field of AI-powered marketing. Since the end of 2017, there has been a lot of scaremongering about the power of ‘The Big Five’ technology companies — Apple, Alphabet, Microsoft, Facebook and Amazon — who are estimated to have a combined valuation of more than $3.3 trillion (£2.4 trillion),  accounting for more than 40 per cent of the total value of the Nasdaq 100 index. Experts have begun to predict potentially damaging effects that such a monopoly could cause on competitivity within the tech industry as a whole.

So is the introduction of AI-automated marketing just another step forward in the ‘Big Five’s’ unstoppable crusade of dominance over the tech industry, and what does this announcement really mean for smaller startup players?

Head start
One school of thought is that these companies have become so powerful and profitable that they will be able to charge ahead in R&D for any emerging technology, and use their bulging bank balances to acquire startups, tech and talent already existing in these spaces, gaining a head start over smaller players which would be hard to regain.

But the fact is that the current AI sprint we are seeing from big players is not new. Since 2012, The Big Five have been betting heavily on AI – and have acquired over 30 related companies in the process. Google in particular has always been on the frontline of AI advancement, after buying artificial intelligence startup DeepMind for $400m back in 2014, one of the largest AI acquisitions to date.

A quick look at the AdWords product roadmap presented at last year’s Google Marketing Next Conference shows that artificial intelligence has always featured heavily in the companys long term goals for its marketing tools. But, in light of the news of the new ad unit for AdSense, has the technological gap widened too much for startups to stay competitive?

Window of opportunity
In short, no. But the window of opportunity to adopt new tools and processes will not stay open forever. A recent study shows that 53 per cent of marketers plan to adopt AI in the next two years, but based on our experience, many teams are being held back by misconceptions that machine learning marketing projects would cost too much or be too difficult to roll out.

The reality is that these misconceptions are largely unfounded. While access to big enough budgets to hire AI dev teams and large enough data sets of proprietary data to train algorithms remains challenging to all but the biggest players, thanks to a range of new tools, you don’t need to be a multi-billion dollar giant to start gaining insights from your data, and making data-driven decisions.

Machine learning applications can offer value at many stages of the customer journey, from analyzing historical data from CRM systems and building predictive models for better segmentation of different customer groups based on intent and Lifetime Value (LTV), producing highly personalized content and delivering the right message on the right channel at the right time, to defining risk models to decide on the amount and type of intervention companies take to reduce customer churn.

The Big Five themselves have levelled the AI playing field somewhat by offering ‘Machine learning as a service’ functions on cloud computing services like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. There are also other ‘plug and play’ AI-powered solutions for smaller players who want to start using machine learning applications, but don’t have the data sets needed to train AI algorithms or take much value from cloud computing tools. For example, CRM systems like HubSpot and SalesForce and creative optimization platforms like our own ReFUEL4, are designed to be easy to use, and offer quick insights straight out of the box.

A blessing in disguise?
While to date many startups have been slow to move into the world of automated, data-driven marketing campaigns, the fact that AI marketing tools are expected to save businesses $8bn a year by 2022, is likely to push decision makers towards integrating ‘smart’ AI tools into their processes as soon as possible. By their very nature, SMBs and startups are well-positioned to take advantage of AI for marketing – and other applications – because their smaller size means they can move more quickly to adopt such solutions and develop an edge over other startup competitors.

In the future, we are likely to see more tech giants opening up these types of tools for cheap or free, as the more smaller players that start uploading their data sets to harness the power of ‘AI on demand’ tools, the bigger, smarter and more powerful the ‘Big Five’s’ AI will become. For example, Google also recently made its machine learning system TensorFlow available free of charge, and last year rolled out a new research initiative called People + AI Research initiative (PAIR) to assess how the public interacts with emerging AI systems.

I predict that eventually, AI will go down the same path as that of web development. Initially, this was limited to a small number of trained specialists, but over time, increased interest and investment led to the creation of simplified tools such as WordPress and Wix, which have democratized access and use.

So while there are legitimate concerns over the centralization of AI power among the Big Five, we are likely to see them create more and more affordable and easy-to-use solutions in the next decade. Rather than accepting defeat, startups have the chance to gain a competitive advantage within their industries, by being quick off the mark to harness the tools which are readily available to them. Developments such as Google’s AdSense Auto ads offer AI-powered tools at no additional cost, but it’s up to startups to capitalize on these opportunities at lightning speed and stay ahead of the curve.