From using motion capture tech to allow the Indian cricketing star Rahul Dravid to give personalised coaching tips for children to an algorithm trained on Shakespeare’s handwriting powering a robotic arm to rewrite Romeo and Juliet, artificial intelligence is rapidly revolutionising the global advertising industry.
Those AI-created adverts, for the Cadbury’s drink brand Bournvita and the pen maker Bic, were produced by agency group WPP, which is spending £300m annually on data, tech and machine learning to remain competitive.
Mark Read, the chief executive of the London-listed marketing services group, has said AI is “fundamental” to the future of its business, while admitting that it will drastically reshape the ad industry workforce.
Now Read has announced he is to leave at the end of this year, after almost seven years as chief executive and more than 30 at WPP, as the company struggles to keep pace with its peers and also counter moves by big tech to muscle in to the AI-driven future of advertising.
For ad agencies, the upheaval originates from a familiar source. Over more than a decade, Google and the Facebook owner, Meta, successfully built tech tools for publishers and ad buyers that helped them to dominate online. Big tech hoovered up almost two-thirds of the £45bn spent by advertisers in the UK this year. Now, Mark Zuckerberg wants to take over making the ads, too.
The WPP firm VML used AI to create the ‘One Bic, One Book, Two Classics’ campaign for Bic in Brazil. Photograph: WPP
The Meta boss is gearing up to unleash AI tools to allow advertisers to fully create and target campaigns on his social media sites, prompting fears of the “death of creativity” – and widespread job cuts at agencies.
Last week it emerged that these tools are to be rolled out by the end of next year, with Zuckerberg describing the capability in a recent interview as a “redefinition of the category of advertising. You don’t need any creative, you don’t need any targeting, you don’t need any measurement, except to be able to read the results that we spit out,” he said last month, in comments that appear to render much of the advertising industry obsolete.
Rahul Dravid in Cadbury’s Bournvita campaign, which used AI.
Agencies of all sizes – and particularly the deep-pocketed international groups such as WPP, Publicis and Omnicom – are pouring investment into developing their own AI tools and working with tech companies such as Meta and Google. But the plan is meant to be to keep clients, not lose them.
“I think there is no doubt AI will disintermediate a large number of jobs,” says the chief executive of one big ad agency. “Having said that, there are many agencies with big corporate clients that really could do with being slimmed down a lot. I can see staffing in areas like strategy, consumer insight and some conceptual roles being safe, but what will be really hit is those involved in production and the realisation of ideas.”
Big tech executives espoused the benefits of AI at the annual Enders Deloitte conference on the media and telecoms industry last week.
Stephan Pretorius, who described himself as “WPP’s AI guy” as he co-led a session with Meta, said: “Creativity, in its purest form, remains a human skill.”
WPP’s Stephan Pretorius on AI and advertising.
He argued that AI does not equate to job cuts but admitted that agencies need to restructure and advertising client relationships are changing.
“AI replaces tasks, it eliminates tasks, it doesn’t eliminate jobs,” he said. “A lot of what we used to get paid for is now getting automated and therefore our commercial models have to change, our team structures have to change. The way we are incentivised by our clients is changing. But that is the transition.”
Last month WPP said there would be an undisclosed number of redundancies globally across WPP Media, formerly known as GroupM, which plans and buys billions of pounds of ad space for clients across digital and traditional media.
“You have a situation where the big holding companies are in a dilemma,” another ad agency chief executive says. “Clients expect us to invest millions developing AI so they can cut their budgets because things can be done quicker and cheaper. Lots of clients are asking for fee reductions.”
So far the AI revolution does not appear to be having a big impact on the UK industry.
The Facebook and Instagram owner, Meta, has said it will release AI tools to allow advertisers to fully create and target campaigns on social media sites. Photograph: Anadolu/Getty Images
There were a record 26,787 people employed in media, creative and digital agencies last year, according to the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (IPA), the trade body for agencies that represent 85% of ad spend by clients in the UK.
The IPA has been measuring the size of the market since 1960, when there were 19,000 employees, hitting a low point of just under 12,000 in the early 1990s.
The amount spent on advertising has also grown exponentially, driven by the advent of the internet era, from £60m recorded in the pre-TV era in 1938.
By 1982 the UK market was worth £3.1bn and this year it is forecast to cross £45bn, according to the Advertising Association/Warc, which has been publishing figures annually since 1980.
Agency bosses believe that for the biggest household name advertisers there is too much brand risk handing over the full creative process to AI, which, for now at least, does not have the capability to make top-quality ads.
“You can often tell a [pure] AI piece of work a thousand yards away – glossy, very idealised and slightly plasticky looking,” the chief of one creative agency says. “But that will change. You hear creatives saying that AI is never going to come up with something as brilliant as, say, a gorilla playing drums for Cadbury, but I am not so sure. AI will eventually become fine-tuned enough to react to the quite left-field conceptual prompting.”
The Cadbury’s Dairy Milk TV advert featuring a gorilla playing the drums – created by the ad agency Fallon – became a viral hit. Photograph: Rex Features
Since making the comments that the industry took to mean that Meta is seeking to supplant the role of agencies, Zuckerberg has tried to clarify that the AI tools are primarily expected to be used by small and medium-sized businesses.
“In the future, if you were working with a creative agency to make creative, you’ll probably keep doing that,” he said at the Stripe conference, clarifying his position a week after making his initial comments about the scope of Meta’s AI advertising plans. “If you aren’t and you’re just hacking something together and throwing it into Meta’s ad system, well now we’re going to be able to come up with 4,000 different versions of your creative and just test them and figure out which one works best.”
Meta and Google have always considered that they have “democratised” advertising by enabling the long tail of millions of small businesses that do not have the financial wherewithal to run TV ad campaigns, or employ an ad agency to run campaigns.
“That is the smokescreen they always use,” the ad agency boss says. “When they first emerged as new ad channels decades ago it was all about small businesses, and now they take nearly two-thirds of all UK ad spend.”
In the noughties, as big tech grew increasingly powerful, Sir Martin Sorrell, who built WPP into the world’s biggest ad group and is now the chief executive of S4 Capital, labelled Meta and Google “frenemies” – meaning they can be seen as a partner and as a competitive threat to agencies.
Two decades on, the rise of AI in advertising is the latest technological development forcing the industry to once again adapt to survive.
“Meta’s new promise to ‘auto-generate your ad in seconds’ is the clearest sign yet that the production sausage factory is about to be fully mechanised,” says Patrick Garvey, the co-founder of the independent agency We Are Pi. “It’s not the death of agencies. It’s the death of outdated agency models.”
He is supportive of small businesses benefiting from the changes but says Meta’s approach to AI is akin to the “fast food of advertising”. For traditional companies in adland, it could be a difficult meal to stomach.
Buyers cite Amazon’s pricing, inventory access and flexibility as key advantages
Advertisers are shifting millions of dollars in ad budgets, particularly in connected TV (CTV), from The Trade Desk’s demand-side platform (DSP) to Amazon’s. Key reasons include lower fees, improved user interface, greater measurement visibility, exclusive live sports, Prime Video’s growing reach, and a more collaborative partnership model.
