A manifesto for digital media buying
Digital advertising is a massive, heterogeneous, and highly dynamic industry. Today, it is experiencing the early stages of a huge wave of change — the predictive technology wave, powered by the tsunami of new AI capabilities driving change in the broader world.
TECHNOLOGY WAVES
Over the last decade, the industry has experienced several overlapping commercial, technological, and legal waves that have fundamentally driven how digital campaigns use data.
For many years, up until 2018, advertisers benefited from the application of incredibly signal-rich, diverse data sets in programmatic activation, including everything from web behaviors and location to shopping and in-app behaviors. This Third-Party Data Wave was all about using data from other sources for targeting and enrichment.
The Privacy Wave began in 2018 as new forces introduced doubt around the long-term viability of third-party data.
Browsers like Safari and Firefox stopped supporting 3P cookies. Sweeping privacy regulations were introduced, including GDPR (2018) in Europe and CCPA (2020) in California. Apple introduced its App Tracking Transparency (ATT).
The Privacy Wave crested in January 2020 when Google’s announcement that it would stop supporting cookies in Chrome marked the most profound and impactful shift toward new privacy standards.
These pressures sparked a wave of investment by advertisers in privacy-enhancing technologies, new identity spaces, and significant brand investment. Their goal was to collect as much data as possible about their customers to offset the loss of signal from the Privacy Wave. Thus began the First-Party Data Wave.
In 2024, Google withdrew its proposed cookie deprecation, kicking off the Predictive Wave, which has been gathering strength ever since.
This wave is characterized by the declining reach of third-party data, innovations launched under the Privacy Wave, and a significant trove of newly gathered first-party data across many brands.
THE AI TSUNAMI
Adding to its strength is the powerful tide of the AI Tsunami, an irresistible and massive wave that has brought a swell of new tools and capabilities to the advertising ecosystem.
It is perfectly suited to tie together the patchwork of data and technologies developed during the previous waves, while enhancing and democratizing the predictive technologies powered by that data.
The Predictive Wave, powered by the AI Tsunami, is bringing the most profound change to the advertising ecosystem since the dawn of the internet.
PREDICTIVE UNLOCKS ADVERTISING ALPHA
Unlike previous waves, the Predictive Wave is more than just a new data layer or new activation mode. It is a technology layer powered by all the data and capabilities from previous waves, supercharged by AI.
It connects the myriad of data from previous waves, extracting maximum value from available signals and projecting that signal into all media and activation modes. Practically speaking, predictive technology unlocks premium performance for campaigns, or what we call advertising alpha.
The concept of alpha, borrowed from the investment community, is the value that media buyers add to a campaign by applying insights, skills, and data. It is the performance advantage from active campaign management and optimization.
The deterministic data at the core of identity spines is commodified, broadly available, and widely used. It is hard to generate outperformance using the exact same data as everyone else in the market. Effective predictive methods amplify the behavioral signals unique to a brand’s own customers, enabling differentiated campaign performance.
FULFILLING THE PROMISE OF PROGRAMMATIC
Many advertising professionals think of the promise of programmatic as 1-to-1 deterministic targeting. We know exactly who we want to reach, and we can confirm that we reach exactly that individual. That surety is certainly compelling, and maximizing deterministic reach ought to be an element of every campaign for which it is possible.
In reality, though, deterministic methods have a number of constraints, including limited reach, siloed data, workflow latency, and privacy rules and regulations. They are insufficient to fulfill the true promise of programmatic, which is to maximize returns on ad spend by applying the most valuable signals for each campaign at maximum scale and efficiency.
The world’s largest advertising platforms combine predictive technologies with deterministic data to drive campaign alpha. Both Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ run predictive AI on top of their massive deterministic data sets to unlock value for advertisers.
Programmatic buyers have access to all of the tools and data to do the same.
It is less about 1-to-1 targeting of a known user and more about the ability to tune the campaign exactly to its objectives. The three key drivers of alpha from predictive technologies are:
- Precision. By connecting rich multi-modal signals, predictive technologies power campaigns with high-resolution and high-value signals. That richer signal provides behavioral precision to target prospects showing the most predictive intent signals.
- Scale. By connecting and amplifying high-value conversion signals beyond the limited reach of resolvable identity, predictive drives much greater scale with very high fidelity.
- Efficiency. Predictive methods unlock media efficiency — a key source of alpha — by providing decisioning that is effective beyond the reach of just resolvable identity. Combined with agentic AI, predictive technology also brings efficiency to campaign workflows, integrating the linear stages of media buying, from planning to activation to measurement & reporting, into a continuous optimization loop.
Predictive technologies connect signals across siloed data sets that lack identity continuity. Web behaviors, app usage, CTV viewing, shopping signals, search, and more can be brought together into a single multi-modal embedding space.
This creates a rich cross-section of intent data for activation in any media or mode. High-value signals from known users can be used to build the model, but scale is not constrained to the perimeter of identity resolution.
TWO TRANSFORMATIVE TRENDS
Predictive technologies have long been available to programmatic professionals. Their adoption has been limited by perceived or real complexity, friction, and cost. AI has eliminated those objections, unleashing the Predictive Wave of programmatic advertising technologies that will drive significant gains in capabilities, efficiency, scale, and effectiveness.
The early signs of this are visible in two shifts underway that will transform digital media buying:
Convergence of the media buying process. What has traditionally been a linear process involving different teams across stages from planning to activation to reporting is now converging into an interconnected cycle. AI enables faster workflows and streamlined integration of functions that are collapsing the linear process.
Unbundling of adtech economics. Different segments of the digital media value chain are now competing for decisioning control and margin. Agencies are bringing data capabilities in-house and are scaling their principal trading activities to capture more margin. SSPs are building out data and decisioning capabilities, previously only available on the buy side. DSPs with decisioning advantages are taking share.
Together, convergence and unbundling will change the complexion of the industry. There is a proliferation of new ways to activate campaigns and to squeeze a lot more value from campaign data inputs and outputs.
These changes are creating a wave of opportunity for predictive technologies, which are the connective tissue for this converged and unbundled media buying.
Convergence requires a signal that can move across the whole cycle. New activation approaches focused on maximizing the margin, favoring scale and efficiency. New algorithmic activation modes are built to run on live predictions.
RIDE THE PREDICTIVE WAVE
AI is driving new interest in predictive technologies for programmatic advertising. Objections and barriers are falling away, and the benefits to workflows and campaign results are irresistible. It is time for the industry to let go of its preoccupation with 1-to-1 deterministic identity and embrace the technologies that power Google’s and Meta’s platforms.
As media buyers absorb more AI into their processes and activation surfaces fragment and change, predictive audiences will become the new currency for the programmatic advertising ecosystem. They connect all stages of activation and all the rich, valuable signals from the waves that have come before.
The Predictive Wave, powered by the AI Tsunami, is gathering momentum. It will fundamentally change digital media buying over the coming months, quarters, and years. Those who fight the tide may drown. Those who ride the wave will see their businesses thrive.