‘New world order’: 3 takes on how AI is overhauling advertising

It’s getting increasingly difficult to predict the future of ad tech as technology, identity solutions and regulation converge and upend the status quo.

Fittingly, “Thriving in Chaos” was the theme of this year’s inaugural Marketecture Live conference on March 18 — along with a commitment to “no boring panels.”

Of course, no ad tech conference — least of all one focusing on chaos — would be complete without bold takes on how AI will impact the industry as we know it. Industry professionals from Mediaocean, Omnicom, Dailymotion and others dished on how AI is overhauling advertising, in a series of fireside chats and keynote talks (not panels).

One crucial talking point was how AI could dramatically reshape search and consumer behavior — potentially disrupting the entire traditional marketing funnel. This shift would force advertisers and agencies to respond accordingly. Ari Paparo, CEO of Marketecture, even wondered whether product websites would just become “data repositories for AI” within the next five years.

“A lot of the stuff that advertisers and marketers do to get in front of [consumers] will become different,” he said onstage to kick off the conference, referring to the rise of chatbots in the consumer journey. In short, AI could completely change the bottom of the funnel.

With that in mind, here are three intriguing observations from Marketecture Live on how AI could shake up advertising, from brand reputation to attention metrics.

1. Brands will need to protect their reputations from AI chatbots

Brands must understand how AI-driven search could impact their reputations, said Erin Lanuti, chief innovation officer at Omnicom Public Relations Group.

Lanuti highlighted data that shows how frequently AI-generated answers are inaccurate — and the significant share of search volume that AI chatbots are expected to capture in the near future (hint: it’s a lot).

“The vast majority of brands don’t understand what LLMs [large language models] are saying about them,” Lanuti said. “You could have a brand that’s a category leader, and they don’t even show up, or they don’t show up correctly.”

To get ahead of this, Lanuti said that brands should be bringing together their PR, commerce, search and content teams to figure out how to respond to potential reputational risk when it comes to AI search (for its part, Lanuti announced AI Optix during her chat, Omnicom’s new tool designed to help brands analyze how AI is representing them).

“All brands need to be moving into this space quickly to protect their brands and their sales in this new world order,” she said.

2. Agencies should harness AI for efficiency

If AI is top of mind for brands, it needs to be for agencies too. Paparo asked Grant Parker, president of Innovid, about the priorities for agencies as they navigate the growing role of AI in advertising.

“Big picture — creative and media are still so divided,” Parker said. “I think there’s a ton that can be done to automate how those come together” in terms of high-level strategy and also getting the right message in front of the right person.

AI is also a priority for Mediaocean, which recently completed its acquisition of Innovid. Bill Wise, CEO of Mediaocean, emphasized that the company’s biggest AI investments are focused on campaign management.

“A lot of it is leveraging the tactical execution; it’s not strategy up in the cloud,” Wise said. “It’s about how AI can increase the operations and efficiency of the business tomorrow.”

Those sentiments were echoed this week at another event, Nvidia’s GTC summit, where Unilever CMO Esi Eggleston Bracey said the company has been testing AI tech to reduce costs on shoots by inserting AI-generated product replicas.

“We’ve transformed what was once a complex, slow process into a marketing system that frees up our teams to focus on what they do best — think bigger, be creative, push boundaries and create magic for our brands,” Bracey said at the event on Tuesday.

3. Completion rates = BS

The role of AI in delivering the right message to the right person was a recurring theme at the event. For Sean Black, SVP/GM North America at video-sharing platform Dailymotion, it’s so critical that he thinks video completion rates are “bullshit.”

According to Black, a person may engage with a brand before a logo ever appears on screen, making conventional metrics outdated (remember: AI is disrupting the traditional marketing funnel).

For its part, Black said that Dailymotion partners with AI startup Neurons, which predicts and analyzes consumer engagement. AI is a “faster way to get the same results,” he said.

He argues that AI should redefine how companies measure engagement, shifting from completion rates to meaningful interactions.

“What our challenge is as a video company is how we look at attention in a way that we know that someone is watching but also doing something with it,” Black said. “AI can help us understand if the creative is doing what it needs to do.”