[Podcast] Promises and challenges of artificial intelligence with Ségolène Martin
In this week’s Podcast, we welcome Ségolène Martin, the CEO of Kantify, a company specialising in artificial intelligence, based in Brussels. Artificial intelligence has undoubtedly been one of the most popular subjects in recent months, but in this Podcast, we will try to go beyond the clichés. We will, therefore, focus on the real added value of artificial intelligence in companies, but also on the difficulties that the launch of such a project represents. In particular,...
How to achieve better marketing and market research with Big Data
Technological progress today allows us to enjoy excellent living conditions. Control of space, control of reproduction, control of information are challenges that we have already accomplished. However, time control remains out of reach. Many human obsessions revolve around the power of this resource, offered to us at birth in a desperately finite quantity: time. Staying young, living old, perpetuating your memory, predicting the future are some of the forms that this obsession takes. This refusal of...
Personalising customer relations: how to gain trust and data?
The recommendation algorithms promise marketers to achieve their Holy Grail: that of personalised relationships with all their customers at a reasonable price. Since the quality of customer relations is a decisive factor for customer satisfaction and loyalty, algorithmic recommendations, therefore, represent the promise of quality interactions with customers and meaningful marketing actions. However, large-scale customisation can only be achieved by using customer data and the digital traces they leave behind. In a world where privacy awareness...
How to get Internet users to share more personal data?
What personal data are Internet users willing to share in exchange for better personalisation of the marketing offer? How to adapt your marketing strategy to get more data? This question is the subject of much debate at a time of the GDPR and the dawn of the entry into force of e-privacy. What data can a company still collect without fear that its customers will lose confidence? It is this tricky but crucial question that we...
Which regions of France have the most enterprising approach?
In our last post, we presented you with a map representing the French counties where the most (and least) companies are created. This analysis, as impressive as it may be, needed to be further developed to take into account the disparities that exist in terms of population density. A region with a tiny population will necessarily create fewer companies than a large city (let alone a capital). It was, therefore, necessary to take into account the...
Firms’ creations in France: an interactive visualization
The National Institute of Statistics (see our article on the search for statistical data for your market research) make quality data available to all, but it is still necessary to be able to use them efficiently. They are often in their original form and are therefore not easily accessible to newbies. For example, INSEE (the French national statistics institute) produces excellent data on the creation of businesses in France, but it lacks a simple tool to...
Media research : 4 data journalism projects worth knowing
As part of the Big Data Initiative (which I’m chairing) of the European Broadcasting Union, a conference was organized on 26 and 27 February 2019 in Munich to discuss the latest members’ projects in the field of data journalism. Although more than a dozen presentations related to this topic twere given, I chose to report and compare in this article only 4 of them that are extremely concrete and launched each in a different country. Those...
Impact of artificial intelligence in the retail, media and insurance sectors
On the invitation of Philippe Warzée, editor-in-chief of Pub.be, I was pleased to present my latest thoughts on the impact of artificial intelligence in the media, retail and insurance sectors. The presentation started with a brief historical overview of recommendation algorithms, perhaps the most widespread type of algorithms around. After this introduction I dealt with 3 use cases : Netflix (media sector), coupons in the retail sector, and health insurances. I followed with an analysis of...
AI revolution in media : BBC4 broadcasts program made by machine
On the 4th and 5th of September, a unique television experience took place in the United Kingdom on one of the BBC channels. It is on BBC4 that 2 exceptional evenings dedicated to artificial intelligence took place. In addition to the documentaries that allowed viewers to familiarise themselves with this complex theme, these two evenings were also an opportunity to experiment with the broadcasting of a programme entirely designed by an algorithm. It is precisely this...
BNR Smart Radio : a mobile app powered by AI to reach niche audiences
At the IBC 2018 show (the ideal place to do market research in the broadcasting sector) I stumbled upon a very interesting innovation presented by BNR Nieuwsradio during one of the conferences. BNR Nieuwsradion is the only commercial radio in The Netherlands and is part of the FD Mediagroep. What Joeri Nortier presented at IBC on behalf of BNR is an amazing innovation and this is what we’ll cover in today’s post. BNR Smart Radio :...
BMMA : Keynote on the use of artificial intelligence in the media industry
At the invitation of the Belgian Management and Marketing Association (BMMA), I was delighted to be able to give a keynote on 15/11/2018 about the applications of artificial intelligence in the media sector. This presentation, which was illustrated with several real use cases from several European countries, was based on the market research that we have been carrying out since 2016 and on the proprietary information that we have been collecting for many years. If you...
Recommendation systems: a scientific investigation of user inaction
One of the most interesting researches at RecSys 2018 was for me the paper on user inaction by Qian Zhao, Martijn Willemsen, Gediminas Adomavicius, F. Maxwell Harper and Joe Konstan (full title: “Interpreting User Inaction in Recommender Systems“). We are so focused on interpreting signals that we often forget to take the absence of signal into account. Yet, as this paper shows, lack of information is already a piece of information in itself and sometimes it can make a...
