What’s better than running a company with a good data strategy?
Running two companies with impressive data strategies.
At least, Trevor Carr seems to think so.
Earlier this month, Carr was appointed Head of CSA, Havas Media Network’s technology, data and analytics consultancy arm, in the North American region.
But make no mistake, Carr isn’t stepping down from his role as CEO of Noise Digital, the agency and consultancy he founded in 1998.
“I’m just adding jobs,” he joked to AdExchanger, “trying to see if I can work 20 hours a day, not just the usual 12.”
AdExchanger: It sounds like CSA has a similar overall mission to Noise Digital. Are you doing similar work in both roles?
TREVOR CARR: I’ve always positioned Noise Digital as sort of a data consulting company that activates data on behalf of our clients. So we’re a performance media mixed with a data and technology consulting arm.
My vision is to integrate the Noise Digital team and the CSA team together to sort of coalesce around a North American vision for how we approach data technology consulting.
And how do you approach data and technology consulting?
CSA is going to be integrated with the Noise team around its four core pillars.
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We have a technology consulting service line, which is essentially advising clients on how to leverage enterprise tech, ad tech and analytics.
Then we have a data science and measurement service stream, which is self-explanatory. It provides measurement services and modeling.
The new wing for CSA in the US is in technology development. So this revolves around actually building tech and tools on top of existing ecosystems and then integrating systems for our clients. Recently, we’ve been building out AI agents on behalf of our clients, too.
Lastly, we also have a health specialty, helping pharma and modern wellness clients with data analytics and personalized marketing efforts.
We’ve all seen that AI is maturing more quickly than many people expected. How do you think that affects the online advertising industry and the industry’s response?
This moment reminds me a lot of the early internet, when the entire economy and culture was being disrupted. But the rapidity of AI is quite stunning to me. It’s definitely changing the way our business works and will be working in the future.
That being said, even though AI is changing very quickly, people are still in that trough of disillusionment. Everyone jumped into it very quickly, trying to design proofs of concept and implement AI in their businesses.
A lot of those projects failed.
It’s really important to make sure your data, your cloud, your technology chops and your data maturity level are ready to take advantage of AI.
How do you personally feel about the evolution of AI services?
It’s terrifying on one side, but it’s exhilarating on the other. I’m a person who leans into chaos, because I think that’s where opportunity comes from.
So I’m excited by it. But I’m also cautiously understanding that there’s a long way to go before we really see the huge benefits of AI.
To end on a pessimistic note, what terrifies you about AI?
I think the terrifying part is how good it’s gotten so quickly.
Noise and CSA have both been using AI for years, but we didn’t really refer to an “AI perspective.” There were machine learning models and visual AI layers on top of ads to do dynamic creative optimization.
Now, generative AI is shockingly good.
Looking at models like Gemini, Perplexity and OpenAI, when you point these models to good data and build an agent that’s efficient and effective, you get really good results quickly. My mind is blown at how good these models have gotten in a short period of time.
This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.
