AI: Advertising & Beyond | Wrap Up

This week LoopMe UK hosted AI: Advertising & Beyond at the British Museum in London. Over 150 attendees listened to thought-leaders and pioneers to explore AI’s impact on advertising, and also the wider world.

We heard from spokespeople including Leila Ratnani, Group Digital & Programmatic Director at Dentsu, Julia Lagan, Digital Strategy Director at creative agency FCB Inferno and Matthew Griffin, Futurist of the consultancy company 311 Institute. Attendees took part in VR experiences and had the opportunity to see how PurchaseLoop works in real-time.

For those unable to attend, or who’d like a quick recap – read on! To receive invites to our next event, sign up to our events mailing list.

AI is changing marketing

The morning was kicked-off by Lynette Saunders, Senior Analyst at Econsultancy in her keynote ‘The Quest for Real-Time Experiences’. Lynette discussed how AI should be at the forefront of marketer’s minds, giving successful examples of how the likes of Under Armour, Netflix and Amazon are using AI to increase their efficiency.

LoopMe’s GM International, Pete O’Mara-Kane presented ‘Closing the Loop’, an analysis of more than 150 campaigns run in 20 countries to explain best practice outcomes to help understand how to get the most from PurchaseLoop campaigns.

Following this, Pete interviewed Leonard Newnham, LoopMe’s Chief Data Scientist to debunk some of the myths and jargon around AI. A key takeaway from their conversation was a need to clarify the difference between machine learning and AI – which is also covered in our AI Guide.

Will AI take our jobs? What impact will it have on our industry? These were all addressed in the ‘AI: Risk & Reward’ panel led by Julie lagan. Julie was joined by Dane Hamer, Brand Creative & Media at 02, Alexandra Spiliotopoulou, Digital Strategy Lead at Merkle Periscopix, Michael Migliore, Senior Retention & Engagement Manager at News UK and Leila Ratnani. One point of difference in the panel was that Alexandra thinks AI will slowly take jobs, while Leila was adamant that won’t happen, rather they’ll do mundane tasks.

Part 1 of ‘AI: Advertising and Beyond’ concluded with a chat between LoopMe CEO and Co-Founder Stephen Upstone and John Taysom, NED and Co-Founder of Privitar. John, who has over 18 years of experience in investing in tech companies from discussed everything from the Cambridge Analytica debacle to the surge in the world’s largest economy – data.

After a short coffee break, we started part 2 with another panel discussion on the topic of Altruistic AI. Moderator Stephen Lepitak, Editor at The Drum was accompanied by Saqib Shaikh, Tech Lead of Microsoft ‘Seeing AI’ app, Roger Highfield, Director at the Science Museum and Chris Russell a Research Fellow in computer vision and Machine Learning at the Alan Turning Institute. The session was very insightful, especially in showing how AI is set to disrupt the healthcare industry, with companies such as Babylon Health and Benevolent AI lauded as ones to watch.

This year, The Times and creative agency Rothco teamed up and used AI to recreate JFK’s speech he was meant to deliver the day he was assasinated. Alan Kelly, Executive Creative Director of Rothco was interviewed by LoopMe’s Head of Marketing Lauren Bigland, to learn more about the campaign. In their conversation Alan explained how he was inspired to start the project through a family connection and how he saw the role of AI be used to enhance creativity.

We rounded things off by hearing from Matthew Griffin, founder of the 311 Institute discussing what the future holds in the next 50 years. Matthew emphasised the importance of AI and stated that we’re entering a dawn of a new era – ‘The Age of the Machine’.

Matthew stated that this new era will allow us to increase the rates of innovation in multiple industries (healthcare, advertising and finance) by up to 1000% as well as introducing us to the song ‘Break Free’, showing again how AI is set to disrupt many industries.

Thanks again to our brilliant speakers and attendees, we hope to see you all at another event soon!