End-To-When?
Fully automated AI-powered ad buying is real – so long as your ambitions are small.
Somewhere between 80% and 90% of campaigns are just too complex for AI to handle on its own, Emily Lai, WPP Media’s group director of media optimization, told the crowd at AdExchanger’s Programmatic AI event in Las Vegas this week.
Simple programmatic guaranteed or deal-based buys with minimal targeting in the DSP? Sure, maybe, said Lai. But expecting an agent to handle today’s average media plan solo is unrealistic.
And that’s before even considering highly regulated categories like healthcare.
“Having agents talking to each other at scale across all campaigns? It’s just not realistic,” said Oleg Korenfeld, CTO of CMI Media Group, a WPP-owned healthcare media and marketing agency. “But I’d actually be very curious to hear what Tony Katsur would say.”
Well, we know the answer to that question!
Katsur, CEO of the IAB Tech Lab, also spoke at Prog AI. After his session on the evolution of advertising from ML to agentic AI, we took the opportunity to ask him whether AI is ready to run campaigns end-to-end.
The Tech Lab has been very rah-rah on AI, busily “agentifying” its standards and developing frameworks to help agents transact programmatically. But Katsur has a pragmatic POV.
“I’d agree that we’re not there yet,” he said. “For simple things, yes, but there’s still a lot of work to do.”
Chief Make-Money Officer
Should a head of marketing also be in charge of a company’s retail media business for marketers? As barriers collapse between internal orgs (customer service, physical supply-chain management, buying ads, selling ads and creative strategy), there are new interesting assortments of departments under a CMO’s remit.
For instance, just this week, Expedia consolidated its platforms and partnerships units under its current B2B business leader, Alfonso Paredes. Expedia also put its retail media business under the remit of CMO Jochen Koedijk.
It’s an intuitive change. The retail media business buys ads, after all, so shouldn’t it be under the marketer? But it’s a noteworthy change for the media buyer to be in a directly revenue-generating role.
Koedjik frames the reorg in straightforward growth terms. Opportunity exists on both sides, but there’s more growth potential in advertising than in marketing going forward, he tells PhocusWire.
“We still believe there is room there, but that’s not going to be infinite,” he said of marketing. But on the advertising side, there is “a lot more” room for growth, particularly as Expedia Group leans into data, tech and solutions for partners inside and outside of travel.
The Holdout
Airbnb is one of the notable non-participants in the retail media craze.
It has immense data, interesting digital and real-world canvases in which to place ads and all sorts of valuable audience segmentation it could do on behalf of theoretical advertising customers.
Airbnb already has a “services” revenue line, the catch-all category where many companies, including Apple, report advertising and data revenue. Well, now Airbnb is expanding that services biz, Bloomberg reports, with new car rental, luggage storage and airport pickups, adding to a grocery delivery service it began testing with Instacart late last year.
“It’s almost like an app store where we work with other developers, other companies,” Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky tells Bloomberg.
Meanwhile, earlier this month, he told investors that he sees “Amazon as a good inspiration.”
An app‑store analogy, a tilt toward a retailer‑style model, an expanding services layer and Chesky name‑checking Amazon?
Sounds a lot like laying the groundwork to get into the advertising business. Yet, aside from organically recommending services within its app – like suggesting a car rental option – Airbnb remains hands-off when it comes to seizing real ad revenue.
But Wait! There’s More!
James Murdoch will acquire half of Vox Media, including New York Magazine and the Vox podcast network. [NYT]
Omnicom says it was already moving off of LiveRamp, but the Publicis deal moves that timeline forward. [Digiday]
Surprise! Google’s new Search AI pivot is going to include a lot more ads. [The Verge]
Meta lays off another 10% of its workforce, some 8,000 employees, to offset its AI investments. [Semafor]
The web is being made accessible for AI, not for people. [Tech Policy Press]
TikTok micro-creators are charging brands more for sponsorships than they did this time last year. [Business Insider]
How agentic advertising demand might realistically flow from buyers to publishers. [Ad Tech Explained]
You’re Hired!
Iván Markman joins Mediaocean as president and COO. [post]
App industry veteran Hawley Shpiro joins SplitMetrics as managing director for the Americas. [release]
Equativ hires Jake Skarzynski as VP of retail media partnerships and Adrienne Ross Maihle as VP of commercial partnerships. [Adweek]
