by AdExchanger Content Studio // Friday, May 13th, 2022 – 8:00 am

By Rémi Lemonnier, co-founder and president, Scibids

The apocalyptic headlines about cookie deprecation and the shift toward privacy have slowed somewhat ­– but don’t get too comfortable. Regulators around the world remain emphatic about privacy, big ad tech still plans big deprecation and a cookieless future for ad tech will be here before you know it. But this is no apocalypse. It’s a new dawn for digital marketing – defined by the possibilities that a new generation of artificial intelligence (AI) technologies create.

AI is already enabling smarter, more sophisticated scaled media-buying decisions for advertisers in digital marketing – unlocking productivity and profitability opportunities just as we’ve seen AI do in other industries.

Now, with cookie deprecation looming, AI gives digital marketers new optimization methods that eschew PII and cross-site tracking while delivering superior marketing results. Best of all, AI creates these new opportunities from within your existing ad tech stack.

Building AI to run on a better source of data fuel

Machine-learning tools have long been viewed as a perfect fit for digital marketing. Hungry algorithms thrive on the real-time feedback and enormous, global scale of data points and media opportunities.

The problem is that the current generation of optimization methods were built to run on ad tech’s primary source of fuel: cross-platform online behavioral analysis. When this fuel disappears, so will the utility of the conventional algorithms that rely on it.

The next generation of AI tools and machine-learning algorithms are built for Big Tech’s evolving data regimes. These AI tools flexibly ingest more voluminous, nonuser-related data, including data sets that pool users in groups instead of individual cookies – data structures that simply weren’t top of mind for those who engineered the current generation of algorithms a decade ago.

Richer data fuel + smarter AI = superior RoAS

Not only does this broader, more flexible approach enable privacy-minded, compliant data use – these AI tools solve many of the shortcomings that plague cookie-centric approaches.

Instead of over-targeting a specific and small group of cookies, modern AI is smart enough to ingest plentiful, nonuser-specific metadata from web content across much larger pools of individuals. It then goes on to pair that data with specific advertiser goals and business rules. Finally, it generates buying algorithms that produce superior performance across a range of business KPIs.

Making your existing mar-tech stack work harder

Perhaps the best news for digital marketers anxious about painful changes forced by cookie deprecation is this: The leading tools in this new generation of AI don’t ask users to upend the way they work or stop using the tech stacks they’re used to. Instead, these AI tools are built to seamlessly complement existing workflows – and make your current tech stack work harder and deliver more.

With the right AI at their sides, advertisers like Dell, Nestlé, Spotify, Square and Charlotte Tilbury are embracing a privacy-aligned, highly performant future – today.

Next-gen AI will improve marketing performance – so what are we waiting for?

Change is never simple. Digital marketers have much work ahead and use cases yet to solve. But overreliance on cross-site tracking and behavioral targeting was never a viable long-term strategy – the shift to a broader data set was inevitable as a matter of performance, not just regulation.

Fortunately, we now have the AI technology to power our marketing engines on more privacy-aligned, renewable data fuel. More importantly, this technology will unlock even greater marketing value in this broader, richer source of fuel. Let’s take this opportunity to leave behind burdensome, intrusive, legacy technology from another age – and not look back.

Founded in Paris in 2016, Scibids is the independent global leader building Artificial Intelligence to make marketing more effective. Scibids AI supports strategic business outcomes for brands by building customizable algorithms for powerful ad decisioning that does not require user tracking and profiling. Scibids AI is enabled within leading Demand Side Platforms, helps unify the ad stack between planning and measurement, and delivers measurable ROI for a long-lasting competitive advantage. Scibids works across the digital marketing ecosystem, is used by thousands of brands and embraced by their media agencies worldwide. Learn more at www.scibids.com and download “AI, Privacy and the Future of Digital Marketing,” a marketers guide to growth in the post-cookie digital ecosystem.

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