Big names are zoning in to AI-powered Advertising – what this means for Brands

It certainly appears that whatever can be automated with regard to how ad campaigns are planned or bought, will be.

AI is already being used in several top notch media agencies to do things like ensuring brand safety and dynamic creative optimization. And the use of AI is only increasing!

The Havas Media Group, for instance has been using AI and machine learning to optimize lower funnel performance optimization tasks. Now they plan to bring AI in to various other tasks that will optimize media buys (creating custom algorithms within a bidder, identifying the right training modules for a planner, automating manual tasks like filling out timesheets, etc.)

Horizon Media recently launched an AI-based predictive analytics tool, designed to boost e-commerce sales for clients. DDB has announced a new hybrid creative platform called RAND that will focus on developing and implementing new AI technologies for creative processes.

AI seems to be a mega wave that is making its presence felt across the globe and sweeping its way through every market and industry. Ad agencies are no exception to this. While this does not mean that AI will do away with sector jobs or that media agencies will be taken over by machines, it does look like AI will automate all the mundane aspects of media selection and trading.

Agencies see this almost as the next step in the creative process. Media buying will get more and more optimized and personalized. And generative AI will help the creative team develop enough content to meet that demand.

AI can help manage large amounts of data, sift through it, and derive meaningful insights and marketing intelligence about audiences, helping agencies make data-driven decisions. It can ensure that all the marketing bucks are not spent on campaigns that don’t convert, because it can make data-based predictions about how both the creative and the messaging will resonate with customers. This allows advertisers to move from reactive to proactive in their approach to creative, in order to generate more qualified leads and conversions.

What agencies can track and measure, has scope for improvement and optimization – right now it is mainly attribution – the marketing touch points a consumer passes on their way to purchasing.

Future trends and insights can be predicted with greater accuracy.

The future is in the marking

More and more marketers and agencies are taking to AI powered platforms. Meta’s Advantage+ Suite is a group of machine-learning-based technologies which help in automating all the steps of a campaign. Needless to say, this is very popular among marketers. Similarly, Google’s Performance Max tool automates targeting and creative decisions.

While these do the job, there is still no way to measure or test and see if the outcomes of this AI are correct. AI is like a human. It learns as it goes along. There is no way of knowing if it learns some unconscious bias along the way, in which case, everything it does, will have a slant. And it naturally follows, that such campaigns won’t resonate well with the audience.

Similarly with segmentation – the AI-powered tool may decide to segment based on unintentional signals such as race, or age or even gender, which can bring in some kind of bias or slant into the campaign.

But despite all this, there is so much that being AI powered can do. The possibilities are truly mind-blowing. But will the machines take over the world? We have to wait and watch – the possibility is very real.