As we continue to keep an eye on the development of AI in our industry, it is also useful to widen the lens and look at how other industries are experiencing and estimating the impact of AI trends on their businesses. Gartner recently did a study/survey among executives across different verticals. One thing is clear. AI is a huge focal point for all businesses as each business tries to understand what AI capabilities apply to them, or can make meaningful differences in how they go to market and drive competitive advantage. 70% of companies are investing in some type of AI exploration today, while according to Gartner 19% are in “pilot” mode - that’s a near universal effort to understand the benefits of AI.
The Gartner report further details the specific types of AI that the respondents outlined as important trends. For the ad industry, two things stick out in my mind - the level of synthetic data that will be generated to fill “holes” in data sets, and data processes designed to unearth insights (think models, attribution, ROI), and Responsible AI - AI that runs in the background, to align and verify data to ensure things, like compliance. It will be interesting to see how these areas develop over the next 18 months and start to fill knowledge (or know how) gaps that currently limit executional elements and performance variables. Synthetic data will go a long way to bring more reliability/predictability to the way we make several choices in our work, including brand's safety and suitability. Several new entrants are emerging, all looking at different levels of assurance across the value chain.
