Over the past several weeks, we hosted a series of AI forums in London, New York, Seattle, and San Francisco. Executives, practitioners, and industry leaders came together to explore how artificial intelligence is reshaping marketing, identity, and the broader digital ecosystem. There’s enormous opportunity, but it’s also very clear that there’s an enormous need for the industry to develop standards and best practices to allow this industry to safely scale in a way that benefits all.
AI is redefining the building blocks of marketing
One of the recurring themes of the forums is that AI isn’t simply a tool for greater efficiency: it is challenging the fundamentals of how marketing works. Identity, consent, creative, audiences — these are just a few of the pillars of the industry that attendees were reexamining in light of these rapidly-evolving technologies.
For example, consent is typically managed through consumer-facing banners and policy pages. In a world where autonomous agents are acting on behalf of consumers, we must collectively agree on what consent looks like when a consumer’s only point of contact with a company may be through a single agent-to-agent interaction.
Simultaneously, while AI is introducing a new toolset for marketers, what we expect is for leading solutions to interoperate with new must-haves. We expect that marketers will have agents, publishers will have agents; tech platforms will have agents; and ultimately, every consumer will have agents. Workflows will be operated in part by agents, but also with clear human oversight, rules, and often human intervention and negotiation.
Moving forward: standards and governance
Throughout all of our globe-spanning conversations, participants were united on one point: the industry needs stronger standards, safeguards, interoperability, and transparency. Whether it’s proving data lineage, certifying model outputs, or establishing auditability, governance must evolve in lockstep with innovation. Not setting the rules ourselves will hinder the ecosystem’s ability to do efficient business — and increases the risk of regulators having to set more stringent standards in the future.
We agree with leading executives like Brian O’Kelley on the critical importance of AI to marketing growth, anticipated marketplace evolution, as well as forthcoming agent-to-agent use cases that can improve the quality and value of advertising. The recent AdCP initiative is a great step forward for the industry and one we intend to actively participate in and develop towards.
We’re also working closely with the IAB Tech Lab to help develop additional standards for AI’s rapidly-evolving role in the ecosystem beyond the media transaction. We’ve started a GitHub repository, which we are transitioning to the IAB Tech Lab for the ecosystem to contribute to an open standard defining how intelligent agents exchange user context.
We were delighted to host over 100 industry leaders from the likes of Microsoft, TikTok, Index Exchange, Magnite, Scope3, Chalice AI, Criteo, and many more. Crucially, the IAB Tech Lab joined all four sessions and CEO Anthony Katsur shared his view: “AI is experiencing its first true exponential surge, but what will transform that surge into enduring business value are open, interoperable standards that the industry can confidently build upon. LiveRamp’s deep industry relationships and leadership will be instrumental in shaping this work, and the IAB Tech Lab will ultimately steward these standards under its governance to ensure they serve the entire digital media ecosystem.”
Just as AI accelerates innovation, it’s not a magic bullet, nor is it an instant remedy for any of the long-standing challenges the industry has been facing. Building the next chapter of marketing will require collaboration across the ecosystem, new forms of governance, and a shared commitment to making AI both effective and trustworthy.
The conversations at the AI in Marketing Forums were just the beginning. We look forward to continuing this dialogue and working together to shape a future where AI enables incredible outcomes, both for brands and the consumers they interact with. Throughout it all, we’re here to connect and collaborate on everything AI in marketing – reach out to [email protected].