Consumers are sitting on a gold mine: Thomas Been, DataStax

Been talks about how a host of new tools are revolutionizing the way organizations utilize AI and big data, and more

by Shantanu David
Published - May 29, 2023
5 minutes To Read
Consumers are sitting on a gold mine: Thomas Been, DataStax

With Gartner predicting that 70% of in-house applications will include AI by 2025, data companies stand at the forefront of this transformative technology that will shape the future of business. Within the next three years, every company is going to require a strategy to incorporate AI and ML into their business and applications. The problem is that most companies are struggling with their real-time data strategies. And that’s where DataStax comes in.

The real-time data company looks to make it possible for customers to overlay an AI pipeline on their real-time data to make real-time AI accessible and part of their business process.


exchange4media spoke to Thomas Been, CMO, DataStax, about how a host of new tools are revolutionizing the way organizations utilize AI and big data, and how the company is helping to drive that revolution through Real Time AI, and why it’s different from Generative AI.


As Been defines it, Generative AI is a set of models that tap into a broad knowledge. “Everybody talks about ChatGPT, which has trawled the web for a long time. Generative AI produces content, images based on its knowledge. So you ask it something and it's going to produce something that looks good. It repeats the patterns that it has seen in other content (which sometimes it's true, sometimes it's not; that's something that marketers need to keep an eye on), which is extremely useful because it's very, very productive.”

Meanwhile, “Real Time AI is actually a different type of AI which is born of a different family called Predictive AI, which is able to understand based on information that's available, as an example, how a customer is going to understand the context.”

So Real time AI is really enabling marketers with the ability to decide in a moment and really build these experiences. “We talk about it as the consumer experience but real time AI allows the ability to make informed choices very quickly and actually instead of just trying a few things to see what sticks from start to the outcome.”

“It’s not let's try hundreds of offers and see which one has the most success but really knowing and having the confidence that you know the customer that's going to show up. The outcome is that the customer takes the offer, so it really changes the way you think about your experience, your call to actions. I think it also changes the game because everything happens in an instant,” says Been.

He points to the fact that when you or I search for a particular product or service, we are then inundated with offers by brands in those categories for the next few days, through mails, banner ads, and even newsletters. “The thing is, by then, you’ve probably already ordered that lunch, bought tickets for that trip, purchased those pants. So responses need to be faster, in real time in fact.”

That also of course leads to the larger narrative, of how companies use consumers’ own data to draw them in.

“I think our customers are sitting on their own goldmine and that gold is data. We are the shop where you buy it, and we are happy to help you turn that gold into even more value,” says Been adding that as a cookieless future becomes more imminent, marketers should absolutely look at other sources of data, all of which will be needed to fuel AI capabilities.

“There will be information coming from their partners from other services that that's going to help AI. I think brands will also develop ways to provide an improved experience and immersives for their consumers and users. I'm thinking about technologies like augmented reality and virtual reality.”

When it comes to these, Been says Gaming is a perfect example. “To me, gaming is the top experience you can have today. It's completely immersive, driven by loads of real time data, and AI is already present. And I'm not talking about the gamification of brands, like ‘you have to give me badges and points’, but in getting inspiration from gaming, in terms of experience.”

One of the biggest trends is AI getting even more connected to the consumer experience. As Been explains, “There's a company called Uniphore, which is actually an Indian company that does AI and sentiment analysis on the fly during sales calls. They're one of our customers, and that's also the power AI gives to marketers and salespeople. The ability to understand as you're talking to somebody, what the reaction is, what are the topics that are hitting the point, so you can react to them accordingly as they are talking so that's very, extremely powerful.”

“So these are the tools that marketers can bring together, where they combine some of these technologies with data and AI, and I think that's where the future is going to be,” concludes the Datastax CMO.

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