Adobe Social gets predictive tool for hyper-targeting

(Phys.org) —Marketing and advertising executives are hearing a lot about the word "predictive," even outdistancing "SEO" as a key goal. That is partly due to software vendors having plenty to say about what their predictive analytics technology can do for businesses. Predictive analytics technology offers predictive data for customers, to optimize the marketer's efforts to increase customer responses and clicks. The data analyses can be used to guide future actions that can produce best results. It's a valued tool for business intelligence, and Adobe has announced that Adobe Social is getting something called predictive publishing. This is a new capability to become part of its Adobe Social service.

The new capability offers predictive analytics, historical data-driven recommendations, self-learning (the solution learns as it goes, with continual refinements to its recommendations) and social content optimization (best time to post).

The new capability in Adobe Social is in beta and is expected to be available this summer. The initial version offers Facebook integration; other social platforms will be added later this year. Adobe Social is making use of "advanced sentiment analysis" and predictive text mining algorithms. Using historical data, the likely engagement level and sentiment around a specific Facebook post will be made known. Adobe Social will also recommend keywords, content types and timing for a better response.

The Adobe Social tool will launch with Facebook integration but more social platforms will be added to the software later in the year. The announcement was made at the Adobe Summit EMEA, the Digital Marketing Conference, in London earlier this week. At the event Adobe Social was announced as a "capability" "that predicts social content performance on Facebook to maximize engagement and ROI."

Adobe executives are saying that the key benefit of such a tool is that it removes the guesswork of customer behavior and replaces the guesswork with smarter analytics.

Predictive publishing is promoted as a step up from such engagement metrics as "likes" and fans, to a smarter view of how customers are engaging with the business.

"Traditionally, social posts are composed without a measurable, data-driven connection to how they will be received, and many marketers release big news or compelling content through social channels only to find that it falls flat in terms of engagement," according to an Adobe statement about its beta.

How it works: Customers open a widget showing an estimated range for the amount of Likes, comments, and shares a post will receive. They can identify other metrics, too, for tracking. Another key Adobe Social feature is timing. The tool will indicate if the post had best be delayed for posting later. Posts are not just targeted but (using Adobe's lingo) "hyper-targeted."