• by Tanya Gazdik , June 16, 2017

The Weather Channel is launching what it claims are the first cognitive ads for the auto industry. 

Toyota and The Weather Channel have partnered for a Watson Ads experience to introduce the Prius Prime on The Weather Channel App and weather.com.

Watson Ads is an industry-first cognitive ad format that enables consumers to organically connect with brands and allows marketers to have a personalized, one-to-one conversation with their audiences at scale. The cognitive ad format combines machine learning, natural language understanding, and integrated dialogue tools designed to deliver a personalized user experience.

Through Watson Ads, Toyota is able to engage and educate consumers about Prius Prime, addressing questions, sharing new car information, and guiding decision-making during the purchase consideration stage.

"Toyota has an organized system for their data management along with internal processes, which allowed them to recognize and leverage Watson innovation in advertising,” said Sarah Ripmaster, head of automotive sales, The Weather Company, in a release. “They were quick to recognize the benefits of leveraging Watson Ads to not only engage consumers but also extract valuable insights gained from those interactions.”

Because Watson Ads learns over time and gets smarter with every interaction, this not only helps educate consumers and ultimately help them make more informed buying decisions, but it also helps the brand itself to understand consumer questions, concerns and interests, Ripmaster says.  Those insights can then inform overall planning and strategies, from product to supply chain management to marketing.

Saatchi & Saatchi handles creative as well as media planning and buying for Toyota. In the competitive automotive market, the ability to showcase a helpful and beneficial customer experience is invaluable, says John Lisko, executive communications director, Saatchi & Saatchi. 

“We are entering the next frontier of marketing, with cognition and AI poised to take consumer engagement to the next level, and Watson Ads is a prime example of that shift and the great potential we have," Lisko says in a release. “We have leveraged IBM Watson in other areas of our business such as the programmatic video campaign of 300 custom pieces for Toyota RAV4 and most recently, the Mirai campaign on Facebook in which the tool wrote thousands of ads and we continue to uncover valuable insights.