Marketing has been around since the early 20th century, and has since evolved into different

forms today by adjusting to the changes and adapting to the prevailing trends. Marketing
experts are now researching the possibilities of using Blockchain and Artificial Intelligence,
the latest buzzwords in IT, in the field of digital marketing. They strongly believe that
blockchain-based advertising would be more effective than the traditional digital
advertisement which involved middlemen in the process.

This new trend of marketing has also caught the attention of many service based tech-giants
like IBM, Accenture, TCS, Infosys etc. because majority of their customers are opting for
short, outcome-based deals rather than long-term, high value ones. This has prompted the
companies to refocus their sales strategies on data analytics driven decisions that brings about
more one-to-one engagement (without middlemen) than the conventional year-long
marketing campaigns. The CMO of IBM has stated that only 40-45% of a dollar spent in
today’s marketing sees effective use and impact before the clients. Blockchain and AI can
help improve the efficiency of advertising due to many of its inherent technological features.
For example, with blockchain based marketing, the advertiser can verify the ad delivery to
confirm that a real person saw the ad in the specified time duration. They can also prevent
duplication of ads, pay the publisher, validate email delivery, and even reward consumers for
providing personal data. Transparency, being the biggest backbone of blockchain technology,
is also brought to the advertising domain where consumers can know how their data has been
used by the advertiser.

The scope of blockchain, AI and other technologies in business is expanding day by day.
Michelle Peluso, CMO of IBM, says that she sees a time not too distant in the future when
market budgets in a company are given not yearly, but every day.
Date: 02 July 2018 Source: Moneycontrol.com https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/science/new-
artificial-intelligence-system-may-help-prevent-water-logging-in-cities-2658811.html

The news is about an AI system that can identify areas prone to water logging caused by
monsoon showers. The issue of water logging is present in most of the developing countries
including India. The recent flood-like situation in Nagpur is a perfect example for the same.

One of the main issues the researchers would have faced during the development of the
system is the collection of relevant data that can be fed into the machine learning system.
They made use of existing database of areas prone to water logging. Other areas were located
by making use of the past travel time data from Uber. The database that contained details
about elevation of areas was also taken into account while developing the system. The
database table with rainfall data also plays an important role in the system to determine the
intensity of water logging. . Using concepts of Database Management Systems and Big Data,
important details like amount of rainfall received, elevation, travel time etc. about a specific
area can be retrieved.

The data from all these tables are analysed by a neural network that finds out patterns in the
data. An AI algorithm finally assigns a water-logging intensity score to each area, according
to which preventive measures can be taken.

The existing system used Internet of Things (IoTs) - a network of small electronic sensors
installed in different locations to gather data about moisture, traffic, etc. and then identified
logging-prone areas. The new AI system makes use of only data and no sensors or IOT
devices to make inferences. Thus, the AI system cuts the cost of hardware and saves the
installation time too.