Netflix uses algorithms to personalize images to your very taste
Netflix presentation at RecSys conferences always attract a lot of attention. This year was no different. Netflix presented several papers and in today’s article I’d like to discuss the presentation given by Fernando Amat on artwork personalization. We know that ca. 75-80% of all what is consumed on Netflix comes from recommendations. Pretty much everything is personalized on a Netflix homepage : the item on the top of the page, the order of the rows, the...
Why recommendation algorithms need to include personality and emotions
At the RecSys 2018 conference on recommender systems, a very interesting tutorial was given on the first day by Marko Tkalčič from the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano. In his presentation he focused on how emotions, mood and personality shape the way we consume recommendations. Emotions, Mood and Personality shape the way we behave Marko first reminded us that we, human beings, behave according to our emotions, mood and personality. Yet the latter vary according to different frequencies...
Societal and ethical issues of digitization: are emotions covered by GDPR?
An academic paper by Royakkers et al. (2018) is currently available from “Ethics and information technology” magazine that offers an interesting overview of the societal and ethical issues of digitization (hence its title). Digitization issues are analyzed along 6 axis : privacy autonomy safety and security balance of power human dignity power It’s not my intention here to sum up the whole paper; I’d rather want to focus on one aspect at a time. In today’s...
Reading privacy policies of the 20 most-used mobile apps takes 6h40
Our latest article on consent fatigue with regards to privacy policies prompted for some kind of follow-up. The market research insights that we used in that article were pretty old (2008) and an update was needed. That’s the purpose of today’s article. We discovered that privacy policies have greatly increased in length over the past 10 years. Mobile applications’ policies are on average 58% longer than the ones studied in 2008 and require 6 hours 40...
Do you know your customers ? On the importance of data sovereignty
On the occasion of my keynote at RTBF, I introduced the term of “data sovereignty” to justify the use of a single-sign-on system. In today’s blog post I’d like to come back on my concept of “data sovereignty” and what it means for your business. 75% of internet trafic goes through facebook and google In his famous article “The web began dying in 2014, here’s how” André Staltz shows that most of the internet trafic goes...
Cambridge Analytica closes but it’s only the tip of the iceberg
Mn May 2nd 2018 Cambridge Analytica announced it was filling for insolvency in the UK and bankruptcy in the US. In its press release the company declared : the siege of media coverage has driven away virtually all of the Company’s customers and suppliers. As a result, it has been determined that it is no longer viable to continue operating the business, which left Cambridge Analytica with no realistic alternative to placing the Company into administration. While...
Face recognition algorithms are biases towards black people and women
Joy Buolamwini, a MIT PhD candidate, presented her research at the inaugural FAT Conference in New-York. She had previously given a TED talk and been invited to the White House to present her work on algorithmic fairness. In the paper she presented at the FAT conference Joy showed how face recognition algorithms can be biased towards certain segment of the population and in fact lead to discrimination. Here are the 2 main contributions of this...
Artificial intelligence won’t replace you if you are creative: here’s why
“Artificial intelligence will replace us”; “millions of jobs are threatened by artificial intelligence”. I’m sure you all have read those catastrophist headlines. And it’s probably true that the job market will be disrupted on the long run. But I don’t think it’s likely to happen overnight. Most importantly I think some parts of the job market will be entirely safe; those jobs for which creativity is essential are likely to be safe and, most importantly, will...
Cambridge Analytica scandal: it’s the user stupid !
The Cambridge Analytica scandal is one of a one-of-a-kind size. It attracted the attention of many and resembles a wake-up call. Yet also triggers some very hypocritical reactions from people who “seem” to discover that Facebook collects an awful lot of data and makes it available to, basically anyone who asks for it. Zuckerberg, king of the hypocrites Everyone seems to discover that the most personal data is being collected by Facebook, shared to and analysed...
GDPR : these 2 examples prove that US companies are not ready
I gave a keynote speech in February in New-York about the need for US companies to adapt to GDPR. I my discussions with companies over the last 12 months I indeed found out that most companies hadn’t prepared sufficiently (or at all) for GDPR. For a vast majority of companies raising awareness is still a priority and my recent trip to New-York (for the FAT conference) made it clear to me that US companies are mostly...
GDPR: what is consent and why it will impact customer satisfaction
I had a recent experience where one firm didn’t ask my consent and tried to nudge me into doing something that I was firmly opposed to. In today’s article I’d like to highlight the conditions for a valid consent. GDPR : how to collect a valid consent? There are 5 conditions to fulfil for having a valid consent : The customer’s act must be clear and affirmative Forget about policies that a customer implicitly accept by...
Retail innovation: smart shelves enable dynamic pricing
The biggest retail show on earth just opened its doors in New York. The NRF 2018 is the ideal place to observe market trends in the retail sector (professional shows in general are very good places to start market research: see also the example of SIAL in the food sector). This year one interesting innovation caught our eyes : smart shelves enabling personalized pricing Smart shelves for dynamic pricing We already discussed adaptive pricing (or “dynamic...