One global auto brand moved approximately $80 million in annual ad spend from The Trade Desk to Amazon’s platform by the end of Q1,according to an adtech executive familiar with the deal, speaking anonymously to protect industry relations. Part of the reason for the move is that the brand can now sell its cars on Amazon.
A second global tech brand redirected nearly $5 million of ad spend for a single campaign to Amazon’s DSP, but continues to spend with The Trade Desk, the source said.While The Trade Desk’s technology is effective, Amazon has been aggressively building out its tech stack, they added.
At PMG, 80% of clients have shifted tens of millions in CTV budgets to Amazon’s DSP over the past year, money that was previously going to The Trade Desk, said Mike Treon, PMG’s head of CTV and video strategy.
“At a time where budgets aren’t growing significantly across the board, [Amazon’s gain] does come at the cost of some of the incumbent folks,” Treon said.
Amazon’s ad revenue grew 18% year-over-year to $13.9 billion in Q1. The Trade Desk, meanwhile, reported a 25% YoY increase, generating $616 million in the same quarter.
A spokesperson at The Trade Desk said the company has seen “solid growth” and is “growing faster than Amazon,” citing its Q1 earnings. “Amazon can offer very cheap reach because it directs advertiser demand to its own platform, notably Amazon Prime. TTD doesn’t own or operate any media, so our value proposition to clients is very different, [helping] advertisers objectively decide between all ad impressions on the open internet,” they said.
Some buyers are cautious about Amazon prioritizing its own inventory, but others are enticed by its unique access.
A first media buyer at an agency, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said 30% of its clients shifted a bulk of their CTV and display budgets from The Trade Desk to Amazon, particularly around Thursday Night Football.
A second media buyer at an agency, speaking anonymously to preserve industry relations, said 30% of the agency’s clients shifted 100% of their total annual ad budgets from The Trade Desk to Amazon in the past six months. Last year, only 10% of the agency’s clients moved budgets. The source wouldn’t share exact figures.
Over 40 brands at Tinuiti have increased their budget on Amazon DSP by 12% collectively as of Q1 this year, according to Elizabeth Marsten, vp, commerce innovation. In Tinuiti’s case, this spend was moved from several DSPs, including The Trade Desk.
Flexibility in inventory access and deal terms
ADWEEK spoke to nine sources for this story and most said that it appeared to them as if Amazon had been making a play to lure The Trade Desk’s clients, partly because the DSP has been offering lower prices and improving its tech stack. Part of Amazon’s appeal has long been that buyers can use its DSP to buy across third-party CTV inventory, beyond Amazon’s owned-and-operated (O&O) properties.
An Amazon Ads spokesperson referred ADWEEK to a blog post and said it is giving “advertisers the control to choose where ads are delivered whether that be APD, third-party exchanges or any combination in between. Advertisers can even exclude Amazon properties if desired.”
According to Karsten Weide, principal and chief analyst, W Media Research, advertisers and agencies are moving budgets from The Trade Desk to Amazon’s DSP, particularly for CTV and cost-sensitive campaigns. “Amazon’s DSP market share has been bigger than The Trade Desk’s for a few years now,” he said. “However, both companies are still growing market share, so Amazon’s market share gain has not come at the expense of The Trade Desk’s share.”
Still, some buyers have other reasons for switching DSPs. A third media buyer at an agency pointed to a lack of flexibility in The Trade Desk’s upfront deals, which require brands to commit to minimum monthly spend thresholds—this amount varies by brand. However, if a brand doesn’t meet the required monthly media spend, they still need to pay a baseline platform fee, which varies. The Trade Desk did not respond to specific questions about its upfront deals.
“The Trade Desk is perceived as vulnerable at the moment,” the first buyer said, adding that, given the way Amazon has touted its pricing, inventory and exclusive programming, it appears to them as if “Amazon’s strategic approach is to really go after The Trade Desk, and their pricing is compelling and trying to eat up market share.”
Competitive fees and pricing structure
Amazon is offering tech fees on programmatic guaranteed deals as low as 1% of the ad buy across all media—below the 7% to 15% typically charged by other DSPs, according to two sources. Amazon has also reportedly lowered its DSP fees by up to 3 percentage points, per Digiday.
For some types of transactions, Amazon is charging tech fees under 10%, two media buyers said. Treon described those fees as “aggressive,” making it cheaper for buyers to access third-party inventory. Last year, most DSP tech fees hovered around 10% to 12%, he added.
Amazon did not respond to comment about its fee structure.
Beefing up third-party supply
Over the past nine months, Amazon has ramped up efforts to drive more third-party supply through its DSP, according to Treon, striking deals with players like Hulu on Fire TV devices and securing exclusive access to that inventory.
Most recently, Amazon signed a resale deal with Samsung TV Plus to resell its inventory.
“The most unique thing about Amazon is being able to use Amazon data on third-party inventory,” Treon said. “When you’re presented with a more advantageous platform fee, unique reach, and incremental data, we have to chase that in these times where we’re demanding efficacy and efficiency out of media.”
For two decades, YouTube has tried to convince advertisers that it’s the future of entertainment. The pitch has always been simple enough: “Young people don’t watch cable; they watch YouTube.” It doesn’t exactly require a PowerPoint presentation.
But YouTube has had problems making its case. The first is that the vast majority of videos on the site aren’t filmed to Scorsese-like standards. “The biggest knock against creator content is that it’s low quality, s—, crap, slop, garbage,” Doug Shapiro, a former executive at Time Warner, wrote in December. That’s sort of inconsequential, he argued, since most people aren’t watching random YouTube slop—they’re watching the most popular slop. Which leads to YouTube’s second issue: The most watched channels haven’t always been hospitable to advertisers. To name a few high-profile examples: Felix Kjellberg, aka PewDiePie, a Swedish YouTuber known for his gaming content, made antisemitic jokes in videos in 2016 and 2017 and was later accused of inspiring White nationalist shooting rampages. Logan Paul, who posted gaming and prank videos before ascending to influencer-wrestler status, filmed a video in 2017 with a dead body in a Japanese suicide forest. In 2020, Jason Ethier, aka JayStation, a Canadian YouTuber known for videos such as “Running From the Cops” and “24 Hour Overnight Challenge in Jail,” tried to gain followers by pretending his girlfriend and fellow YouTuber Alexia Marano had been killed by a drunk driver. Marketers don’t have to worry about this kind of stuff on, say, NBC. (All three creators apologized, and YouTube ultimately took down that JayStation channel for violating its terms of service. In a video, Marano said she never agreed to the hoax and was “sick to her stomach” about it.) To attract those advertising dollars, YouTube set about trying to boost the quality of videos on the site. In 2011 it announced plans to invest $100 million in original programming. The funds went to dozens of channels from popular creators such as Philip DeFranco, a pop culture commentator who currently has more than 6.6 million followers, and Felicia Day, an actress best known for the web series The Guild, which was based on her life as a gamer. Four years later, YouTube backed a smaller number of prestige shows to drive viewers to YouTube Red, an ill-fated attempt to compete with Netflix Inc. in subscription video. The company hired Susanne Daniels, a longtime Hollywood executive who’d developed Dawson’s Creek and Buffy the Vampire Slayer, to oversee the slate, which included Cobra Kai, which takes place about 30 years after The Karate Kid saga. And beginning in 2017, YouTube started funding dozens of ad-supported original series that it offered for free, such as Kevin Hart: What the Fit, in which the comedian works out with celebrities including Conan O’Brien, DJ Khaled and Rebel Wilson.
