Q: Despite AI’s prevalence, human influence remains massively important in programmatic advertising. In your opinion, what are the risks in relying too heavily on AI and ML?
A: There’s no doubt AI is transforming the digital advertising space at speed, and programmatic is strongly impacted. In particular, the ability to process and analyse vast data sets at scale makes AI a hugely powerful programmatic weapon for those looking for granular insights into campaign performance. Yet, while some are willing to paint AI as a silver bullet that can drive performance while solving various programmatic challenges, it presents some significant risks, too.
Despite all the noise surrounding generative AI, it remains relatively unremarkable as a content creation tool. It simply lacks the human, emotional intelligence to spark (and create) amazing ad experiences.
AI algorithms are also prone to human bias. This can potentially lead to unintended discrimination consequences, while a lack of accountability and explainability means consumers find AI hard to trust… a potential banana skin for brand safety.
AI also has the ability to make errors of judgment that are vastly extrapolated and magnified given its ability to operate autonomously at a huge scale. Without human scrutiny, AI advertising solutions have the ability to quickly create serious reputational and financial problems for brands, if they make an error.
Q: AI plays a prominent role in your new native tool, Ultima, but why is human influence also important for native advertising?
A: Ultima has some fantastic AI functionality that helps our clients target, analyse and optimise their campaigns. Yet, native advertising is one of the more difficult forms of programmatic because brands have only one chance to get the message right before it is published.
Unlike with display advertising, with native you can’t update the product recommendations in real time, or display different creative as consumers browse. You have to get the creative right first time, and it has to sit well with the content it is published alongside.
AI is great at advancing our understanding of the best content and the perfect messaging to show, but a human element ensures native ads are placed perfectly. Without this, AI might place an ad inappropriately, and within a native environment, the jarring, negative impact of this will be felt greater than with other forms of digital advertising.
Q: Particular technologies aside, why is the trust that only human connection brings so important for the broader programmatic industry, and managing relationships between publishers, advertisers and brands?
A: Strip it back to the bones, and it’s human trust that sits at the foundation of programmatic’s success. You can boast the greatest, most innovative tech, but without trust, the rest counts for little. It’s human trust that has allowed the building of a sustainable programmatic market. It’s trust between humans that encourages accountability that AI can’t synthesise, and it’s trust that pushes for greater transparency, simplicity and accessibility across the programmatic ecosystem.
Trust is also a cornerstone for managing publisher-advertiser relationships — it’s through these that humans can negotiate, resolve issues and progress the industry in a way an algorithm simply can’t.
The importance of trust between brand and consumer is also integral to programmatic’s success. If consumers don’t trust a brand, they won’t buy from it. So, building advertising trust with consumers through human connection and consistent engagement will build long-term brand loyalty that pushes beyond a transactional affair.
Q: Are we at a place where AI can lead the charge on content creation?
A: No, we’re not there yet. And it may be a while before we get close. Anyone who’s ever played around with mainstream AI creative tools will quickly realise their limitations. Even basic text-to-AI image generation can be pretty underwhelming.
It’s also evident that consumers don’t trust AI, with around only 20% trusting the use of AI in marketing contexts, and the majority being less willing to engage with AI-generated ads.
The human element has never been more key to content creation. For example, only humans can react and change to adopt trends and spot emotional contexts.
Q: Why are humans integral to the nuances of performance analysis and reporting?
A: AI’s ability to process massive quantities of granular data makes it uniquely powerful in performance reporting. Yet, when it comes to the analysis of that reporting, humans play a critical role because of our ability to understand everything from audience sentiment and emotion, to cultural context, brand values and safety.
Raw numbers will only take you so far in analysing an ad campaign. Human experience will provide a holistic picture of why an ad performed in a certain way, and use intuition and analytical thinking (that can counter algorithmic bias) to optimise and strategise for the future.
Q: In the interest of a balanced argument, why are you excited about the combined power of AI and human influence?
A: We are already embracing the massive competitive advantages that AI offers programmatic advertising. Our native solution uses AI in numerous innovative, exciting ways. For example, it removes high bounce rate traffic to achieve superb engagement rates, meaning our clients no longer buy redundant media, boosting their ROI. This also reduces the carbon impact of a campaign, making it more sustainable.
Allowing AI to carry out these data-centric, administrative tasks frees client time better spent on strategising and planning fantastic ad campaigns. That is where the AI/human combination really shows its value — we’re able to help brands and advertisers create greater human connections with consumers, while simultaneously letting AI drive performance through its enhanced data capabilities.
Q: What is the pipeline from Preciso?
A: On the AI front, we’re developing our products around emerging trends such as agentic AI and clickless search and I think there are a world of great opportunities in the space for all parties in the ecosystem. We’re also focusing some of our energy beyond advertisers to create publisher-centric solutions — watch this space!
About us
Preciso is Europe’s fast-growing RTB marketplace, powered by its flagship smart-bid technology and delivering client campaigns in just a few easy clicks. Through use of actual customer journey and machine learning, our technology predicts customer behaviour to calculate which display ad placement to buy in a real-time bidding marketplace — boosting relevance and conversion and putting the power back into the hands of advertisers. Founded in Italy by Piero Pavone, Preciso has expanded over the last few years and now has teams in six countries.
