Artificial Intelligence

“‘Cookieless’ is just a buzzword,” said Sanup Pillai, DHL’s global head of digital marketing and mar tech tells AdExchanger. “I wouldn’t say we’re getting ready for the ‘cookieless future’ as much as that we’re taking this opportunity to future-proof our technology stack.”

Brand safety’s detrimental impact on diverse, equitable and inclusive media goals is a question of automation gone wrong, ham-fisted implementation and industry leaders choosing the easy route, writes Charles Cantu, CEO and founder at Reset Digital. In this column, he reviews how brand safety’s DEI problem has developed and recommends steps advertisers, agencies and brand safety organizations can take to overcome it.

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

It’s not hard to imagine the applications of AI-generated art for media and marketing, including spitting out multiple variations of creative quickly, cheaply and easily. But AI art is also sparking a lot of very tricky questions, such as: What is “real” art, and can robots create it?

Only about half of marketers are utilizing the full breadth of capabilities of their marketing tech stack. But, writes Katie Klumper, CEO and founder of Black Glass, what if we treated technology like a team member?

Meta reported $27.2 billion in ad revenue in its Q3 earnings report on Wednesday. That represents a 4% drop year-over-year (YoY). Net income for Q3 was $4.4 billion, down 52% YoY. And Meta is projecting another revenue dip for Q4. As a result, the company will implement layoffs and hiring freezes throughout 2023.

For digital media, Scope 3 includes agencies, tech companies and publishers. Everyone in the digital advertising supply chain is equally responsible for its sustainability. That’s why, to successfully sustain it, marketers must connect their efforts to wider corporate goals, use standard certifications and measurements, and prioritize innovations that create a winning, sustainable scenario for everyone, writes Ben Riley, general manager at SeenThis. 

Google Topics is Google’s proposed replacement, which takes us back in time to broad, interest-based segmented targeting. This means brands are about to return to the “bad old days” of marketing, when many audiences all saw the same message. And this one-message-fits-most approach doesn’t fix what’s fundamentally broken in MADTech: the consumer experience, writes Tara DeZao, director of product marketing, MarTech and AdTech, at Pega.

Meta has many pots on the boil right now, and for good reason. The advertising industry is bubbling like a pan of oil. Meta has announced major new initiatives to support the metaverse (natch), AI, brand safety and suitability controls and third-party verification for the feed, automated ad products, business messaging, privacy-enhancing technologies, creator tools […]

The term “machine learning” seems to have a magical effect as a sales buzzword. Couple that with the term “data science,” and lots of companies think they have a winning formula for attracting new clients. But there is a need for best practices in data science and for companies to invest in and fully support talent that can apply those principles effectively, writes Jasmine Jia, associate director of data science at Blockthrough. 

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Insta Needs Its Groove Back Instagram has (mostly) been able to balance its business priorities with the interests of its users. But its streak is over. Instagram is struggling to recruit people to create content for its TikTok clone, Reels, The Wall Street […]

Rather than looking at one particular data signal, attention metrics include a variety of data points, which are fed into a machine-learning model to predict the likelihood that a given media environment and ad creative will draw attention from a hypothetical audience member.

To make the most of AI, advertisers must diversify data analytics teams to bring varied perspectives and talents to data collection and decision-making, writes Ashley Tsai, head of analytics at mSix&Partners.

What’s the rationale behind AppLovin’s bid to merge with Unity (kicking ironSource to the curb in the process)? Adam Foroughi, AppLovin’s CEO, got into the details on the company’s Q2 earnings call.

Meta has released new products available within Meta Advantage, its newly consolidated suite of automated advertising tools, and the global rollout of Advantage+ shopping campaigns, which was in beta since earlier this year, with additional features to support Advantage+ app campaigns.

The release of Google’s Imagen tool has certainly made news feeds more entertaining in recent months. Who doesn’t want to see pictures of a raccoon dressed as an astronaut or a corgi cycling through Times Square? But while Google’s new text-to-image generator is a really interesting development that illustrates the potential of AI, this type of technology can’t replace human creatives in the advertising industry, writes Graham Wilkinson, chief innovation officer at Kinesso and Matterkind Global.

Roy Armale, VMLY&R’s global chief innovation officer, believes in tackling technology with human behavior in mind – and being careful not to let the convenience of technology alter our perception of what it means to be human.

Google released a batch of new monetization, targeting and measurement features for AdMob on Thursday, with a focus on (what else?) data privacy. “Everybody is thinking about how they can evolve in this new world,” David Mitby, Google’s senior director of product management for app ads, told AdExchanger.

Last year, Levi’s launched an in-house machine-learning bootcamp to help employees who don’t have a formal data science background learn about AI and develop new digital skills. More than 450 people applied for just 60 spots in the program. Roughly two-thirds of the first class were women, says Katia Walsh, head of AI at Levi’s.

Patients are wielding their power as consumers, and the healthcare industry needs to adapt to address their needs and expectations. Artificial intelligence might just be the key for healthcare marketers to unlock the new patient economy, says Stefanos Kapetanakis, GVP, Data and Technology, at Publicis Health Media. 

As ecommerce continues to boom, AI technology promises to revolutionize nearly every aspect of a retailer’s operations. Yet, the human aspect of tastemaking has never had more influence, says Catherine Leung, managing executive director, head of activation, Hearts & Science.

The Weather Company is a large publisher with lots of first-party data and, with investments from IBM Watson Advertising, it’s using AI technology to mitigate bias in advertising. The goal is to use both to monetize quality content above short-term gains in ad revenue, says CEO Sheri Bachstein.

Former physicist Melinda Han Williams used to spend her time studying “electronic transport in nanostructured graphene devices.” These days, as chief data scientist at Dstillery, she’s creating identifier-free solutions to transport us past the end of third-party cookies.

AppLovin is in the process of fully integrating MAX and MoPub, which AppLovin bought from Twitter in October for around $1 billion. Since the acquisition, the number of apps monetizing with MAX, AppLovin’s in-app bidding software is up by more than 60%,, according to CEO Adam Foroughi.

Marketers often rely on a combination of assumptions and incorrect, faulty data that perpetuates stereotypes. Former WarnerMedia executive Larry Adams experienced this firsthand and founded LVA, an “anti-racist” agency that uses proprietary technology to measure the level of inclusion in content.

Here’s today’s AdExchanger.com news round-up… Want it by email? Sign up here. Mind Your Own IABeeswax Ad Age dinged the IAB for Meta’s prime placement during the trade group’s Annual Leadership Meeting this week. Three small businesses with the Internet for Growth, an IAB-backed advocacy group, all cited Facebook and Instagram advertising during their presentations. “I […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Ali Manning, co-founder and COO of Chalice Custom Algorithms. In the future, the best, most successful brands will be the ones that can predict the future. And there’s no reason […]

“Data-Driven Thinking” is written by members of the media community and contains fresh ideas on the digital revolution in media. Today’s column is written by Melinda Han Williams, Chief Data Scientist, Dstillery.  Google’s announcement that its “data-driven attribution” – that its machine-learning-driven attribution modeling will be the default attribution method in Google Ads – took […]

A weekly comic strip from AdExchanger.com that highlights the digital advertising ecosystem…

Erik Huberman, CEO and founder of marketing consultancy Hawke Media, has some pretty strong – if not outright harsh – words for most media agencies out there: “They’re full of [expletive].” Before founding the Los Angeles-based company in 2014, Huberman launched and sold two commerce companies – Swag of the Month and Ellie – and […]