IBM’s Watson is now working as a psychologist for ad tech firm Unruly

Marketers have run psychological profiles on consumers for quite a while, but they take time and money to do well. Now, IBM’s Watson supercomputer is helping ad tech firm Unruly generate psychological profiles at scale, quickly and cheaply, to help target video ads. The UK-based firm announced late last week its new Watson-assisted Unruly DNA tool. The central goal is to increase sales by trying to replicate “light buyers” of a brand’s products, with the idea being that these kind of customers already know the product line and haven’t reached their limit of purchases. This is the latest effort by the News Corp-owned firm to understand the hidden feelings of customers. In September, for instance, it unveiled a multi-layered program to measure biometric responses of viewers to online video or TV ads.