Not much found a huge audience. Daniels’ biggest discovery was a young writer named Quinta Brunson, who created Broke, a comedy about three friends who move from Philadelphia to Los Angeles. The show lasted just one season, but Brunson went on to create Abbott Elementary, a hit for ABC. YouTube gradually wound down its originals efforts and allowed Sony Group Corp.’s TV studio, which produced and owned Cobra Kai, to shop the rights to future seasons. The show became a huge hit for Netflix. Daniels left in 2022.
YouTube had more success cleaning up its existing catalog, promoting stars it prayed wouldn’t do dumb stuff. It built tools to monitor the site for things such as Japanese suicide forests—and ran marketing campaigns to boost the cultural relevance of major creators, hoping that billboards of Liza Koshy, an actress from Houston, or Smosh, a sketch comedy-improv collective, would make advertisers think of them as movie stars. New programs let companies target ads to the top 1% of videos by viewership. YouTube channels such as MrBeast; Good Mythical Morning (“Coworkers Reveal Their Search History to Each Other”); and First We Feast, the home of wing-eating talk show phenomenon Hot Ones, grew so popular that even if some advertisers didn’t see the service as premium, most viewers didn’t care. The site became “too dominant not to be a major part of advertisers’ media plans and their video strategy,” says David Campanelli, president, global investment at Horizon Media Inc., which buys a lot of YouTube ads.
Even as advertisers spent more money on YouTube, executives at parent company Google thought it should be securing ads from marquee brands, whose large checks were instead going to TV networks. YouTube still made most of its money from low-cost commercials targeted at niche audiences. And many advertisers still thought their commercials didn’t have the same impact when they appeared next to YouTube’s cheaper, shorter videos, most of which were viewed on phones or laptops.
YouTube has spent the past few years trying to make itself the centerpiece of the living room. The company teamed up with TV manufacturers so watching YouTube on a TV became as easy as watching it on your phone or laptop. People can now leave comments and subscribe to YouTube channels on a TV, and creators can arrange videos as though they’re episodes of a show. YouTube will remind viewers where they left off with a program and feed them the next episode—rather than have the algorithm offer a similar video, often from another creator. YouTube also tailored its advertising for TV viewing, creating more space between ad breaks. The company introduced pause ads, which show commercials when a viewer stops a video, and it introduced a live-TV service, YouTube TV, that includes the channels in a cable bundle—crucially, the ones that show the NFL—as well as a storefront that offers paid streaming services such as Max and Paramount+.
YouTube is now the TV service of choice for viewers of all ages. People in the US spend more time watching YouTube on a TV than on a phone or computer, according to the company. Not including YouTube TV, the service accounted for over 12% of TV viewing in April, more than all of Walt Disney Co.’s TV networks and streaming services combined, according to Nielsen. About 40% of viewers are age 18 to 49, the demographic most appealing to advertisers, Nielsen reported. “When people turn on the TV, they turn on YouTube,” says YouTube Chief Executive Officer Neal Mohan. While linear TV ad sales have flatlined, YouTube has more than doubled its ad sales over the last five years, from $15 billion in 2019 to $36 billion in 2024, according to earnings reports. YouTube now generates more sales from advertising than all four broadcast networks combined.
Hollywood executives still try to portray YouTube as a slopfest. In a recent public appearance, Netflix co-Chief Executive Officer Ted Sarandos said YouTube is a place people kill time, whereas his service is a place where people spend time. But these comments now reek more of fear than confidence. As much as Hollywood has worried about labor strife, artificial intelligence and the demise of moviegoing, the rise of YouTube is a much more immediate and real threat.
To understand how YouTube has evolved past its awkward struggle with original programming to become the singular destination for creators and advertisers, it helps to know the name Alan Chikin Chow.
YouTube’s biggest creators have been doubling or tripling the length of their videos for longer viewing sessions optimized on larger screens. (Of course, longer videos also create more opportunities for advertising.) Some are just recording longer podcasts. People such as Chow, though, went from making YouTube Shorts, which are three minutes or less, to making the sitcom-length Alan’s Universe. The show has its DNA in classic American tween series such as Boy Meets World, a coming-of-age ’90s sitcom; the South Korean high school drama Boys Over Flowers, which ran for one season in 2009 and became a cultural phenomenon in Asia; and Japanese anime. Alan’s Universe started drawing millions of viewers in 2023.
Chow is the showrunner and main character, while his college friend Chelsea Sik co-stars as a frequent love interest and occasional rival. The stories aren’t serialized, but every episode features the same cast of characters at the same fictional school. Chow begins writing each episode by coming up with a title, such as “No One Knew I Was a Famous Singer.” If a conceit works, he repeats it with a twist. “We are really intentional about creating stuff that even a year from now, you could watch it and get the same amount of” viewer interest, he says. In January he posted “No One Knows I’m a Famous Pop Star.” The two videos have over 82 million views combined. A recent episode, “Boys vs Girls: Control the School,” has more than 62 million views and is on track to become the show’s most watched episode. As the title suggests, Chow and Sik lead their respective genders in a battle to be named president of their school. After many public and covert efforts to sabotage one another, they fall in love.
Growing up in Dallas, Chow had dreams of creating his own sitcom. The son of immigrant parents—Chikin means “strong-willed” in Cantonese—he devoured Hannah Montana and George Lopez. He attended the University of Southern California, majoring in screenwriting and business administration, and first pursued Hollywood as an actor, booking guest roles on TV series including Grey’s Anatomy. Yet he was more interested in creating his own projects than in acting in someone else’s. He joined Reach, a club at USC for students who wanted to be social media creators, and started posting to TikTok and YouTube in 2019.
In early 2023, Chow suffered an existential crisis. He was by then the world’s most popular creator of Shorts. He’d amassed tens of millions of followers with goofy comedy clips. In “Couple Goals Gone Too Far” (over 664 million views), Chow shows his partner the lengths he’ll go to please her. He exchanges his hoodie for her sports bra when she stains it and makes a lecherous stranger grab his behind after the stranger slaps hers. A demonically distorted version of My Heart Will Go On from Titanic plays in the background. In “Zombie Fanfics Be Like” (more than 554 million views), he plays a zombie hunter who falls in love with an undead woman with a taste for arms; he realizes the key to his happiness is buying her a mouthguard. But Chow wanted to tell stories that would influence kids the way sitcoms had affected him. Four years after starting his YouTube channel, he renamed it Alan’s Universe and turned it into the home of his new scripted drama. He still made Shorts, but they now exist within Alan’s Universe.
