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“Conversational marketing” is a phrase that I hear a lot, but when the team at AdLingo uses it, they mean something specific — namely, bringing chatbots and other conversational assistants

into online advertising. The startup is part of Google’s Area 120 incubator, and co-founder and general manager Vic Fatnani said he’s worked on advertising at Google for more than a decade.

“One of the things we saw happening was this paradigm shift with users and consumers going towards more of a conversational medium,” he said. “Everything is becoming more conversational,

whether it’s through devices such as your phone, your speaker and eventually your car … We asked ourselves, ‘Hey if this shift is happening, why can’t marketing be more conversational?’” You

may be wondering whether consumers are really clamoring to interact with ads, but Fatnani said he and his co-founder Dario Rapisardi were determined not to build “a solution that needs a

problem,” so they spent months talking to marketers and chatbot developers. Apparently, when they asked about what challenges everyone was facing, the big answer was “discovery.” As Fatnani

put it, “Hey, I have this amazing conversational assistant, but it’s really hard for me to bring this in front of an audience.” In his view, advertising provides the perfect medium to solve

this problem. Instead of building a chatbot and just letting consumers find it on their own website or app, brands can integrate it into their advertising, allowing people who see the ad to

ask questions and provide feedback. “Imagine you want to launch a new soda drink in Brazil, a market that you’ve never entered before,” he said. “Imagine you can now run a conversational

display ad and actually have people vote to say what kind of flavor would you like to drink.” Or for a real example, there’s the Allstar Kia experience that you can see at the top of this

post. The company’s director of internet marketing Chris Ferrall said in a statement that “AdLingo lets our customers browse inventory, determine car trade-in value and make an appointment

with a salesperson — all within an engaging, interactive experience that meets them right where they are.” To be clear, AdLingo isn’t building the chatbots. Instead, Fatnani said, “The

brands and developers bring the conversational experience to us, and we distribute that experience all over the web.” To do this, the platform integrates with chatbot tools like Dialogue

Flow, Microsoftbot Framework, LiveEngage and Blip. It’s also partnered with Valassis Digital and LivePerson (the Kia campaign happened through Valassis). How does this all fit into Google’s

larger plans for advertising? Fatnani said it doesn’t, at least not yet. “We are completely separate efforts in terms of our product roadmap and what we execute,” he said, later adding, “At

this point, we just want to make sure we’re really, really focused on our customer.”