5 AI takeaways from Advertising Week 2024

This year’s Advertising Week New York conference hit on the biggest developments in the ad industry, and to little surprise AI was one of the headliners. Although the technology was all the rage last year as well, AI has evolved in numerous ways since then. The conversations and themes at Advertising Week reflected the evolution—nuance was emphasized over novelty, and everyone from traditional brands to agencies to new players in the AI space were pitching marketers on tools that supposedly cut through the noise. One such company was Perplexity, the AI search engine, which drew an enormous crowd to a panel featuring one of its ad execs. Also read: AI in ads divides consumers Yet, despite marketers claiming that AI has matured, several instances at Advertising Week suggested that the space was still rife with exaggerated hype. Attendees at Penn District were bombarded with signage boasting “AI-powered” yada yada yada. One panel actually presented what could be considered AI performance art, featuring an actress portraying a chatbot. Ad Age has compiled these, and other moments, into a shortlist highlighting AI’s role at this year’s Advertising Week New York, showing how the technology was being used, abused and mused about in the ad world. “AI” here, there and everywhere First things first: AI was the real sponsor of Advertising Week, which runs through Thursday. Yes, Snap and Netflix were quite visible thanks to big ads strewn throughout the event space, but if an attendee took a closer look at the miscellaneous booths and partner setups, the term “AI” was featured far more frequently. Software company Moloco was offering an AI boba bar, where attendees could learn more about Moloco’s AI-powered services while slurping down complimentary tapioca balls. Mediaocean, the advertising platform, had an AI photo booth, where visitors could take selfies, have them transformed by AI “magic” and share them on social media. Resonate, a consumer intelligence firm, had a big floor presence with signs that said “Powered by rAI,” referencing Resonate’s proprietary version of the technology. Nearby, programmatic advertising platform Viant was promoting its own AI with a sign claiming it’s the “future of advertising intelligence.” As attendees were bombarded with AI messaging at Advertising Week this year, it could have reminded them of the frequency with which Web3 and blockchain terminology appeared at industry events in prior years. While most people are more bullish on AI versus Web3, the over-hype still felt very much real. Perplexity AI draws big interest One of the more popular sessions at Advertising Week was a panel Tuesday featuring a marketing executive from Perplexity, the AI search-engine. The program drew scores of attendees, far more than the number of available chairs, so that people had to stand at the perimeter of the room. Perplexity is a well-known name in the AI space, and it has grabbed marketers’ attention for reasons both good and bad. The company is one of the first AI-native platforms to formally announce a plan to include ads in its service, which was largely the reason why so many people attended the Advertising Week session. Andrew Beck, head of go-to-market for Perplexity’s advertising business, teased what these advertising opportunities will look like, such as brands being able to sponsor “related questions” that appear below a user’s search. The search results won’t change based on the brand that is advertising; for example, if Nike were advertising alongside shoe-related searches, the AI wouldn’t return more Nike-related content. Perplexity’s ad products will focus on helping brands increase awareness and lift through consumer engagement, as opposed to more traditional measures of success for search advertising, such as driving conversions, click-through-rates and traffic to a brand’s website, Beck said during the panel. This week, Perplexity also announced a partnership with data platform LiveRamp to bolster its advertising experience, which is expected to launch next month. Aside from its ad business, Perplexity has made waves in the world of publishing, accused of copying articles from websites—a concern held by many publishers as AI grows its internet reach. Forbes and Wired claimed Perplexity plagiarized their content in its search results. The copyright issue, however, was not addressed during the panel despite a reporter’s inquiry. AI performance art? One of the ways that AI showed up at Advertising Week may have been a first. On Tuesday, for a session dubbed “There’s No One AI Button—But Many Companies Are Succeeding,” one of the panelists pretended to be an AI chatbot named Jane Doe, which was trained on public data belonging to more than 30 AI companies. The bot was portrayed on stage by a human actor who spoke whatever text the bot generated. Jane Doe’s listed title was “CEO of Every AI Company,” a tongue-in-cheek nod to the bot’s purpose on stage, namely, to spout vague answers so that the human panelists could comment on them. For example, when asked to talk about video generation, Jane Doe explained how her platform could provide it instantly. Fellow panelist Laura Chau, a partner at Canaan Partners, responded: “When I hear ‘instant video generation,’ I don’t really believe it.” At times, the Jane Doe bot felt like a piece of performance art. Whenever she wasn’t speaking, she would “power down” to a statuesque position with eyes closed. Then, when called upon by the moderator, she would snap to life with a big smile and quick answer. The effort received some laughs, generated a ton of opportunities for videos, and plenty of confusion. Early in the session, attendees could be heard asking each other, “Is it a real person?” After the session, as people were exiting, one attendee was overheard saying to a peer, “I don’t really know what the objective of that was.” The duality of AI and misinformation One commonly cited consequence of AI’s ability to quickly generate content is that it could enable bad actors to spread misinformation far more easily. That was the topic of a panel on Tuesday called “Strategies to Safeguard Your Brand and Navigate Misinformation.” The panel discussed how brands needed to guard against unwanted or harmful content appearing near their ads. Much undesirable content online is a product of generative AI, said panelist David Byrne, executive VP of global brand safety and privacy at IPG Mediabrands. On the other hand, AI also could play a constructive role combatting the dissemination of AI-generated misinformation. Panelist Lisa Utzschneider, CEO of Integral Ad Science, spoke to this use case when she discussed her company’s misinformation detection product, which it rolled out this spring. The service leverages AI to digest reams of data quickly in order to scour different sources of media for misinformation. A human reviews the findings to determine whether the content identified was indeed misinformation. Social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, are integrating with the misinformation detection product, Utzschneider said during the panel. TikTok became the latest partner to enable brands to use this feature, too, per a company announcement this week. These tie-ups suggest that AI is both enabler and enforcer when it comes to the harmful content that is presenting serious obstacles to internet advertising. Meanwhile, in a separate panel Tuesday, Toni Clayton-Hine, Ernst & Young’s chief marketing officer, reassured business-to-business marketers in the audience that they didn't need to worry about deepfakes, which have affected B2C brands such as Le Creuset. “The things we sell and create are not cool enough [to be deepfaked],” said Clayton-Hine during a session titled “AI in the Spotlight: Creating Compelling Narratives that Resonate.” With a laugh, Clayton-Hine added: “I don’t know if there are consultants being deepfaked out there, but [if so] they’d probably be excited.” Social platforms launch more AI ad tools Several social media giants leveraged the occasion of Advertising Week to launch new AI tools for brands. TikTok announced an ad product called Smart+, which uses AI to automate targeting, bidding and creative and thus enhance campaign performance. Another ad product called GMV Max will automate campaign creation for TikTok Shop merchants. Meanwhile, Meta announced new generative AI capabilities for advertisers, including an expansion of video ad creation, logo incorporation in AI-generated images, and the ability to animate static images. Leading up to Advertising Week, Pinterest launched Performance+, an automated campaign enhancement platform that resembles TikTok’s Smart+. Ad Age Next: CMO Get your tickets for the Dec. 7 event in New York Register here

5 AI takeaways from Advertising Week 2024

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