Last July, Chow converted a drab office space in Burbank, California, into the Alan’s Universe studio. The makeup room is a former office on the second floor, down the hall from a locker room. The ground floor features the basic settings of a teenager’s life: a bedroom, a school cafeteria and a small area that can be manipulated into whatever is required, such as a catwalk for a dance-off. Wires and cables run along the ground between the rooms, just asking for someone to trip. “Everything is whatever you want it to be,” Chow says during an interview from a conference room that’s doubled as the school principal’s office.
“Boys vs Girls,” which clocks in at 26 minutes, will feel very familiar to any fan of Mean Girls or High School Musical, minus the super-quick cuts and neon editing effects. The key to its huge audience may be that, while scripted, the vibe of the show comes off as organic to the platform in a way that Cobra Kai perhaps did not. Alan’s Universe speaks a language familiar to teens and tweens who grew up on YouTube, a demographic for whom the youth brands of yesteryear—Comedy Central, MTV, Nickelodeon—mean little. Disney Channel and Nickelodeon have surrendered more than 90% of their prime-time audience over the past decade. Disney Channel averaged about 110,000 viewers last year in prime time, down from about 2 million in 2014. “There is no Disney Channel anymore, as we used to know it,” says Chow. “The 7- to 14-year-olds that used to watch Disney Channel now watch YouTube.” (Disney’s own YouTube channels are top performers with kids, who also engage with its characters through Disney+, theme parks, etc.)
Chow is one of several creators having success with scripted shows for younger audiences. Dhar Mann’s channel has over 25 million subscribers and features wholesome, uplifting stories. His videos often have to do with bullying. There’s “Amish Girl Bullied in Public School” and “Kids Make Fun of Boy With Autism, They Instantly Regret It,” which is Mann’s most watched with more than 67 million views. In the 28-minute video about an Amish girl named Greta, who’s experiencing newfound freedoms on her rumspringa, she quickly becomes a pariah for not knowing how to turn on a computer and trying to talk to a vending machine. Just as she’s had enough of the insults and prepares to return to the traditional life on the farm, one of the bullies has an about-face and gets her to stay. She finds a boyfriend. They form a band.
Dhar Mann Studios uploads four or five half-hour episodes of original programming per week, appealing to a core audience of 13- to 24-year-olds. Mann got his start posting inspirational messages on Facebook while helping his wife run a beauty business. He now oversees one of the largest scripted programming businesses on YouTube. Mann has commandeered three sound stages in Burbank that house dozens of sets, including malls, apartments, high schools and a pawnshop. Thanks to a business that generates tens of millions of dollars a year in ad sales, he now has a staff of nearly 200. “Content that makes some sort of a positive difference in the world,” he says, “is key for virality.”
If YouTube has its way, it’ll be the place people come to watch Shorts, podcasts, nursery rhymes, the NFL, other streaming services—and 30-minute shows that are made for YouTube. Right now, scripted series are just one table in an endless buffet of videos. While Chow and Mann were both at YouTube’s annual presentation to advertisers earlier this month, neither one appeared onstage. That hallowed promotional ground was reserved for bigger stars such as MrBeast; Sean Evans, the host of Hot Ones; NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell; and Lady Gaga. But Chow’s and Mann’s successes help illustrate a world in which the distinction between YouTube and Hollywood is eroding.
In moving to scripted shows, Chow and Mann are thriving where many others have failed. Save for a handful of popular web series such as Fred—a comedy created by Lucas Cruikshank about a boy named Fred Figglehorn—and Red vs. Blue, a first-person shooter parody, scripted programming on YouTube has faced challenges. Most viewers don’t open the app for a specific channel—they’re fed videos based on their previous viewing or stumble upon links online. Then they pick what to watch based on a video’s title and thumbnail image. It’s hard to distill the essence of a scripted show in a few words the way MrBeast can with “I Survived the 5 Deadliest Places on Earth.”
But the biggest issue is cost. Making a scripted series is more expensive than even the most elaborate unscripted program. Game of Thrones or Severance costs as much as $20 million an episode. MrBeast (real name: Jimmy Donaldson) spends about $3 million to $4 million per video, more than just about any creator on YouTube. Few channels generate the ad revenue to make the math work. The budget for Alan’s Universe—about $120,000 an episode—amounts to roughly 6% of Jennifer Aniston’s fee for an episode of The Morning Show. Still, it’s only a matter of time before scripted shows become as big as MrBeast or, say, Dude Perfect, five buddies who got famous perfecting the art of the “trick shot” and now have over 61 million subscribers, says Sean Atkins, a veteran media executive who joined Mann’s company as CEO last year. AI will only make it easier and cheaper for creators to produce shows that look expensive and appeal more to adults. “Will there be YouTube’s Game of Thrones? It’s 100% gonna happen,” Atkins says. “Will it be $100 million an episode? No.”
Quality is the other issue. YouTube no longer has to convince advertisers that it’s a safe place to spend money, but it’s still trying to convince Hollywood and Madison Avenue that the slopfest days are in the rearview mirror. Even with operations that resemble proto-Hollywood studios and budgets around $100,000 an episode, advertisers consider Chow’s and Mann’s videos less valuable than those of a network sitcom. Mann, for example, gets paid 25% as much as a broadcast show per viewer and must share 45% of ad sales with YouTube (which is better than the arrangement on other platforms). YouTube’s top priority is getting “more brands to see their future is with YouTube,” he says.
The lower budgets haven’t stopped Amazon Prime Video, Disney+ and Netflix from licensing the work of hit YouTube creators. There’s CoComelon, the wildly popular nursery rhyme and children’s song channel; Ms Rachel, which is dedicated to toddler learning; and Sidemen, where the hosts compare $200 and $20,000 vacations.
Hollywood studios and other investors are also looking to buy into or acquire major YouTube channels. The Dude Perfect dudes raised more than $100 million last year from investment firm Highmount Capital and opened an 80,000-square-foot studio in Frisco, Texas. They’re using the money to increase output, make more videos that don’t feature themselves (or trick shots) and open a family entertainment complex. MrBeast generates more than $200 million a year from his entertainment business, and his Feastables chocolate business had sales of about $250 million in 2024. Also last year, he raised $300 million dollars at a valuation of about $5 billion with Alpha Wave, an investment firm. Mann is working with CAA Evolution, an investment bank affiliated with the Hollywood talent giant, to roll up other YouTube channels under his umbrella.
Investment will only accelerate as money follows eyeballs. According to Nielsen, an average of more than 7 million people in the US are watching YouTube on a TV at any given point in time—more than those watching Netflix and Amazon Prime Video combined, with the fastest-growing audience being viewers 65 and over. In addition to the more than $30 billion in ad sales, YouTube now generates almost $20 billion from subscriptions. YouTube may eclipse Disney’s media business in total revenue as soon as this year, according to research firm MoffettNathanson LLC, which dubbed YouTube the “new king of all media.”
