More than a decade after its Meta acquisition, WhatsApp will start showing ads inside its app for the first time. Meanwhile, Sam Altman, who has publicly expressed his aversion to ads, has softened his stance on an OpenAI ad product, sending speculators into a frenzy. All the while, generative and agentic AI further reshapes the ad ecosystem, as new platforms continue to enter the market with the promises of automation and hyper-personalization. As AI increasingly reimagines the customer journey, it’s evident marketers need omnichannel strategies to deliver exceptional experiences everywhere it matters.
CTV is the proof of concept
While it’s not the only example of an ecosystem that has proven to be a natural fit for advertising, our work with CTV partners has provided strong evidence that advertising is, on all fronts, a value-add. Across our partners, advertising:
- Expands target audiences: Advertising makes it easier for streamers to offer new price tiers to attract new audiences. These new customers are explicitly signaling their openness to receive personalized content. When combined with their first-party data and viewing preferences, marketers and streamers can provide experiences that resonate.
- Drives value for all users: Advertising helps streamers to boost their business performance. The benefits of this extend to all users, as increased revenue from new subscribers can be funneled back to improve and drive core product, the content, be it movies, series, or other experiences.
- Makes the company more valuable: As stock prices show, shareholders find advertising to be a winning proposition for streamers.
What makes CTV advertising even more effective is when marketers are able to tie performance to business outcomes like conversions and purchases — all leading back to omnichannel marketing. Omnichannel marketers are also better–prepared for the emergence of new platforms, and can seamlessly connect and activate on new platforms, whether they be CTV or something else, as these are integrated into their data collaboration networks.
AI may be the next big switch that flips
Although it’s extremely early days in AI, we’re starting to get a better sense of some of the use cases for advertising in AI products. Some of the early leaders are focusing on personalized ads and experiences next to its core product. Whether marketers are looking at early standouts like Perplexity — or advertising products that have yet to be built, like OpenAI’s — it’s clear that the ecosystem continues to increase in complexity, as well as the unpredictable and varied ways that consumers will use these platforms and engage with ads. No matter what the future may hold, marketers need to be able to adapt and incorporate it into their strategies, making omnichannel more important than ever.
Marketers using LiveRamp will soon be able to seamlessly activate on Perplexity and can already do so across premium CTV and anywhere else their customers are, including via exchanges or cutting-edge channels like commerce media networks. In today’s complex consumer journey, omnichannel marketing helps to not just deliver experiences across all channels, at scale, but also helps marketers to tap first-party data to personalize each touchpoint and deepen the relationship at every step.
Omnichannel prepares you for everything
No matter what the next frontier is for advertising, marketers will need to be able to reach audiences at scale, and deliver experiences to deepen relationships with consumers whose brand loyalty is harder and harder to win. With improved connectivity comes better measurability as well, which enables marketers to better understand the performance of their marketing investments, helping them to make better, more effective decisions across all of their marketing channels.
While technology and content may continue to evolve in unforeseeable ways, advertising will no doubt follow; through it all, omnichannel marketing, with industry-leading connectivity, will enable marketers to personalize every new channel and touchpoint as it emerges.