Cycles Material Manipulations with Animation Nodes
Abhay Sharma writes:
Learn how to control cycles material attributes with animation nodes. For example, whether you like to assign solid color, gradient color or random colors to a single object or a group of objects based on the static or dynamic properties using vertex color node.

Awesome tutorial Abhay!
This really answers a lot of questions as to what can be done with the Animation Nodes addon.
Thanks for your help.