YouTube is still sensitive to the idea that programs born on the service are inferior to those born on, say, Netflix or ABC, and the company has spent millions of dollars on advertising campaigns to help shows such as Hot Ones compete for Emmy Awards. (It hasn’t won one yet.) “The amount of money you spend on a show doesn’t equate to quality,” says Mohan. “It might equate to some antiquated notion of production value. I would put a lot of our creator-led, studio-generated content against what used to be considered traditional content.” Many advertisers and Hollywood moguls would beg to differ. It seems inevitable they won’t for long.
Advertisers sound off on Google, Meta, and Microsoft Ads: what they love, what’s frustrating, and where PPC platforms must improve in 2025.
Let’s be honest: the pace of change in PPC is exhausting.
Between AI-powered everything, new campaign types rolling out every quarter, and feature removals with no warning, advertisers are being asked to adapt faster than ever – often with less control, less data, and less clarity than we’ve had in years.
We asked a group of experienced advertisers to share how they feel about Google, Meta, and Microsoft Ads in 2025 – not just a number rating, but:
What they love.
What they’d fix.
What they’d remove if they had the chance.
The goal wasn’t to dunk on the platforms (we all rely on them) – but to surface the patterns in what’s working and what’s frustrating, and to spotlight real opportunities for improvement.
This isn’t a complaint-fest. It’s a sentiment check.
More importantly, it’s a roadmap for how ad platforms and advertisers can move forward together.
Google Ads: Too powerful to ignore, slowly becoming more transparent
Google Ads still dominates most PPC strategies.
Its scale is unmatched, its infrastructure is world-class, and its machine learning – when it works – can be a force multiplier.
Feedback consistently conveyed a feeling of being asked to trust a system that offered fewer levers to pull and diminishing insight into what was happening behind the scenes.
What advertisers love
Even among its critics, there’s still a deep appreciation for Google Ads’ potential, especially its precision when things are set up correctly.
Smart Bidding, when aligned with good data, can be exceptional.
There’s also cautious optimism about Google’s recent push to restore some of the transparency advertisers have been asking for.
Notably, the platform has started rolling out Performance Max insights that allow advertisers to see:
Which channels and asset groups are spending budget.
What actual search terms are driving PMax traffic.
A clearer breakdown of performance across placements.
These updates are long overdue, but they’re meaningful.
For many advertisers, it’s a sign that Google is – however slowly – trying to build a better bridge between automation and accountability.
“Imagine a ChatGPT-style assistant inside Google Ads that answers questions like ‘Why did conversions drop last week?’ or ‘Which keywords are wasting the most budget?’ That’s the kind of AI integration we actually need,” says Heidi Sturrock.
What advertisers would fix
This is where the most consistent feedback lives:
Search query visibility remains incomplete, especially for converting terms.
Match types no longer work intuitively – broad match in particular is too expansive.
Performance Max still feels like a walled garden, even with improvements.
Reporting is especially difficult for low-volume accounts, which often get partial or delayed data.
There’s also a clear call for smarter diagnostics. Advertisers want tools that help them interpret machine learning behavior – not just monitor KPIs.
“We don’t necessarily need to change the machine, but at least let us see what it’s doing,” Steve Gerencser of Web Narwhal points out.
Dig deeper: Dealing with Google Ads frustrations – Poor support, suspensions, rising costs
What advertisers would remove
There’s a shared desire to eliminate or radically overhaul:
Optimization score, which many feel misrepresents performance and pressures users into unsuitable changes
Auto-applied recommendations, which alter accounts without consent
The current Recommendations tab, which prioritizes increasing Google’s preferred metrics (like optimization score) over business outcomes
Fellow Search Engine Land contributor Sophie Logan warns:
“The optimization score can mislead clients into thinking their account is ‘bad’ when it’s simply not following Google’s automated preferences.”
Go do: Double down on transparency
Google is starting to do the right things, particularly with new PMax insights, but it needs to go further.
Advertisers are watching closely and will reward tools that provide more clarity and control.
If Google continues to give advertisers better visibility into where money is going, how decisions are made, and what changes are occurring, it can show how automation and human strategy can coexist instead of compete.
For advertisers, now’s the time to push for even more visibility.
Document where:
Improvements are showing up (like the new PMax data).
Critical blind spots still exist.
That feedback isn’t just helpful – it’s leverage.
Dig deeper: Outsmarting Google Ads — Insider strategies to navigate changes like a pro
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Meta Ads: Powerful reach, but at what cost to control?
Meta continues to be a workhorse for advertisers focused on reach, scale, and visual storytelling.
The ad formats are impactful, the platform’s data is rich, and the ability to connect with new customers, particularly in B2C and ecommerce, is still incredibly strong.
But unlike Google, which is cautiously adding back transparency, Meta appears to be moving away from it, while also pulling levers that remove creative control from advertisers altogether.
What advertisers love
No one’s questioning Meta’s value at the top of the funnel.
Advertisers still see great results for awareness, engagement, and remarketing, especially with well-structured creative.
The addition of Advantage+ and other automation layers has improved efficiency for many teams, particularly in high-volume campaigns.
There’s also appreciation for Meta’s breadth of placements and massive active user base, which continue to drive value for brands across verticals.
“Meta ads are an indisputable champ when it comes to reach and building brand awareness,” notes Julia Vyse.
What advertisers would fix
This is where tension begins to mount. Advertisers want:
More consistency in ad approvals, especially when identical creative is approved in one account but rejected in another.
Manual controls over Advantage+ delivery, especially when the system picks winners too fast.
Breakdown-level reporting for flexible creatives, which currently hides performance insights for individual assets.
A true offline editor to support scaled changes and uploads (Power Editor is still missed).
Gabriela Martin-Arranz shares:
“It’s frustrating to tell a client to take action on something, only to discover it’s already gone.”
There’s also growing concern about a lack of transparency in delivery.
While Google is (finally) revealing where budget is going in PMax, Meta is heading in the opposite direction: surfacing less detail about how campaigns are being optimized.
What advertisers would remove
More than any one feature, advertisers want more opt-in choices:
Stop enabling creative enhancements account-wide without user control.
Eliminate default daily spend caps for new accounts without guidance or visibility.
Slow the feature rollout treadmill – or at least provide more reliable documentation.
Andrew Sutton observes:
“As soon as we start to understand how a feature works, Meta changes it or removes it.”
Go do: Control builds confidence
Meta is still indispensable for many brands, but to keep that status, it needs to respect advertiser effort and allow for more deliberate automation management.
Full transparency isn’t always feasible, but clear controls and visibility into key systems are table stakes.
For advertisers, the takeaway is this: treat Meta as a fast-moving system.
Build playbooks that anticipate sudden changes.
Advocate for more stable tooling.
Where possible, back up recommendations with platform-agnostic logic so you won’t be caught flat-footed when Meta shifts again.
Dig deeper: Rethinking Meta Ads AI – Best practices for better results
Microsoft Ads: The quiet contender with something to prove
Fewer advertisers filled out our Microsoft Ads feedback form, and that may be the most revealing stat of all.
The small sample size suggests that many advertisers still don’t have Microsoft in active rotation, even though the feedback echoed many of the same themes heard about Google.
That’s both a gap and an opportunity.
