Stella Artois predicts future customers with AI powered technology from Blis

Stella Artois is the first global brand to lean on artificial intelligence and deep learning based technology to target customers. Using Blis Futures, a new AI-powered predictive location modelling tool, Stella Artois can pinpoint specific places that consumers are most likely to visit and can drive customers into pubs and increase engagement.

Blis Futures identifies patterns through machine learning and predictive analytics to group like data sets, and builds audience segments based on their predicted conversion rates. It then indicates when and where to target this audience group to achieve the advertisers’ business objectives.

“At Stella, it’s a crucial part of our mission to keep innovating to better understand our customers. Part of that is harnessing new technologies to engage with them in new ways,’ says Stella Artois’ brand manager, Ali Humphrey. He credits Blis Futures for recognising how Stella’s audiences behave in the real world as well as the digital one, allowing the brand to engage with them at the right moment to impact their future purchase decisions.

Developed by global location intelligence company Blis, this innovation is specifically for the mobile advertising market, and guarantees that advertisers will only be charged per consumer visit through a new performance metric, ‘cost per visit’. This is a clear shift away from click through rates towards brand performance-based models, bringing value back to physical locations.

Greg Isbister, CEO of Blis, says the software can now accurately identify people who are either highly likely or definitely going to buy a product. “This eliminates waste in spend and increases campaign performance,” he says.

Blis is built on the belief that where people go defines who they are, and that location and content behaviour provides deeper insights into their preferences.

Established in 2004, the business has built and deployed a proprietary platform that serves digital content to audiences on the move. The company is headquartered in London with regional offices throughout Europe, North America, Middle East and Asia Pacific, and works with media buying agencies acting on behalf of the global brands, including Samsung, McDonald’s, O2, HSBC, Asics, Peugeot and Mercedes Benz.