programmatic

Next Generation Artificial Intelligence

  • TOWN HALL

Professor Russ Newman of New York University does not believe that AI will cause humanity’s extinction. Instead, it should help enhance human intelligence and productivity and our quality of life. After putting the AI revolution into historical context, Prof. Newman discussed aligning AI with human values. At our current stage, he believes the regulatory mechanisms in place are sufficient. He explained how large language models work, what allowed them to come into existence and their future impact, describing the effect on marketing and advertising, as well as what the individual user experience will be like. A democratizing, hyper-personalized experience could take place where AI agents advocate on their owner’s behalf and negotiate each transaction with their owner’s preferences in mind. Over time, he sees a great diversification of models coming into being. Historically speaking, each groundbreaking technology that changed the world has been a net gain for humanity. What makes AI different is that if applied correctly, it could make us smarter. The question is, if AI gives us exceptional advice, will we take it?

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Brand Safety, Social Targeting, and Who Needs Highly Creative Ads?

  • INSIDE THE JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH

At this Insights Studio, JAR authors in Australia, China and the U.S. presented their recently published research on topics that some in industry may consider controversial. One found evidence of brand safety risks in programmatic advertising when ads were placed in negative news environments, contradicting some industry research. Another discovered social targeting spillover effects that suggest advertisers rethink conventional targeting methods. Other work came with unexpected findings: that highly creative advertising—although important for attracting attention—can have harmful effects on familiar brands, while benefiting unfamiliar brands. In the concluding Q&A, panelists explored aspects of brand recall relevant to their research, and whether brand size and other media channels would affect their results.

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Brands Should Do More to Protect Their Image Online, Study Shows

  • Journal of Advertising Research

Brand safety is a hot topic in programmatic advertising, which is lauded for its efficient distribution but comes with big risks—particularly the unfiltered placement of digital ads next to negative content. New research offers empirical evidence of such risks, including damage to consumers’ perceptions, and calls for brands to do more to protect themselves.

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A Brand’s Perspective: Building a Measurement Strategy Around Attention Metrics

Marc Guldimann of Adelaide interviewed Laurel Van Tassel on Anheuser-Busch InBev’s use of attention metrics. Laurel said she sympathized with those who spoke during panel discussion about viewability. When she was with GoupM she said they were buying on viewability and the CPMs were very expensive. When she arrived at ABI they split their strategy into finding new users and retention. Their focus on attention began with the need for retention. “We knew if we wanted to start attention testing, we wanted to leave our creative and data strategies the same and only have media be the variable that we’re optimizing against.”

The Relevance and Power of Context in Today’s Media Environment

The ARF Cognition Council presented an event focused on advertising within news content and context effects in programmatic buying. The first panel presented research on the effectiveness of advertising within news content on television and online, drawing from available qualitative, quantitative, and neuroscience evidence. The second panel delved into the potential opportunity for the context in which an ad is placed to be used in programmatic buying as the third-party cookie becomes less important.

Audi Switzerland Integrates Attention Metrics & AI into Programmatic Bidding to Drive Business Outcomes

Zach Kubin of Adelaide began the session by explaining how reach has become increasingly fragmented. Digital, viewability and ACR tell an incomplete story, which makes it difficult to assess the quality of the media brands are buying. Adelaide combines all the available metrics into their own algorithm, which they call the Attention Metric (AU). Filip Pujic of Audi gave details from the car company’s use case, where it integrated AU using Adelaide’s algorithm into programmatic bidding, driving positive business outcomes. Audi will conduct a follow-up study to validate the results they have received.

The Rise of Retail Media: Latest Trends, Opportunities and Challenges for Retailers and Brands

In providing an overview of retail media’s latest trends, opportunities and challenges for retailers and brands, Michael Ellgass (Circana) shared results from analyses of over 100 CPG studies that looked at channel performance in retail media networks and the halo impact outside those networks. Finding that the total incremental sales impact is often larger than what the retail media can see in their own outlets and that most shoppers are influenced by a variety of channels, Michael presented the nuanced data that supported a combined approach for maximum impact.

The Quality Media Framework

Michael Siewert (Colgate-Palmolive) and Souptik Datta (GroupM) presented how their companies worked together to combine measurement data for building custom solutions around bidding in the programmatic space. Colgate wanted to create their own quality definition for their inventory and be able to benchmark at a scalable cost benefit. Building a framework around their definition of quality and creating their own “qCPM” metric allowed them to understand the details of performance at a baseline and optimize with machine learning across 80+ markets and varying formats.