What advertisers love
Advertisers who do use Microsoft Ads described it as stable, reliable, and easy to work with. There’s appreciation for:
Simplicity in campaign structure and reporting.
Audience quality, particularly for B2B and older demos.
Platform consistency, with fewer disruptive UI or structural changes.
Sutton says:
“Microsoft is like going home. It feels familiar, and even when it changes, it still feels solid.”
What advertisers would fix
There was near-universal frustration about the Microsoft Audience Network (MSAN) being automatically opted into Search campaigns, without a global opt-out option.
Other suggestions:
Add a forecast tool to the keyword planner.
Improve experiment handling (e.g., removing expired experiments from the UI)
Thom Langeveld comments:
“Auto-enabling the Audience Network with no master toggle is just absurd.”
What advertisers would remove
The answer here was simple: remove default MSAN inclusion, or at least make it easier to opt out with one setting, not dozens of placement-level exclusions.
Go do: Win advertisers by listening first
Here’s the opportunity: Microsoft could be the platform that actually listens.
If it responds quickly to feedback, improves control over automation, and communicates clearly, it can build real loyalty, especially from advertisers feeling burned out by Google or Meta.
Advertisers: don’t wait for a big market shift.
Test Microsoft now, while CPCs are relatively low and competitors are distracted elsewhere.
The platform is growing, and in some verticals, the early adopters are already reaping the rewards.
The platforms that win will be the ones that listen
There’s no perfect ad platform in 2025 – but there is a perfect principle: trust is earned through clarity and control.
Whether it’s Google making slow progress on Performance Max visibility, Meta moving too fast for its own good, or Microsoft quietly offering stability with one big caveat, the message is the same: advertisers want to be part of the process, not passengers on a platform’s roadmap.
If you’re a platform:
Build tools that explain what the machine is doing.
Offer real opt-outs, not buried toggles.
Treat transparency not as a burden, but as a brand asset.
If you’re an advertiser:
Document everything. Track what’s changing. Speak up about what’s not working.
Test outside your comfort zone – especially where competition is light.
And never stop advocating for smarter, clearer tools.
“I am ready to catch my breath,” the award-winning advertising executive said. He will transition to a strategic role in September.
Accenture announced on Wednesday that David Droga, CEO of its technology-focused creative group Accenture Song, will step down from his role in September. Droga will transition from his day-to-day leadership role into a broader strategic role as vice chair of Accenture.
As part of the transition, Ndidi Oteh, who currently serves as the Americas lead for Accenture Song, will become the CEO of Accenture Song, the company said. He will also join Accenture’s Global Management Committee.
Meanwhile, Nick Law, current creative chairperson for Accenture Song, is set to become the creative strategy and experience lead.
‘Once-in-a-generation creative leader’
An award-winning creative executive, Droga founded his New York-based namesake advertising agency, Droga5, in 2006. Under his leadership, the creative agency won numerous awards for its innovative advertising campaigns.
In 2019, Droga sold Droga5 to Accenture Song (formerly Accenture Interactive). The agency has offices in New York City, London, Dublin, Tokyo, and São Paulo.
He became CEO of Accenture Song in 2021 after Accenture chair and CEO Julie Sweet asked him to step into the leadership role, as Sweet told Modern CEO in January. She saw the benefit of bringing his creative perspective to the leadership team.
Droga’s ideas helped to transform Accenture Song and accelerated the company’s growth. As CEO, he introduced an operating model that merged creativity, design, technology, AI, data, and strategy into one connected platform. Droga spoke about how AI was transforming the advertising industry on Fast Company‘s Brand New World podcast in February.
In a news release, Sweet described Droga as a “once-in-a-generation creative leader and business builder” who has “lived our core value of stewardship and has developed the next generation of leaders who will build an even better Song.”
‘I am ready to catch my breath’
In today’s company news release, Droga expressed appreciation and conveyed his optimism for the future of Accenture Song. “With such extraordinary leadership in place, it felt like the right time,” he said.
He also discussed his next chapter. “After 30 plus years of leaping, I am ready to catch my breath. And being vice chair will allow me to do that, but also to contribute in new ways.”
Shares of Accenture Plc (NYSE: ACN) were flat in early trading on Wednesday.
The final deadline for Fast Company’s Brands That Matter Awards is this Friday, May 30, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply toda
AI has the potential to disrupt ad agencies by automating creative work.
Three top creative directors told Business Insider they were using AI to win more work.
They said they were using the technology to supercharge pitches and expand their services.
Don’t sound the death knell for ad agencies yet.
Artificial intelligence threatens to upend the ad agency sector. Ever-improving tools are shortening the time it takes to produce logos, online ads, and even movies.
In the soon-to-be-published book “AI First” by Adam Brotman and Andy Sack, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is quoted as saying, “95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly, and at almost no cost be handled by AI.”
The agency world thinks differently. Business Insider spoke with three top creative directors who said that AI is fueling a creative boom and that the technology doesn’t portend an ad agency extinction event. Instead, they’re using AI to more efficiently pitch big ideas and to expand their services into areas such as content optimization. It’s Don Draper from “Mad Men,” on steroids.
“AI can be an incredible creative tool, and if we keep getting in our own way of fearing it, it’ll only date us,” said Elena Knox, an executive creativedirector at BBDO New York, which works for clients including Starbucks, SAP, and St-Germain.
Knox said she was using AI to sell ambitious concepts to clients. She and her team used tools such as Midjourney to bring to life a vision of an office where tree growth exploded into it before landing the viewer in a forest in the form of a GIF. It convinced the client to invest a multimillion-dollar production budget for shoots in New Zealand and Bulgaria.
“Before you would have had to spend hours comping that, and the image wouldn’t have existed,” Knox said. “In AI, we were able to make a quick GIF of it and show the clients: This is what we want to film.”
In a separate pitch, Knox and her team used AI to create a realistic voiceover that convinced the client they needed to invest in that particular celebrity. In yesteryear, the agency might have needed to create a multipage pitch deck to showcase why the celebrity was relevant, include their latest movies and social media followings, and perhaps call in the celebrity or a voice impersonator for testing.
“What AI allowed me to do was show the client what it felt like,” Knox said. “There’s nothing like hearing the thing and being like, well, I can’t unhear that.”
This story originally appeared on Calendar
Every week, over 100 million consumers tune in to their favorite podcasts. Some are casual listeners. Others avidly fill their queues with so many episodes and interviews that they’ll never work through them all. The growing number of online audio listeners represents a new consumer segment that businesses are increasingly targeting with their marketing messages. However, to date, there have been significant barriers to entry in the audio advertising space. Factors such as limited bandwidth, creative resources, and restrictive budgets have prevented smaller businesses from participating in the audio market.
AudioGO, a part of SiriusXM, has rewritten the script for advertising on podcasts and similar online audio channels. AudioGO’s innovative platform disrupts the market. It achieves this by making podcast advertising accessible to anyone, including those with small teams and limited marketing budgets.
In this article, we’ll explore how AudioGO democratizes digital audio advertising, making it easier than ever for small businesses, including niche and local enterprises, to amplify their message, reach their target audiences, and compete with larger brands.
