A new chatbot has launched. Built with OpenAI’s enterprise-grade version of the tech behind ChatGPT, Publicis-owned Profitero is launching Ask Profitero, a chatbot which aims to help companies connect the dots across the fragmented but burgeoning world of retail media.
Debuting this week, Ask Profitero can analyse data for 1,000 brands in 50 countries including price, availability, search rank, ratings and reviews, photos, images, videos and texts. Furthermore, the chat-based AI assistant can tell a user about their competitors’ best-selling products in a specific month, the most important keywords in their category, or suggest product titles to help improve search rank. Ask Profitero also provides other types of commerce analytics like product attributes are most important for a shopper even if the terms weren’t explicitly used in their search.
Ask Profitero will also provide companies with other types of commerce analytics such as looking at the availability of a certain product, summarising reviews into key themes and turning insights into charts when a user asks to “make it pretty.” Some features will be available for free within Profitero’s current platform, but the company plans to charge extra for using the predictive tools.
It should be noted that Profitero can’t help marketers prioritise media spending or analyse creative assets across various retail networks. There’s also still the risks everyone using various large language models faces when it comes to accuracy — something Profitero and its beta partners plan to test in the coming weeks and months.
Profitero’s new tool is still in beta mode, but it’s another example of how AI-driven chatbots might someday help advertisers navigate the fragmented retail media landscape. Ask Profitero also includes other predictive capabilities the company debuted earlier this year that help drive conversion for specific retailers and categories.
Colgate-Palmolive will be one of the first brands to test the chatbot in the beta group along with a number of undisclosed blue-chip brands. While the CPG giant’s commerce department experiments with prompts, the closed beta will also help other teams — such as legal and IT.
According to a survey of B2C marketers conducted by Forester, 56% have already used generative AI in their marketing efforts. However, another survey by the research firm found the average share of digital budgets devoted for “innovate” efforts has declined from 31% in 2022 to 27% in 2023.
