AI is transforming how organizations generate insights and forecast outcomes, but questions remain about reliability and the need for human oversight. On September 14-15 in NYC, industry and academic leaders gathered to discuss integrating AI into analytics workflows and maintaining transparency.
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Generative AI is changing how advertising creative is developed—but not by replacing human creativity. Drawing on interviews with industry leaders and a broad review of emerging research, this ARF Creative Council white paper examines how AI is being used across the creative process, from briefing and ideation to personalization and optimization. It explores where AI delivers the greatest value today, the risks organizations continue to navigate and why human judgment remains central to producing distinctive, effective advertising.
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What happens to brand growth when consumers increasingly turn to AI assistants instead of relying on familiar brands or traditional search results? As generative AI becomes a more influential part of product discovery and purchasing decisions, marketers face new questions about how brands gain visibility, enter consumers' consideration sets and compete for attention. In MSI Working Paper, Tri-System Brand Growth: The AI Mediation Layer, researcher Pablo Ulpiano González Castro introduces a framework that adds AI availability to the established concepts of mental and physical availability. Drawing on brand-growth theory, an experiment and cross-category measurement research, the paper examines how AI-generated recommendations may reinforce existing brand advantages or create new opportunities for competing brands, and what these changes mean for marketing strategy and brand measurement.
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AI-optimized, omnichannel campaigns are changing how media are planned, activated and measured. Drawing on in-depth interviews with advertisers and providers, the ARF Cross-Platform Measurement Council’s Attribution Working Group examined omnichannel campaign tools such as Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+, exploring their potential to simplify execution, optimize across channels and improve performance. Their research also identified important tradeoffs, including transparency, testing capabilities and ongoing measurement and governance challenges.
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As generative AI becomes more deeply embedded in advertising, understanding its implications requires looking at both how marketers are adopting it and how consumers are responding. On July 22, the ARF brought these perspectives together through presentations from the ARF and Humantel Media, followed by a broader discussion.
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Generative AI is becoming an active participant in the purchase journey, helping consumers compare products, interpret information and select among alternatives. Based on a survey of 500 adults who use AI at least weekly and have used it for shopping or product research, the latest report in the ARF and MSI Psych of Gen AI series examines how much of the decision process consumers are willing to delegate, where they still insist on control and what their growing reliance on AI means for marketers.
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Getting noticed is only the beginning. As consumers discover brands through search engines, social platforms, creators, retail environments and AI-powered tools, visibility alone no longer guarantees relevance or consideration. In her latest article for The Advertising Club of New York, Tracy Adams, PhD, Senior Director of Research & Insights at the ARF, examines how the changing discovery landscape is reshaping the relationship between brands and consumers. Drawing on recent ARF and industry research, she explores why recognition, relevance, credibility and trust are increasingly important to turning brand exposure into meaningful consumer engagement.
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As consumers add AI-powered search engines to their information routines, their behavior changes with the platform and purpose of the search. An observational study of 848 real-world searches found that traditional search still dominated while AI-powered search was used more often for advice-seeking, drew substantially longer queries and produced fewer outbound clicks. The findings suggest that advertisers may need to rethink long-tail keyword strategies, website optimization and ad models as search behavior becomes divided across traditional and generative platforms.
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