Pereira O’Dell is opening a lab dedicated to developing new AI tools specifically for marketers. The entity is called Silverside AI, and will be headquartered out of the ad agency’s office in San Francisco to build a bridge to the Silicon Valley tech scene.

Startups will work alongside Pereira O’Dell and its clients to experiment with generative AI, machine learning and new models, to formulate solutions for the many disciplines within the advertising business, including media, data, creative and customer experience. Silverside plays the role of incubator, a Silicon Valley institution that supports early-stage companies by providing a range of resources, including networking and physical space.

While AI incubators have emerged widely over the past year, a lab entirely focused on advertising services is uncommon, said Rob Wrubel, managing director of Silverside and a Silicon Valley veteran. The tight focus, he hopes, will allow startups to address technological concerns plaguing marketers.

For instance, Silverside aims to help brands to generate images that are not trained on copyrighted data—an issue that has prevented marketers such as BBDO from using AI to create consumer-facing material. 

This is “not something a Stable Diffusion will want to solve,” Wrubel said, alluding to the popular, text-to-image model developed by Stability AI.

Silverside’s proximity to Silicon Valley signals its other primary purpose: to be a matchmaker between startups and brands. The tech hotbed saw over $11 billion invested in local AI firms in the first three months of 2023, accounting for nearly 50% of global AI investment that quarter, according to Pitchbook data provided by Pereira O’Dell. With dozens of burgeoning AI companies headquartered in the Bay Area, the lab aims to connect them with marketers who otherwise may not have the access nor knowledge to seek them out on their own.

Silverside will offer access to some larger high-profile providers, said Wrubel, but the lab’s focus is on early-stage startups. Inaugural partners include Pactto, which allows creatives to record themselves giving live feedback on a media asset; GoCharlie, a multimodal AI platform built for ad markets; and Rembrand, a service that uses AI to streamline product placement.

Pereira O’Dell will run the lab as a separate entity alongside Serviceplan Group, which is launching a similar AI hub in Munich, Germany. Silverside is named after the Jack Silverside fish, a species native to the bay bordering Silicon Valley.

Last fall, Pereira O’Dell unveiled an AI platform called Insights Machine, which allows clients to hold focus groups with AI-generated consumers. The service will be available as part of the Silverside program, Wrubel said.

Many other ad agencies are expanding their AI footprints. Last month, Publicis Groupe and WPP separately announced $300 million-plus investments in the technology, and Dentsu struck a partnership with Amazon for access to its generative AI tools.