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Media Ownership Briefing: Has artificial intelligence reached ubiquity beyond the media bureau landscape?

Illustration of a hand reaching of a computer screen to shake a man's hand.

Ivy Liu

Hardly a day goes by without some company within the marketing and media ecosystem announcing another artificial-intelligence-driven tool, engineering, platform or data product in service of media buying and planning. Many of these advancements have been driven by dramatically altered consumer-behavior patterns toward digital consumption — leaving media agencies, artistic shops and marketers scrambling to more deeply empathize these new patterns.

Within the media bureau earth, artificial intelligence (AI) usually manifests in the forms of machine learning and blueprint detection, ofttimes the terrain of strategists and analysts. The looming spectacle of signal deprecation, mostly in the course of disappearing cookies, is also driving greater adoption of automobile-learning and automated data-gathering. Its third utilise is applied to rooting out bias where possible and maintaining ethical boundaries to ownership and planning.

Loftier-level executives are existence put in identify to ensure the tech is folded effectively into their operations. For case, merely two weeks ago, GroupM hired JiYoung Kim, Carat's principal digital officer, to become its chief product and services officer, charged with finding and implementing all manner of new tools for GroupM's agencies. She drew a distinction between foundational AI — the kind of tech that simplifies fourth dimension-consuming processes and frees employees to focus more on inventiveness and the things machines aren't expert at — and advanced AI, which is much larger in scope and goals.

"Avant-garde AI is how nosotros're going to get to understand how we're managing total business outcomes and to do information technology at scale," said Kim. She said GroupM North American CEO Kirk McDonald "has this vision that nosotros should start looking more like a software visitor for our clients rather than a service company. My area of focus volition be in better understanding, through our ain tools, the relationship between media decisions on incremental growth and lifetime value, and taking our attending away from the fissure of reporting on conversion, cost-per'due south, percentage lift in brand perception and the like."

As for the foundational chemical element, Kim said "If you lot're a media bureau today and you lot didn't already accept this in place, y'all'd be completely paralyzed past the amount of data that's coming in."

Kim added that AI tech plays a significant office in both Choreograph, the company'south massive data platform that connects insights, activation and measurement, also every bit the Data Ethics Compass, which calculates risk in investment. Finally, she mentioned Mindshare's Neurolab application that combines behavioral and sentiment information to assistance inform planning.

Much like IPG'southward Acxiom, Kinesso and Matterkind units that greatly rely on machine-learning tools to sift through petabytes (nosotros've moved past terabytes) of information, Publicis Media likewise has upped its game in applying AI beyond its wide swath of agencies. Kayleen Ohneck, managing director of verified data & technology, Publicis Media, explained that "AI is beingness built into various functionalities with the elimination of data signals, the fluidity of data and the continued access limitations to information. Nosotros have seen partners leaning into AI and predictive modeling in social club to navigate the futurity of real-time programmatic."

The holding visitor also has built the ability to customize its own algorithms based on the needs of agencies and clients. The recently created Publicis Decisioning Science Framework essentially uses Amazon Web Services to power custom algorithm scenarios "for prospecting new users at scale inside an ecosystem that'due south experiencing a reduction in addressability," co-ordinate to Patrick Houlihan, Publicis Media'due south senior vp of decisioning.

Even vendors that serve the media agency world accept upped their AI-driven game. Terminal November, Telmar — a media planning and buying software business firm that manages some viii,000 datasets — acquired Helixa, an AI-driven insights SaaS platform that lets agencies and marketers observe unusual patterns and connections in consumer affinities.

"As we got more traction in the [AI] space and growing our detail flavor of audience analysis, nosotros attracted some interest from companies in the media ownership and planning space, including Telmar," said Florian Kahlert, Helixa's founder and CEO. "We institute they were a actually good fit for us in terms of us being able to abound to contribute our things to them and also tapping into their rich network of existing customers beyond the world."

Finally, the analytical boost that AI provides media agencies helps them fight back against the walled gardens, whose clout and reach (and constructive use of AI to place and deliver ameliorate results for their advertisers) continues to sprawl beyond the media landscape. As Konrad Feldman, CEO of Quantcast, explained, walled gardens' "advertising works well, because they've got significant data, but they've likewise got very effective machine learning and AI techniques. And too they've made it very, very easy to use their systems."

Feldman is pushing for more equilibrium across the digital spectrum past boosting the fortunes of the open Web, "which promises a lot more diversity, in terms of audience, by its very nature. The fragmentation that makes information technology so corking and diverse has made it more than complex to buy. And we want to make it equally reliable and performant. Motorcar learning is a critical part of that."

Color by numbers

Social video intelligence and measurement provider Tubular Labs this calendar week is launching a Tubular Consumer Insights production that connects viewership with viewers' shopping behaviors such every bit production browsing, in-cart activities, purchasing and posting reviews on Amazon. Some insights from the new product include:

  • People who watch videos most home automation are 36 times more than likely to shop for cleaning supplies.
  • Toothpaste shoppers are most probable to watch dazzler content.
  • Disney Media Networks tin can now claim an estimated addressable audience of 56 1000000 health and household shoppers.
  • Barstool Sports' audience over-indexes on video games (4.1x shopping analogousness), electronics (2.2x), and, unexpectedly, clothing (1.5x).
  • Product categories with the largest percentage of social video audiences in Q4 2022 include:
    • Electronics – 19%
    • Computers & Accessories – 14%
    • Abode & Kitchen – 13%
    • Clothing, Shoes, & Jewelry – 12%

Takeoff & landing

  • Department shop chain Kohl'due south put its estimated $240 million media concern into review, as the company entertains offers from prospective buyers. The incumbent media bureau is Publicis Media'due south Zenith unit.
  • Havas Media won U.S. media duties for personal care company Edgewell, post-obit a review. The incumbent media agency is Stagwell'due south Assembly.
  • Independent-agency holding company Dawn acquired the Monday Talent agency, which Dawn CEO Bob Kantor said was not only to ensure Dawn's member agencies have direct access to a talent agency but considering that market is scarlet-hot given the Nifty Resignation.
  • Horizon Media hired Latraviette D. Smith-Wilson to be its first principal marketing and equity officer, constructive Feb. xiv. She was most recently chief strategy & appointment officer for Essence Communications.
  • Through its APX Content Ventures unit, Publicis Media is partnering with online video service Crackle to create and produce long-grade content "that elevates diverse voices and narratives."

Direct quote

"When an industry relies on just one source of measurement truth based off of solutions from the concluding century that utilize a console smaller than the population of Dubuque, Iowa, to model the entire state, you are going to have serious challenges measuring and targeting the media landscape today. The opportunity for both marketers and content owners is clear — we demand to move to a multi-currency model that focuses on actual reach over ratings."

— Cole Strain, head of measurement products at Samba TV, responding to a Video Advertizing Bureau report that found Nielsen's undercounting of audiences resulted in $700 million in revenue losses for Boob tube broadcasters over a xvi month menses.

Speed reading

  • Digiday's senior advertizing tech reporter Ronan Shields digs into the lingering problems plaguing the scarlet-hot connected Television business, as it tries to get past opaque practices such as bargain-basement inventory being passed off as premium air-time.
  • Digiday'south gaming and esports reporter Alexander Lee took a expect at how agencies are trying to stay relevant in the metaverse by holding meetings and opening virtual offices.
  • And I got a kickoff look at a 2022 trends report from Horizon Media'south WHY unit that cited eight things to wait out for, and coined a few unusual terms along the way, including "restivism" and "untact".

https://digiday.com/?p=438255