Note to brands and agencies: AI is both an enabler and a smiling assassin
The world of media planning is increasingly leaning on AI tools, argues TrinityP3’s Stephen Wright. So what happens when big digital platforms use the same tools to inflate performance and maximise yield?
Conversations around AI now dominate marketing discussions. I’m sure your email inbox and Linkedin are filled with it. Mine certainly is.
Agentic is the new buzzword: with everyone promising their advanced AI system that can act autonomously to achieve what you need (usually for a third of the price of a human).
Positive conversations abound with self-interested parties often gushing about the cost efficiency and improved cost effectiveness AI can deliver. It’s typically being sold as a ‘must have’ enabler, a pathway to improved value, a short cut to results, a time saver, or a game changer … and yes, it has the potential to be all of that … but there is a darker side that marketers need to be thinking about.
AI and media remuneration
In media, there are two client spends in play – the dollars paid as fees for services and the dollars invested by the agency on media inventory for the client.
With regard to remuneration and the fees, AI is almost entirely positive. Machines are achieving clear efficiencies and performing tasks faster and more effectively than a human ever could. AI still needs management (the “human in the loop”), it’s no straight swap, but even allowing for human resources, there are both savings and an improved service. The upside and benefits are clear.
AI and media performance
With regard to funds spent on media inventory, the picture is less clear-cut and indeed there are traps for marketers to be aware of.
Stephen Wright
AI is deployed on both sides of the ledger – clients and agencies are using it to find improved efficiencies but is increasingly now being weaponised by media vendors to manipulate and package audience data to maximise yield.
The global behemoths Google and Meta are leading the charge in this area with their ‘black box’ tools operating inside the walled gardens to manipulate and package search findings and the audience information coming out.
These well-funded tech giants have deep pockets and the capacity to ensure that any potential client savings (revenue loss to them) are countered by their capability to control the audience data released.
They are also able to use walled gardens with its well-established secrecy and absolute control of the audience information coming out, which gives them a significant advantage. One they’re not afraid to use.
Recent claims of manipulation by Meta in the UK are a testament to this. It took an internal whistleblower to bring the matter to light long after the event.
From a TrinityP3 perspective, we often hear how large tech players are slowly squeezing the market, diminishing recognition of their publisher-based competitors and in the process are strangling the open web.
The supermarket equivalent would be the big players slowly taking over nearly all the shelf space, limiting smaller competitors to knee-level placement at the fringes outside of the eyeline.
AI-based efficiencies and savings in the digital space will be hard fought. Globally, outside of China, Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, and TikTok take more than 60% of advertising dollars.
Marketers without AI and skilled practitioners to drive the AI (eg. what’s your AI search optimisation plan?) will in the coming years see performance decline. The potential for AI to be a foe rather than a friend is significant.
AI and performance measurement
Market Mix Models have quickly become the first port of call for marketers in determining what works within their marketing plan and which channels they should be capitalising on to deploy funds most efficiently.
The new wave of offerings with independent direct client relationships are now seen by clients as a central source of truth and held in greater relevance than the ‘agency blackbox’ that used to dominate budget allocation.
As audience data increasingly comes under question, the measures of client sales and spend carry greater confidence.
The new wave of smarter, faster MMM offerings offers significant potential benefits (indeed, more and more clients are asking us about them). With more responsive systems, the entry-point media spend in Australia for generating reliable findings is no more than $5 mill. Far lower than the threshold spend required only a few years ago.
MMMs have quickly become the marketer’s trusted friend and confidante to help navigate the AI world.
AI the leveller
Another point for marketers to remember is that AI raises the floor – not the ceiling.
As access to AI grows, the advantages it makes available to you are also likely available to all of your competitors. A new channel, or other media advantage, is likely to be picked up on by a number of category players relatively quickly, especially in highly competitive sectors where all the players watch each other.
AI is levelling many traditional advantages through its ability to assess and reliably report almost instantly on the media channels and environments within channels. There will always be better AI and better drivers of the technology, but the underlying effect of machine-based learning will be to direct more players into the obvious funnels of what works for a category.
Advantages within categories, based on numbers and data, will diminish over time as AI clusters activity around these tried and tested proof points. Ironically, differentiation, a clear brand and innovative thinking have never been more critical.
Moving beyond AI to amplify effect
The good news is that as AI becomes a market leveller, another opportunity emerges.
We need to remember AI is not a fortune teller. AI is walking backwards into the future, as it can only assess historical data to make projections. In the area of media strategy, it remains very limited (especially amid changing consumer habits) in its scope to assess lateral opportunity outside of its information pool.
‘AI: it can just as easily be the smiling assassin’
AI will have the effect of clustering the activity of you and your competitors, at which point another key principle of media kicks in: the power of cut through.
Only big spending market-leading brands can benefit and fully capitalise if everyone is competing in the same media pools.
TrinityP3 took the very best media campaign work from the various Australian trade media awards for the last two years and assessed the capacity of AI to have come up with the great ideas and insights on show.
Even being generous to AI, it would have been unable to come up with only 20% of the activity awarded. Award-winning activity was from opportunities created by humans (remember those?) and innovative ‘first-in-market’ vehicles that wouldn’t require more lateral thinking than the average large language model (LLM) can typically deliver.
Lateral thinking and new ways of going to market remain the domain of the best strategic minds. In fact, they are likely to stand out in a world where a lot of media planning is increasingly being ChatGPTed (or other LLM service).
AI in media selection and usage works best at delivering efficiency of the known, then effectiveness through adaptation, but becomes severely limited in the area of invention.
The net effect of AI, therefore, is to increase the value of high-quality human thinking and the best strategists.
Media activity and the effectiveness of spend will be best amplified where a brand has clear space and an exclusive share of mind.
Moving forward, we see the skill sets required of a media agency partner polarise into two distinct areas:
- AI capability and skilled practitioners in driving the technologies to optimise value.
- A high-performing media strategy team with examples of great thinking that delivered advantage and an amplified presence
So what does all this mean for marketers?
Here’s a checklist of the key questions savvy marketers will be asking:
- How am I using AI within my media planning currently? In the area of agency remuneration, but more importantly, in the performance of inventory.
- Am I securing advantage and mitigating risk to optimal effect?
- Are my agency partners proactively raising the issues and opportunities?
- How well equipped and resourced are they to support me?
- Do my team and I understand within my category what my key competitors are doing in their media planning, and how I am relatively placed?
- Do I have the flexibility and control to move activity to chase opportunity/ efficiency as it arises?
- And in assessing the above, am I currently deploying AI to be more friend than foe?
Within every category, AI will ensure clear winners and losers emerge. AI is being introduced as the people’s friend, the super bright enabler – it certainly can be, but this is not given, it can just as easily be the smiling assassin.
Marketers must seize control and manage the relationship to make AI your friend.
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