IBM unleashes $100m investment plan and opens 10 Interactive Experience labs in bid to shake up the digital ad industry model

The move will see 1,000 new jobs created for the labs, across each of the labs, which will be located in London, New York, Sao Paulo, Bangalore, Beijing, Groningen, Melbourne, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tokyo.

The $100m investment will be dedicated to globally expanding its consulting services to help clients drive their experience design and engagement, largely by creating data-driven, personalised engagement models.

Through it, clients will be able to work closely with researchers and consultants alongside experts in experience, design, mobile, and digital marketing, to drive the creation of “next-generation” mobile, social, analytics and cloud technologies products and services for clients.

Commenting on the news Steve Antoniewicz, managing director of agency sourcing specialists, RAR, said the move signaled a bigger shift away from lower margin commodity kit to the higher margin world of services and software.

"There are so many reasons why this could work. The fact that IBM already has enterprise-level relationships globally, the scale of the planned operations and investment, the data and tech expertise it already possess are just a few."

However, he added that transforming a business of that size and heritage will be a challenge.

"It certainly feels like it'll have a distance to travel to become a world centre for innovation, creativity and design. It will take more than time, resources and money to make it happen though those things will certainly help," he said.

Last month during Mobile World Congress in Barcelona IBM CEO Ginny Rometty revealed that the technology giant had set up a whole division dedicated to its AI computer system Watson in January, as part of plans to move aggressively

in the "cognitive era of technology.