Watson Conversational Ads: AI That Talks Back
Just three months after IBM acquired the Weather Company, Brian led the integration of 30 designers, developers, and engineers from IBM’s Watson Life team—and drove the invention, design, and launch of the first-ever Watson cognitive ad.
Watson Advertising Conversations was designed to enable deeper engagement and real-time personalization at scale. These interactive, voice- or text-based ad units offer personalized recommendations, guide product discovery, and capture valuable feedback—all while empowering users to shape their own ad experiences.
The result: a multi-patented, award-winning ad format that redefined interactive advertising and set a new standard for cognitive brand engagement.
The First Ad You Can Talk To
Powered by a variety of IBM Watson APIs and features that drive action and engagement–such as a retail locator, content carousels, and e-commerce–the Creative Lab designs intelligent experiences to meet client KPIs with three conversation offerings that can deploy across multiple consumer touchpoints:
FAQ/Dialogue
Use conversation to entice exploration, provide education, and answer questions that consumers may have about the brand/product/service
Recommender
Use a conversation experience to drive a recommendation to a product/service and discover user tastes and preferences.
Selector
Help users find the correct product for their specific needs and learn about consumers’ decision-making factors.
Yes, People Talk to Ads
Experienced as a mobile and web-based advertising product fueled by a trained client corpus and built on HTML 5, IBM Watson’s Conversational Ads can also be utilized as a utility or other service element across any screen or IoT experience, such as the Weather Channel’s COVID-19 Tracker. Scroll below for examples of how brands like StateFarm and Toyota use Watson Conversations. See other working demos here.
See how State Farm uses Watson Conversations to keep people safe and informed.
For Toyota, questions lead to information and advice on their hybrid vehicle line-up
2021 Two Patents Awarded for Watson Ads
April 2021
As the lead inventor on this submission, Brian is incredibly honored to have two patents for AI-powered ad products in the marketplace, generating millions in revenue for IBM and invaluable insights for his clients.
Both patents cover the same tech but are directed to different embodiments. The US1 covers the System and Computer Program Product claims. The US02 covers the Method.
2017 Patent Pending
July 2017
Brian was honored to receive his first IBM patent application invention achievement award for Watson Ads’ Cognitive Advertising Triggered by Weather Data from the executive chairman and former IBM CEO, Ginni Rometty.
Conversational AI, Proven at Scale
Watson Conversational Ads showed that when done right, people don’t just see ads — they talk to them, learn from them, and take action.
Platform: Mobile, Tablet, App, Desktop, Web, OTT, IoT, Display
Features: Interactive, Animation, ML, NLP, Voice, e-Commerce, Video, Watson AI, Text to Speech