Evil startup idea gleaned from paper: Use AI/ML to scour a sales prospect's online persona (social media) and build a 'vulnerability profile' and generate targeted, personalized cold-emails (or even phone calls eventually). Also identifies 'levers' for a particular person that can be used to influence a buying decision. May even pre-qualify leads for you and tell you when not to waste your time :) I mean, a good sale…
You don't need to scour online personas. Companies such as Acxiom and FullContact are just two of many which house identities of 10s of millions of individuals.
Then all that's needed to do is plug into twitters firehose and facebooks stream and voila. Real-time data based on what they are thinking/doing online.
Oh and connect to an RTB stream and get real-time where they are clicking. With enough data, you could forecast where they are going next.
Finally, have AI compose the content in the sales funnel to secure that conversion.
I can guarantee you, this is actively being worked on as I type.
Within 5 years, the entire marketing aspect will be mostly automated.