Small Business Marketing Pressures and Opportunities in 2025
The rise of online listeners is staggering. In 2023, 75% of Americans 12 and older had listened to online audio content within the past month. Even more impressive is that 70% of these individuals had done so within the past week. For some context, monthly listeners were 8% in 2003.
People are tuning in to online audio more often and in greater numbers. The mass migration of tens of millions of listeners into the audio space has created a lucrative marketing opportunity. It helps businesses looking to reach consumers with their products and services.
The question is, how can they do so? Advertisements and sponsorships are obvious options, but how do those happen behind the scenes? Besides, while people are listening, is it a safe bet to assume they’ll pay attention to promotional content if you get an ad into a podcast?
To answer the second question first, you have to find the right crowd. They are likely to be hyper-tuned to what you have to say. Edison Research calls those who listen to podcasts voraciously (an average of 11.2 hours per week) Super Listeners. Half of those surveyed reported that podcast messaging is the best way for brands to connect with them. Even more of them said they pay closer attention to podcast advertisements. They claim to be more likely to patronize a brand if it advertises on a show they like.
People are flocking to audio as a preferred form of content. They are willing to accept advertisements as part of the audio experience. That means companies have a strong chance of reaching and resonating with target audiences through podcasts and similar online audio outlets.
Small Business Barriers in Audio Advertising
This still leaves the first question — and unfortunately, it’s a logistical, administrative, and financial conundrum that keeps many entrepreneurs up at night. So, how can small businesses effectively reach their target audiences with limited budgets and small teams?
Running a single 30-second podcast ad in 2024 averaged around $18 per thousand listeners. Sounds fine, right? At scale, however, this can become incredibly expensive, and scale has been the primary driver of this industry’s operations so far. Many traditional podcast advertising packages start with minimums of $5,000 per campaign. Some set the bar at $25,000 per quarter.
This is where AudioGO is shifting the tone and giving small businesses a voice in the audio advertising space.
AudioGO: Accessible Audio Advertising for Entrepreneurs
Firstly, AudioGO empowers small businesses to reach engaged listeners without the high costs or complexity of traditional ad buying. The all-in-one platform provides a robust self-service experience, enabling businesses of any size to create, target, and launch professional audio ads on major streaming services. From this platform, you can launch podcast ad campaigns across today’s top podcast players. This includes Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and iHeartRadio, and gives you access to millions of engaged listeners.
Creating and distributing ads is essential to true accessibility in this key area of modern marketing. The process of audio advertising includes several steps. Some of these are hard to see until you’re in the middle of a campaign. They include:
Firstly, identifying a target audience: There are millions of listeners tuning in, and understanding which of those are best for lead generation is critical. The first step in a successful campaign is understanding your target audience members and identifying the shows where they tend to tune in.
Creating the ads themselves: This includes the ability to craft a compelling script, stick to the right amount of time (30 seconds? 60 seconds?), attract a listener’s attention, and weave a compelling call to action into the mix. You also need to consider factors such as brand voice and tone, copy, messaging, relevance, and more.
Paying for and timing ads: Finding the right placements on shows that are willing to work with you takes a lot of legwork. You must also decide whether it’s worth paying for premiums, like a mid-roll ad placement.
Finally, analyzing, understanding, and improving: You need to know if your audio ads are working, and if not, where to make adjustments. The ability to measure a campaign, observe the results, and synthesize them enough to create meaningful takeaways is essential to ongoing ad success.
AudioGO’s comprehensive approach and intuitive tools address all four of these areas:
Targeting your audience: AudioGO has hundreds of audience parameters, including age, gender, location, device, and show topic. This precise audience targeting enables small businesses to build highly focused audiences, ensuring that every ad that plays has an optimal chance of generating a lead.
Automating ad creation: The platform’s creative tools are designed to fill skill gaps. One of these is hiring creatives. Businesses can pay $10 for a studio recording of their ads made from a stable of real voice actors who work with AudioGO. They can also utilize a free, on-demand AI-generated ad creation tool to reduce costs further.
Matching budget to campaign: AudioGO’s flexible budgeting feature enables small businesses to launch high-quality ad campaigns for as little as $250. This low threshold eliminates the barrier of ad package pricing and creates a level playing field for companies at every level.
Analyzing and improving: Advanced reporting features provide real-time feedback in a user-friendly dashboard. This empowers non-analytical professionals to understand a campaign’s impact, identify who is listening, and make data-driven adjustments.
AudioGO: Small Business Advertising Made Simple
All in all, every aspect of AudioGO’s platform is designed with equity in mind. Its creators understand the inefficiencies and barriers that giant ad packages create. They also realize that this naturally keeps millions of small businesses on the outside looking in.
Finally, by streamlining ad creation and analysis, enabling precise targeting, and lowering minimum campaign spend, AudioGO has created an accessible, low-cost, high-value advertising option. Platforms like these provide small businesses with access to a cutting-edge area of consumer technology that shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
Featured Image Credit: Photo by Austin Distel; Unsplash; Thanks!
Move sends shock waves through traditional media industry by posing threat to advertising agencies
The owner of Facebook and Instagram is to help advertisers to fully create and target campaigns using artificial intelligence tools by the end of next year, in a move that sent shock waves through the traditional marketing industry.
Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta, which also owns WhatsApp, aims to directly target brands’ marketing budgets, posing a threat to the advertising and media agencies that handle client campaigns and budgets.
The AI tools under development, first reported by the Wall Street Journal, will allow brands using Meta’s advertising platform to create ads using a product image and a planned marketing spend.
What to do if you can’t get into your Facebook or Instagram account
Read more
Meta’s platform already offers some AI tools that allow advertisers to tweak existing ads before they appear on Facebook and Instagram.
However, the new tools could disintermediate the traditional advertising creation, planning and buying roles played by agencies, as well as open up a long tail of advertisers with small budgets that cannot afford to retain marketing services companies.
The AI tools would create the entire ad – including imagery, video and text – and also target it to users in line with a client’s budget.
Targeting such as geolocation would enable an advertisement for a holiday company, for example, to be tailored to offer deals specifically related to users’ likely destinations of interest.
Investors quickly sold off some of the world’s largest marketing services as news of Meta’s planned AI rollout, which could significantly swell the $160bn (£118bn) the company already makes annually from advertising, emerged on Monday.
Shares in WPP dropped 3% in early trading, while the French companies Publicis Groupe and Havas suffered 3.9% and 3% falls respectively.
Zuckerberg, who is heavily focused on driving AI-powered advertising, has referred to the development of new tools as “a redefinition of the category of advertising”.
In April, Meta updated its outlook on spending for the next year with plans to invest between $64bn and $72bn in capital expenditure, including the cost of building out AI infrastructure.
Marketers, it’s time to rethink how to use it effectively
By Mike Hilts, Head of Product, Stirista
AI is showing up everywhere, but that doesn’t mean it’s doing everything. Or doing everything well.
