Coming to a Marketing Organization Near You

The Gist

• Faster audience insights. Quantum computing can quickly process large datasets, which helps marketers refine audience segments with more precision and speed.

• Smarter behavior prediction. Improved data analysis supports better personalization, campaign targeting and real-time decision-making based on customer actions.

• Real-time optimization. Quantum speeds up testing, feedback analysis and pricing models, which help teams adjust strategies immediately and improve ROI.

Editor’s note: Marketers, brace yourselves: just when you thought you were catching up with generative AI, here comes the next wave — quantum computing. In Part 1 of this three-part series, Jon Moran explores the emerging role of quantum computing in marketing. But quantum is only one piece of the evolving martech puzzle. In Part 2, we will shift focus to the architectural challenge of implementing AI and enterprise decisioning within the martech stack — and what it really takes to go from siloed systems to seamless decision-making. Then in Part 3, we wrap with a practical framework for how organizations can scale, govern and innovate with centralized AI decisioning in a way that’s sustainable — and future-ready.

Ready to chart the future of marketing? Let’s begin.

The pace of change in marketing can be overwhelming. We just started to get our minds around generative AI, and now we’re focused on AI decisioning and agentic AI. Even more, the next hot topic is already on the horizon. Quantum computing is coming fast. While quantum computing is still at a very early stage, it has the potential to change martech. 

Basically, quantum computing is a type of computing that uses quantum mechanics principles to process information in a style different from computers of today. Quantum computers can perform certain types of calculations much faster than traditional computers because they can explore multiple solutions simultaneously.

Table of Contents

How Quantum Computing Could Impact Key Marketing Functions

Audience Segmentation

Quantum can handle and process vast amounts of data much more quickly than computers of today. This creates audience segments with more variables and attributes, which allows for faster and more precise refinement. This leads to more targeted campaigns, better customer understanding within those campaigns and better performance metrics.

Customer Behavior Prediction

Quantum computing can process large, complex datasets much faster. As a result, machine learning models can deliver more accurate insights into preferences, trends and patterns. Analyzing customer behavior more quickly leads to more precise personalization of messages and offers based on that behavior.

Optimization

Marketing optimization requires the computation of a variety of scenarios and combinations with constraints and policies involved to maximize an outcome. Quantum computing will quickly improve how marketing budgets and resources are distributed across platforms and channels. It will also sharpen targeting by demographic and audience group. Quicker optimization outcomes mean quicker business decisions that can lead to maximized ROI. As with optimization, complex A/B or MVT testing run on top of quantum computers will allow marketers to test and optimize almost in real time.

Instantaneous Consumer Feedback Analysis

Imagine if marketers could analyze campaign success almost instantaneously. With quantum, natural language processing and understanding can be done at a rapid rate to understand social media commentary, customer reviews and online ratings. Understanding consumer sentiment about products and brands can help shape marketing strategies, product development and future business decisions.

Data Encryption

Marketing interactions often involve a wealth of data, some of which can be very sensitive (i.e., PII data and purchase data). Cryptography in martech will only continue to increase in importance as brand-consumer trust continues to erode. Better, faster encryption and security of consumer data using quantum cryptography methods will help brands rebuild those levels of trust.

Enterprise and AI Decisioning

With decisions being made almost instantaneously due to quantum, the enterprise and AI decisioning layers within martech stacks will be able to feed AI agents information immediately. A quantum algorithm could alter an entire marketing strategy, campaign or decision workflow in real time using data from an AI agent.

Synthetic Data Generation and Environment Simulation

Not only will synthetic data be generated more quickly, but quantum will allow more market scenarios and potential outcomes to be forecast with a high degree of accuracy. Digital twin environments can be created almost instantaneously. This will help marketing teams prepare for market shifts and test different strategies in a simulated environment using synthetic data, all before anything goes live.

Product Recommendations

Recommendations today provided by sites like Amazon and Netflix rely on collaborative filtering. Quantum computing will analyze the data behind collaborative filtering much faster. This can strengthen the recommendation systems used by ecommerce platforms, media services and online stores. The result is more accurate product recommendations for the consumer and increasing sales and customer satisfaction for the brand.