Market research combines Big Data and qualitative techniques .. 120 years ago
Visualizing data has become a standard task and one essential component of data science today. But, haven’t we forgotten how lucky we are to have all that data available and to be able to use it for various purposes ? An early example of Big Data and visualisation project One of the most stunning visualization projects I’ve come to know was initiated more than a century ago by Charles Booth, a Liverpool-born businessman who became...
Give me my time back ! I’m a digital slave.
It happens again and again and there is nothing I can do. The temptation is too big. I can’t resist staring at my screen and losing my time watching and doing things that I don’t really want to do. Rather than doing things that would enrich me, I can’t resist the temptation of browsing my Facebook feed, looking at the latest notifications, watching poor videos on YouTube. Social medias are my grave. I want to get...
Media convergence : 2-day workshop in Mainz (Germany)
I had the pleasure to be invited by the University of Mainz (Germany) to give a talk on the use of recommender systems in the broadcasting industry. The 2-day conference started on 16 October at the Chancellery of Rheinland-Pfalz in Mainz, and continued on 17 October at the ZDF headquarters. The conference was entitled “Better stream or watch TV” and was composed of 4 sessions : how does the market change ? how does the usage...
Advertising : limiting cookie lifetime will destroy value
Preliminary information : there are two competing rules for setting up maximal cookie lifetime. The European Commission (based a.o. on a proposal by CNIL) suggests to limit lifetime to 360 days whereas Google proposes 720 days. One year vs. two years is basically what you have to chose from. In no case it should be more than that. Yet, as Miller and Skiera explained at the 2017 EMAC conference, lifetimes of up to 8000 years have...
Market research : authentication on media website, a growing trend
As announced in an earlier article of this blog, I organized a 2-day conference on Single-Sign-On at RTBF (read more here). From a market research perspective this conference allowed participants to clearly understand that SSO was a growing trend among public service broadcasters. We had the please to listen to 9 amazing speakers from very different organizations and horizons : Tim Rowell (Piano.io), Ben Sekhon (Gigya, leader on the SSO market), David Teague and Maya Ross...
Make big data and algorithms part of the public service media eduction plan
On 6 October 2017 I was invited by the Eurovision Academy to give a speech at their General Assembly in Vilnius (Lithuania). The Eurovision Academy is the department, within the European Broadcasting Union, that is responsible for training employees from membres (public service media) and making sure all of them have the opportunity to keep up to date with the latest techniques in terms of employee development. They do a terrific job and have helped introduced some very...
Workshop on fairness and ethics in recommendation systems
On the last day of the RecSys 2017 conference I was fortunate enough to be in the organizing committee of the workshop on fairness, accountability and transparency in recommendation systems (F.A.T.REC). This workshop was the first of its kind within the RecSys community ; the conference is indeed usually very much tech-oriented and Joe Konstan, who chaired the very first ACM Recsys conference, indicated in a plenary session that he wanted more space to be dedicated...
Dynamic pricing : natural marketing evolution or threat ?
In a recent article the Guardian recalled the story of John Wanamaker who revolutionized retail by inventing “fixed prices”. As incredible as it may seem, until 1861 prices were set according to the rule of thumb and the perception left by the customer on the salesman. If the latter felt you had money, you’d be charged more than someone else he felt would be poorer. The “one price for all” rule seems however to vanish with...
How Big Data will influence the future of advertising
“What is the impact of Big Data on online advertising” is the question I was asked to answer on the occasion of an EGTA ((European Group of Television Advertising) workshop that took place on 29 and 30 June 2017 in Brussels (my thanks to Yuri Loburets for his kind invitation to speak). Rather than repeating the same clichés about Big Data again and again I chose to put advertising and Big Data back in a historical perspective....
Big Data and ethics : how visualization can screw it up
Following our first article on the Big Data and Ethics meetup organized at Digityser on 15 June 2017, we’d like to cover today another very interesting presentation by Leenke De Donder. Lenke dealt with an aspect the importance of which is, in our opinion, underestimated by data scientists and professionals in the data business : visualization. We spend a lot of time on collecting data, cleansing (data quality) and designing the most efficient algorithms. Yet, do...
The right to failure doesn’t exist with artificial intelligence. This is terrible.
Artificial intelligence, algorithms based on machine learning, have turned our lives into one of efficiency where failure doesn’t exist anymore. For algorithms an error doesn’t exist ; it’s just a prediction that hasn’t worked because of missing data points. This statistical “accident” will be taken into account to improve predictions a step further. In the field of algorithmic governance failure is not an option anymore. This is very dangerous. Actually I think it’s one of the...
Big Data and Ethics : first sucessful meetup at DigitYser in Brussels
On 15 June 2017 my friend Philippe Van Impe gave me the opportunity to organize the first meetup in his newly opened Big Data temple in Brussels : DigitYser. And what a success ! The topic of this first Meetup at DigitYser was “Big Data and ethics“, an important topic in data science yet insufficiently covered. The idea for this meetup popped up during my talk at the Data Innovation Summit where people started tweeting about...