Nearly every ad tech company is out there promising some form of AI-powered magic. The vendor landscape is turning into a sea of sameness.
So what’s worthwhile and what’s worth chucking in the bin?
The best way to separate AI hype from reality is to roll up your sleeves and try out the tech for yourself, says Ikkjin Ahn, CEO and co-founder of machine learning-based ad tech startup Moloco, on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
It’s like watching a movie, he says. How do you know if it’s good before you even try it?
But there are certain elements that separate serious contenders from the rest of the pack, he says, and one of the biggest is the ability to perform at massive scale.
You can build “toy examples” very easily with generative AI, Ahn says, but “the key differentiator is how much you can feed the volume, how much scale you can achieve.”
That’s where AI hyperscale comes in, which involves running AI on huge, cloud-style infrastructure. It’s a mix of ultra-fast hardware and optimized software that’s been trained to power AI models faster and more efficiently than regular computers.
Moloco uses AI Hypercomputer, which is Google’s branded end-to-end supercomputing stack. It runs on Google Cloud and allows Moloco to process billions of requests a day at 10x speed and relatively low cost.
Online advertising is evolving from a reliance on carefully engineered features and audience segments to harnessing the power of these “foundational models” that can learn from huge volumes of raw data, Ahn says.
It’s a process, though.
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While generative AI models are currently pretty good at answering questions, most are way too slow and expensive to meet the needs of real-time advertising, he says, which demands more powerful models that can operate instantly and affordably.
“Think about how long it takes to get an answer from ChatGPT,” Ahn says. “If your recommendation or sponsored search ad is taking three seconds, I mean, that’s a problem. And if any ad tech companies say, ‘Hey, I’ll burn like, what, $3 billion per quarter – that is not an answer, right?”
Also in this episode: How Moloco started its DSP business using Google’s display ad network as a test bed, how AI can help democratize commerce media beyond giants like Amazon and the role of creative automation in streamlining digital ad production.
For more articles featuring Ikkjin Ahn, click here.
