In an episode titled “The Future of Advertising,” former Snap chief strategy officer Imran Khan welcomes Dave Penski, CEO of Connected Media and agency holding company Publicis Groupe, to his eponymous podcast.

Hear it on Apple Podcasts. And, read the auto-transcript. Penski appears relatively unguarded with Khan in this episode.

Highlights include…

AI’s effect on headcount at Publicis:

“I think we sometimes overestimate how it affects our workforce. We’ve been growing. We have 110,000 employees today. We’ve had AI along in the media buying process for the better part of the last 15 years. (…) The generative AI and chatGPT are a bit different. But in terms of using automated buying platforms, the ability to use those AI technology to do ad buying has been around for a long time. And we had 15,000 media people 10 years ago. We have 35,000 media people now. (…) I don’t think we’re going to see this, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to get rid of all of our staff tomorrow.’ And the other side of it is, to date, we’ve not seen true creativity come through from an AI standpoint.”

AI’s opportunity in media today:

“Where I do see AI – and this is where I see the huge value in our business – how it affects our businesses. In the past, if a client said, ‘(…) you need to add $50 million, and we want to see all of these options.’ – that work might have taken us a week to get back to them, just a couple of years ago. Now, we can provide those options to them in 15 minutes, say, and we have insights, we’re able to give them answers, give them options, and ability to do that. (…) So, the ability to add speed and more accurately predict what is going to happen is the biggest value from [AI]. I’m just talking about media for now. And that has been a very, very important change.”

AI opportunity in creative:

“The ability to drive costs out of production, to be able to produce assets that are reusable, to be able to do those across languages, to do those immediately, to do those globally, to be able to push out those assets in an organized fashion, is something that is a tremendous value for our clients on the production side.”

meanwhile:

• WPP launches rare public attack on Publicis over ad quality, escalating feud (June 9) – Ad Age (subscription)

publisher data licensing

New Street Research analyst Dan Salmon reviews the implications of last week’s Reddit lawsuit against LLM-maker Anthropic in a note to clients. Salmon sees opportunity for Reddit and publishers, “We think the move is positive for the evolution and trajectory of data licensing, as [Reddit] has now followed through on promises to pursue those mis-using Reddit content. Walking the walk, essentially. Most importantly, we see the action as evidence of management’s conviction in the value of [Reddit’s] constantly growing corpus of information, which is not a view universally held by the investment community, where some remain skeptical.”

ad tech DOOH

Winnipeg, Canada-based, ad tech startup Taiv is looking to turn business’ televisions (e.g. restaurants) into ad revenue generators across North America with over 1,000 restaurant deals already in place says the company.

Betakit covers the latest Series A funding round (now $16.5 million USD across all rounds) and notes the company’s “ad switching” tech:

• “The startup’s proprietary AI model analyzes the live video feed and switches sources during commercial breaks, show changes, or based on the time of day. [CEO and co-founder Noah] Palansky claimed that it offers especially fast offline video classification, running on low-powered hardware with less than 50 millisecond latency.”

Aperiam venture investor and Marketecture podcast co-host Eric Franchi commented on LinkedIn, “Taiv is unlocking that value with AI + ads, building a unique DOOH footprint.”

more: As AdExchanger’s Alyssa Boyle noted in July 2024, “Loop Media, Atmosphere TV, Taiv and GSTV are just a few examples of companies selling video ads in public places (bars, restaurants, gas stations, etc.) by pitching a combination of mass reach and targeting.” Read it.

Could AI separate the “wheat from the chaff”?

AI-native martech

Commenting on his consultancy company’s recent “Pulse” survey of CMOs and marketing leaders, PwC’s Tom Birthwhistle pens, “The AI-Native MarTech Stack: Agentic, Contextual, and Conformed.” See it on LinkedIn.

Birthwhistle discusses a new “MarTech architecture built for AI” and shares a vision of PwC’s “AI-Native MarTech Stack….” View below.

Amazon, AI, Cannes

Amazon Web Services released a “curated attendee guide” on the AWS blog for those attending the Cannes Lions ad festival next week in France. AI and advertising are front-and-center for the cloud services provider with sessions such as:

• From Raw Data to Real Delight: Unlocking GenAI-Powered Personalization in Real Time, June 16, 10 am local time
  From Churn to Earn: Reinventing Subscriptions with AI, June 17, 10 am

• The Rise of Agentic AI, June 18, 10 am

• How AI is Transforming Real-Time Marketing Intelligence and Creative Optimization – June 18, 3 pm

Get the guide (PDF).

more Cannes agendas with AI:

• Marketing Leadership Summit at Cannes – Brand Innovators

• Marketecture at Cannes – Marketecture

• WPP at Cannes – WPP

• The Female Quotient at Cannes – FQ

• Havas Cafe – Havas

• Sigma Software, AWS, IPSOS – see event

• Monks Cafe – Monks

• Adweek House – Adweek

search dependency

Just in time for the opening of Apple’s WWDC developer conference yesterday, analyst Eric Seufert quantified the potential impact on Apple if it’s Google search deal were to falter noting on X yesterday, “This chart lays bare the magnitude of Apple’s current vulnerabilities: $20+BN in Google Search revenue share and some portion of $30+BN in App Store commission revenue are at risk.” Also, read Seufert’s “Apple’s reckoning” from May 21.

From here, future options for Apple could include:

• Google AI Mode/Overviews rev share deal

• Emerging player such as OpenAI – with new advertising technology underpinnings – could bring billions to the “rev share table” and dislodge Google in the Apple search (or answer engine) box

WPP changes

WPP Group CEO Mark Read announced yesterday that he’ll be leaving the holding company at the end of the year.

In a post on LinkedIn, Read explains, “There’s never a perfect time to move on from such an organisation, but after almost seven years as CEO, I’ve decided that this is the right time for me. I’m going to stay fully committed as CEO until the end of the year, helping the Board to appoint my successor.”

Exchange Wire’s Ciaran O’Kane digests recent WPP news and takes a crack at the future of the holding company in a post on LinkedIn: “WPP is broken up, and WPP Media and Choreograph are merged. WPP Media Services goes private and goes 100% on principal media buying. And the media buying hedge fund is born. Everyone who matters will have a custom algo. Bobby Axelrod comes to ad tech. Outcomes are the future of the business, clearly. And data is the key.”

related:

• WPP chief steps down as advertising group struggles with rise of AI (June 9) – Financial Times

 

prompt:

How will AI influence agency holding company strategy in 5 years?

 

more stuff

• The ‘death of creativity’? AI job fears stalk advertising industry (June 9) – The Guardian

• AI talk returns to Cannes — but marketers want practicality over pontification (June 9) – Digiday

• The Rise Of AI Shopping Assistants Will Influence Advertising Strategies (June 9) – AdExchanger