Advertising’s performance has always been a function of the data used to make advertising decisions. That performance has stagnated over the last decade because of the data’s limited and structured nature, combined with its widespread access. When everyone uses the same resource, there is little differentiation among competitors who are all purchasing and then targeting the same audience segments for the same reasons using the same underlying data.

This source of information has been and continues to be based on compiled data about the consumer. The approach is the same for all companies: purchase third-party consumer data, overlay it on to your known customers, develop profiles, then purchase similar profiles of prospective customers, and market to them online. The data remains mostly static, limited because of its structure, and cannot capture specific attributes that are unique to the advertiser’s brand, product, or service because that data was never structured to do so. This is what we call “WHO-based marketing.”

This methodology for compiling and storing data and onboarding it using cookies constrains insight and performance. The more valuable and insightful solution would utilize modern forms of artificial intelligence that can produce just-in-time insights that identify the underlying reasons WHY behind a consumer’s interest in a product, service, or brand. The IntentKey has invented this WHY-based approach to marketing.

The IntentKey is the first implementation of Artificial Intelligence designed to replace the advertising industry’s dependence on third-party consumer data. IntentKey’s groundbreaking technology was first developed in a machine-learning lab at UCLA. It works like this: The human brain is nothing more than a library of information, where the neurons in the brain are like the books in that library. The brain is a map that connects these individual books so we can access them to make decisions.

Similarly, the IntentKey is a map of the connections between more than 25 million different WHY-based signals, which can be about people, places, things, products, ideas, or even emotions. The foundation of knowledge for this AI is the internet, which makes the IntentKey the first map of collective knowledge that can be utilized to calculate the probability associated between WHY signals. The IntentKey does not use (nor does it need) any third-party consumer data.

The IntentKey can understand the unique reasons WHY consumers have an interest in the products, services, and brand of an advertiser. Those unique reasons change dynamically every five minutes based on seasonal, environmental, consumer, or other known / unknown influences. These reasons WHY can include any one or more of the 25 million signal “books” the IntentKey understands. Similarly, the IntentKey understands WHY consumers are visiting web pages–and those reasons also vary all the time. When the reason WHY a consumer visits a webpage matches the same reasons WHY other consumers made their purchase decisions, the IntentKey places an advertisement on that page.

Every implementation of this AI is custom to the client with no ability to port that custom AI implementation to any other company. It typically only takes days for the AI to understand all the various micro-segment WHYs and begin marketing to those WHY reasons.

The IntentKey has served the needs of Fortune 3000 clients across industry verticals and within programmatic channels that include CTV, OTT, Video, Display, and Native. Inuvo also serves client needs across Social, Search, and LTV.

In the first 6 months of 2021, the IntentKey beat client expectations on average by over 50%. It concurrently identified and marketed to the reasons behind consumer intent (the WHY) in a manner that also allowed those clients to think more strategically about their brand, product, or service.