Advertising Week Europe 2024: MINT Interview on Stage

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The last Advertising Week Europe Conference in London has been nothing but extraordinary in terms of insights and inspirations.

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Our Chief Growth Officer Salvatore Internullo was interviewed by Ruth Mortimer, Global President at Advertising Week, to discuss the impact of AI on media and marketing operations.

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While Generative AI made headlines in the past years on the creative side with AI-supported asset generation, according to the Marketing leaders, the true potential lies in optimizing processes, workflows and media spendings.

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We discussed how the fragmented technology and media landscape holds challenges and opportunities for AI and how marketers can leverage the full potential of new technologies and an AI-powered advertising resource management.

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Let's review the main highlights and takeaways of our session.

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AI Potential for CMOs and Media Leaders

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While creativity in generative AI applications captures the imagination, the real impact is seen in operational enhancements.

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In the first block, the conversation focused on the role of AI for the contemporary Marketing and media leadership.

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According to a recent report by Ad exchanger, in the next 12-18 months, brands and agencies will completely redefine the impact of AI for their advertising operations, with campaign budgeting and management becoming the expected preferred use case for AI implementation for 73% of marketing leaders.

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The most significant potential of AI in marketing, as we've seen both at MINT and across the industry, lies in its ability to optimize processes, workflows, and media spendings. This is happening for two main reasons currently shaping our industry:

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1. The barriers between advertising and marketing technologies are diminishing, driven by the need to streamline processes and reduce costs while improving campaign effectiveness through integrated data strategies.

2. There is a growing necessity for a unified approach to data management to reduce silos, ensure compliance and security, and enhance decision-making capabilities in all B2C and B2B organizations.

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The result is a convergence of MarTech and AdTech solutions to support companies' growth thanks to AI with new types of software that can effectively drive business transformation.

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The Role of AI in Driving Growth Strategies

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Moving on, the interview focused on the pivotal role of AI in driving growth strategies for companies in their marketing activities.

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According to Statista, the global market value of AI applications for marketing is expected to grow from $27.4 billion in 2023 to $107.4 billion in 2028.

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In 2024, this market value will reach $ 36 billion with a +31% growth YOY: companies from all sectors, experiences and sizes will embrace AI for their marketing activities and this trend will be transformational for our industry.

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From MINT direct experience, we have identified three main growth directories for AI use in daily marketing and advertising operations to grow productivity, business results and customer experience:

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1. Marketing Automation to boost Productivity: human teams will get rid of redundant and repetitive tasks and will be able to focus more on pure cognitive and strategic tasks.  

2. Strategy Optimization and Forecasting to Improve Business Outcomes: AI can accelerate insights retrieval to provide actionable recommendations for marketing professionals.

3. Content Generation and Personalization to Enhance Customers' Experience: while AI cannot replicate the exact creativity of human professionals, it can generate personalized content suggestions, ad copy, subject headlines, and calls to action, augmenting the overall content creation process.

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How to Build AI-enabled Teams

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The conversation quickly moved to practical integrations of AI in media and marketing teams.

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AI-enabled teams are composed of individuals who not only understand AI capabilities but are also able at integrating these technologies into broader marketing strategies.

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These teams possess cross-functional expertise, including data scientists, media experts, advertising specialists, marketing strategists, and project managers, allowing them to tackle problems from various perspectives and develop holistic solutions.  

These teams are also characterized by their agility and adaptability, swiftly responding to new information and shifts in market dynamics.

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Ethical considerations and compliance with regulatory standards, particularly regarding data privacy, are also paramount to their operations.

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Given the rapid evolution of AI, continuous learning and development are essential, with these teams consistently updating their knowledge and strategies to remain at the forefront of innovation.  

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Highly functioning teams are strategic, but AI adoption needs to follow a top-down approach with deep leadership's involvement: CMOs and Media Leaders need to develop the right level of AI knowledge to navigate the minefield of technologies and vendor offerings, separating fact from fiction, to effectively build, buy or hire the right solutions.

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All involved teams should then be enabled through a common AI layer, possibly a comprehensive end-to-end platform or software.

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Stand-alone applications continue to have their place if integration is difficult or impossible, but there are limits to their benefits as they increment the risk of increasing internal siloes.

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AI Capabilities Beyond Creative Tasks

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In the second part of our session, the conversation moved to practical uses of AI beyond pure creativity: according to Salvatore Internullo, in fact, after almost 2 years of GenAI hype, we are finally experiencing a shift from creativity-focused applications to broader operational enhancements.

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AI is ready to be a transformative force in advertising, not just for content creation but also for improving efficiency and effectiveness through automation and data analysis.

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The industry is moving towards integrating AI in various operational phases, such as campaign budgeting and management, to optimize advertising strategies and outcomes.  

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The potential of AI extends to predictive and prescriptive models, which are expected to play significant roles in future advertising operations.  

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Findings from a recent global survey by Klaviyo and Qualtrics involving over 1,500 marketers suggest that within a few years, generative AI will be just one component of a broader AI marketing toolkit.  

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‍53% of marketers have already used predictive AI in the last 6 months and 49% flag that performing marketing analytics would be their preferred AI use.  

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How to Address Technology and Media Fragmentation in Advertising

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During the interview, we also focused on how a fragmented landscape can directly impact the daily efficiency and effectiveness of media and advertising professionals.

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Today, besides agencies, advertisers work with a multitude of partners and intermediaries – DSPs, SSPs, ad networks, data providers – with teams specializing in different channels, from search and influencer marketing to retail media, just to mention a few examples.

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As a result, marketing and media teams face the challenge of making sense of millions of data points generated by these layers and transferring information across workflows.

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But, even in organizations that consider themselves digitally mature, advertising teams haven’t yet caught up with the digital transformation that has helped streamline data, processes, and workflows in other business areas.

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Technology fragmentation can be addressed by consolidating tools, improving integration across advertising platforms, and utilizing AI to orchestrate activities and operations.

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By streamlining processes and optimizing collaboration, AI helps overcome inefficiencies, lack of cohesion, and challenges in managing multiple media channels effectively.

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‍ARM solutions like MINT are here to address and resolve fragmentation providing automated data and process integration.

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AI in Advertising Resource Management

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At the end of the session, Salvatore Internullo explored how brands and media agencies can now consolidate all information relating to advertising operations in one place, accessible as a single source of truth, with the help of technology.

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Centralization and holistic view improve governance, ensuring that all stakeholders can access the data relevant to their roles and responsibilities and are empowered to take action in a unified framework.

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Once advertising resources are centralized, it is possible to simplify and automate processes and workflows at all levels of campaign orchestration, from strategy and planning to execution and reporting, starting with automating manual, tedious tasks to drive efficiencies.

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From reducing errors to improving speed, automation helps teams become more productive and compliant while freeing up time to focus on higher-value tasks.

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Here is where AI can significantly transform advertising operations by introducing optimization capabilities.

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Today, predictive AI empowers advertisers to make informed decisions at every step of the media workflow, continuously refining recommendations on how to optimize spend or choose the best campaign parameters according to their most valuable KPIs.

Thanks to Ruth Mortimer, to Advertising Week and to all attendees for this insightful session!