In this week’s guest member blog post, we caught up with Wayne Tassie, Group Director, Integrated Solutions EMEA at DoubleVerify. Wayne dives into what Artificial Intelligence (AI) is to our industry, how we should approach this and how it can benefit your company. To find out more read below.
When a concept such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) resurfaces in Media, we as a collective community tend to laser focus on the emerging topic. We strive to decipher ‘our’ position, through a matrixed lens that aligns with both corporate and personal beliefs. Cookie deprecation, Attention metrics, custom algorithms and hybrid working are themes that we have communally debated over the last few years. AI is the current thought-provoking subject matter, sending us down the rabbit hole of internalised contemplation. Our cerebration leaning towards questions such as, how does this trending concept affect my role and my team? What impact does this have on our company? What is ‘our’ POV, how do we stay ahead of the curve? How do I effectively communicate this to my customers, and is this a subject that they actually care about?
The truth is that AI is an old trusted friend within digital advertising, and should not be sending us into a collective state of hyper-consideration. It has underpinned product R&D for the last two decades and has been fundamental within programmatic interoperability, since its conception. Whilst AI in its most recent iteration, will increasingly remove the heavy lifting across programmatic trading and optimisation, there are always going to be elements that require human centricity and hands on interaction.
DoubleVerify (DV) leverages AI for ontological content classification and fraud analysis as there's just too much data out there for humans in silo to process or react to it as fast as AI with machine learning and machine execution. Our recent partnership and acquisition of Scibids, underpins our belief that custom AI driven algorithms are the future of our industry when it comes to driving quality media, performance and quantifiable outcomes. AI is required for any multivariate programmatic buying - as in weighing multiple data points and data sources against each other to figure out what inventory to buy, at what price with maximum potential for optimisation. Volume of data is a key factor for the use of AI, but campaign complexity and the human-resource it takes to manage multiple campaigns on an ongoing basis is a driver as well. Putting aside the increase in performance or decrease in cost, traders can very easily find themselves in a position where they could generate the insights, but not have time to analyse the data effectively or action data driven decisions off the back of their analysis. DV Attention solutions are another example where Scibids AI streamlines programmatic optimisation towards high-attention creatives for our brand and agency partners. This approach supports a more data driven dialogue between brand stakeholders and their creative agencies.
When it comes to attribution, 'success' needs to be meticulously defined. Whilst we still come across CTR, CPC and CPA campaigns on lower funnel attribution, complex bespoke metrics around quality, attention and outcomes have become increasingly commonplace on mid to upper funnel activity. Tying this complexity back across the whole customer journey, manually, is a non-option. Paradoxically, using non-traditional emerging AI driven attribution models, was always going to create an element of scepticism, before trust was built with all parties across the transaction; both supply side and demand side. The value exchange between the maturation of AI and advertiser performance has burned bright in recent years. Taking their favourite outcomes data sets, such as purchase data, and feeding it seamlessly into programmatic models throughout the funnel, has defined success, meticulously….
Can AI go one step further in 2024 to solve the sustainability conundrum, regarding how we balance green media at the potential detriment of campaign performance? Is there enough sustainable inventory, and what are the real-world implications on investment, benchmarking and media CPMs. For me, next year will be when sustainable prioritisation will be high on the agenda. AI optimised programmatic investment in the open market (OMP) is where we will define the status quo and green-scale.
All things considered, AI ubiquity does not mean that we as an industry are sacrificing human or customer centricity in favour of a simulation of human intelligence between programmatic systems. AI cannot and will never replace customer service, customer satisfaction, human interaction or relationship building. People still buy into people, and whether consciously or subconsciously, base part of the decision making, regarding whom they want to partner with, on chemistry, relationships and friendship. As it should be.
About DoubleVerify
DoubleVerify (“DV”) (NYSE: DV) is a leading software platform for digital media measurement and analytics. Our mission is to make the digital advertising ecosystem stronger, safer and more secure, thereby preserving the fair value exchange between buyers and sellers of digital media. Hundreds of Fortune 500 advertisers employ our unbiased data and analytics to drive campaign quality and effectiveness, and to maximise return on their digital advertising investments – globally. Learn more at www.doubleverify.com.
