How advertisers can leverage AI and automation at scale

As we look to 2024, advertisers are building their strategies—and their resourcing plans – to incorporate the most impactful and practical applications of both AI and automation.

To thrive, advertisers must find a careful balance between both technologies, ensuring the right level of human oversight and control, as well as  an integrated approach to automation that ensures strategic control, brand safety, compliance and, of course, results at scale.

Combining AI with automation for maximized benefits

Advertising automation has become an indispensable capability, enabling both agencies and enterprise-level organizations to overcome traditional growth challenges associated with large ad programs including execution complexity, eroding margins, and time constraints. Adopting automation allows teams to better utilize their resources, address previously unmanageable tasks, and steer strategic initiatives—all while retaining total control over their strategies.

AI offers the potential to accelerate these benefits. When managed appropriately, AI complements automation by accelerating cognitive work – such as leveraging AI to improve ad content  variation or assisting in the production of monthly reporting. As for automation, it can handle repetitive and predictable tasks efficiently, freeing up time for strategic initiatives and enhancing service levels, thereby improving the overall customer experience and satisfaction.

Another increasingly important benefit of pairing AI with automation is to ensure brand compliance at scale. AI-powered automation systems have the capacity to monitor and regulate brand guidelines across various communication channels. These systems can analyze vast amounts of data, identifying any deviations from the established brand standards. By automating this process, businesses can maintain a consistent brand image, prevent potential issues related to issuing credits, and save valuable time and resources that could be better invested in core business activities.

Safeguarding your strategy at scale: The importance of “attended AI”  for compliance, control and data usage rights

Given its transformative potential for business efficiency, automation should be the foundation of your ad operations approach. Automation provides the foundation on which AI can be most effective. From here, advertisers should take an “attended AI” approach to mitigate potential AI risks, such as compliance and data usage rights. Robotic Process Automation for Advertising (RPA4A) makes this possible by incorporating emerging rule systems for “self-auditing” of AI usage and incorporating highly specific compliance rules and brand safety guidelines.

This combination enables advertisers to provide close oversight and control of their overall strategies while driving efficiency and execution at unprecedented scale. Key use cases include:

• Execution: Today’s multichannel digital strategies are increasing in complexity, as such, utilizing automation to expedite the execution of campaigns. An ideal automation platform should manage campaign rollouts, budget allocations, pacing and handling of ads across multiple channels efficiently, allowing strategists to concentrate on honing strategies.
• Delivery optimization: Developing and testing content can take up critical bandwidth. Coupled with an automation platform, AI facilitates the generation of dynamic, customized messages that can be supervised and regulated by humans but deployed on a large scale. This integrated AI strategy saves time and guarantees accuracy.
• Analysis: Data and insights are critical to the success of any digital advertising strategy. By combining automation and AI, digital advertisers can now analyze data at scale—ultimately paving the way for a profound understanding of performance metrics.
• Strategy: Agencies can leverage the power of automation and AI to augment their teams’ capabilities in driving client strategies. These technological advancements streamline execution, delivery, and analysis, allowing agencies to allocate more resources towards strategy development. This, in turn, also fosters enhanced client relationships and ultimately drives results that positively impact your company’s bottom-line.

Finding the balance

While advertising success will increasingly depend on precision execution at scale and across channels, strategy and creativity will always win the day. Fortunately, technology has progressed enough to allow advertisers to strike this balance. Those who integrate automation and AI into a unified approach, while retaining effective brand and compliance safeguards, stand to take advantage of a bright, tech-enabled future in our industry.