Today, it seems like every platform is calling itself AI-powered. Every deck has a line about embracing machine learning. But most of what gets labeled “AI” in advertising or marketing is just automation with better branding. You’re not seeing real intelligence.
You’re seeing shortcuts: faster guesses, templated content, performance theater. Think of programmatic ad buys that automatically optimize toward the cheapest inventory just because it gets clicks. The AI isn’t thinking about brand safety or context. It’s just reacting.
The popular pitch is always the same: “AI will fix everything. Target better. Write faster. Convert more.” However, if what you feed it isn’t grounded in reality and supported with real conversions and actual decisions, you’re not building intelligence. You’re just speeding up potential mistakes.
Where AI needs our help
AI is getting better. It can flag patterns, hint at intent, and suggest what might happen next. That’s progress. But it’s still guessing.
Models confuse activity with intent all the time. A click gets counted as engagement. A fast scroll looks like interest. CTV impressions, bot traffic, and accidental taps all get tallied without understanding what actually matters.
That’s why smart marketers don’t let the machine make the call. The focus should be on using real outcomes, customer insight, and proven behavior to keep AI focused on what works. If you’re not steering it, you’re letting it drift.
And drift leads to wasted spend, bad assumptions, and missed opportunities.
AI’s real job—enhance, not replace
Smarter teams aren’t asking AI to figure it out. They’re using it to scale what already works.
Start with outcomes. Feed it conversion data and real-time behavior, not assumptions. If you know what’s working, AI should be helping you become faster and more efficient. That’s it.
Too many brands use AI to guess their audience. They build lookalikes and spray messages across platforms. We’ve seen campaigns that lean on AI to identify in-market shoppers, only to serve ads to people who’ve already converted. The model’s chasing patterns, not context. Reach goes up. Relevance disappears. Impressions don’t convert. Costs climb. Nobody stops to ask why.
AI isn’t your strategist. It’s your engine. If you hand it a flawed plan, it won’t fix it, but it will get you to the wrong place faster.
How to use it right
AI works best when it’s reinforcing proven results. That means data tied to outcomes, not impressions.
If you know what’s driving performance, AI can help you do it faster. If you don’t, it will just amplify the noise. It’s not here to fix broken strategies. It’s here to extend experience and good judgment.
People still matter, possibly more than ever
AI can write copy, but that doesn’t mean it’s good copy.
It doesn’t know your brand. It doesn’t know your customers. You do. If you don’t, that’s your real problem.
AI won’t tell you when your tone is off, when your timing is wrong, or when the message feels disconnected. It doesn’t get context. It doesn’t know when a line sounds forced or when the audience stops trusting what you’re saying.
Someone still needs to make the call on what fits, what hits, and what fails. AI can’t feel friction. It can’t hear what people aren’t saying. That’s where good marketing lives.
The best work is coming from the people who understand AI as a tool, not those handing over control and hoping the model knows what to do with it. For Stirista, that means helping clients understand their unique customer segments and the nuance that makes messaging resonate authentically.
Where the industry goes from here
AI isn’t the future of marketing or advertising. Smarter marketers are.
The winning edge won’t come from the model. It will come from the data behind it and the people steering the output. The winners aren’t the ones with the flashiest demos. They are the ones turning smart use of AI into actual results.
This isn’t about becoming an AI company. It’s about being a better marketing company that knows when to lead and when to let the tools follow. It’s about being—or partnering with—a company focused on building a smarter marketing ecosystem where AI is a valuable tool within a broader strategy guided by data integrity and human insight.
Ask better questions. Pay attention to what you’re feeding the machine. If you’re not thinking clearly, AI won’t fix it. It will just help you fail faster.
—
Mike Hilts oversees Stirista’s product innovation and development, ensuring the company’s offerings remain at the forefront of the industry. With extensive experience in product management and a deep understanding of the adtech landscape, Hilts focuses on delivering solutions that combine cutting-edge technology with user-friendly functionality.
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has officially released its updated General Terms for Digital Advertising Agreements—and the organization is opening a 60-day public comment period until July 21, 2025.
The IAB standard terms and conditions (T&Cs) were originally created in May 2001, but according to the company, digital advertising media buys have not kept up with changes in technology, transaction types, or platform capabilities, which has led to legal burdens, slowed the process, and resulted in more complex negotiations.
According to IAB, the 3.0 version of T&Cs has been in market since 2010, while the terms for Coredge and lead gen, as well as video, have been used in market since around 2015.
“This is an opportunity for the broader IAB community and the digital ad industry to address the tremendous changes that have happened in the digital advertising landscape since then,” Michael Hahn, evp and general counsel, IAB and IAB Tech Lab, told ADWEEK. “In light of that changing landscape, there are a lot more different parts of the distribution chain than previously existed.”
The new and clearer foundation for digital ad transactions means buys can happen quicker and with less hassle, whether through direct buy or programmatic buying. The terms also aim to provide easier engagement with different vendors to support digital ad transactions, like measurement and ad verification providers.
“What we’re trying to address is a more holistic and broader set of relationships that exists in the digital ad distribution chain,” Hahn said. “There are certain things that you see over and over again in contracts—and can we standardize around a core set of terms and then create modularity and different addendums that address different types of deals that build on top of that?”
According to Angelina Eng, vp, measurement, addressability & data center, IAB, the company is aware that there are certain aspects, like the number of days of a certain term, that require flexibility.
“We’ve incorporated the opportunity to put together some scenarios of different timings of certain things and when they need to be delivered—and offer a set of flexibilities so that companies don’t have to be so rigid,” Eng said. “There is the option to select a different number of days for different types of deals and contracts.”
Updated terms for efficient transactions
The updated terms were worked on for over a year by 276 IAB member companies, including major holding companies like Omnicom and Publicis, as well as independent agencies such as Butler/Till and Canvas Worldwide, brands like Unilever and Bayer, and media publishers like Hearst and NBCUniversal, top ad tech firms, and law firms.
These terms are meant to support a full range of today’s digital transactions and include a standardized foundation for most deal types, which will make it easier to transact efficiently. More business-specific terms will be addressed in a separate addendum, which will be customized to each transaction type, developed in parallel by IAB’s Terms & Conditions Task Force.
Eng said IAB is currently working on various different forms of addendums that will be released over the next few years, and noted that it will focus more on financial and legal obligations. She added that they will also be looking at direct buys, programmatic guarantees, private marketplace deals, sponsorship contracts, and other topics.
According to Eng, there will be another draft for direct buys that will come out in the next few months, which can be released either at the end of the year or early next year.
“These are core terms that are your foundational set of terms, and then we are going to have those various different agendas that we’ve listed in the cover page on various different scenarios,” Eng said.
IAB is inviting all industry stakeholders to review and comment on the new general terms by July 21, 2025. Feedback is expected to shape the final version, which IAB anticipates will be a new foundation for digital advertising agreements within the industry.
“An update to T&Cs is long overdue, and I’m glad to see this coming out of IAB,” Christy Loftus, svp, data logistics, Canvas Worldwide, said in a statement. “Standardizing how we approach advertising agreements allows for greater consistency and gives the industry a baseline on the expectations for all sides of media.”
