• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, June 12, 2023

Estimating that half of all advertising will be influenced in at least some way by AI by the end of this year, GroupM Global President of Business Intelligence Kate Scott-Dawkins predicts the burgeoning technology also will be Madison Avenue’s next big category boom.

“I think we are really like to see a boom of startup companies created that are likely to hit that high intensity advertiser point within the next two to five years,” she said during a press briefing last week in advance of today’s release of GroupM’s midyear advertising forecast update.

The update, which includes several sections devoted to, as well as ubiquitous references to AI, also includes a compelling eye-chart (see below) showing GroupM’s projected curve for AI penetration of the advertising economy, with the “inflection point” beginning this year.

Scott-Dawkins said the 50% of ad spending that AI already touches is mainly on the big social, search and related big technology platforms and is due largely to their own internal development and deployment of AI enablement tools to “optimize” advertising on their platforms.

But she alluded to a new gold rush of new and emerging companies that will be fostered over the next few years that will accelerate that, as well as tools within the agencies themselves – such as GroupM’s own “Co-Pilot” system, which are leveraging AI to optimize “across channels.”

“The number of companies that are involved and potentially involved in creating those tools, I think is different and is something we need to continue to discuss and watch and plan for as that ticks up to 60%, 70%, 80%, 90% of advertising revenue globally,” Scott-Dawkins advised, predicting that the boom will lead to “another increase in terms of spending, revenue growth creation, user acquisition” over the two to five year period, “So, we’re watching that very closely.”

The impending boom is not without its potential downsides, she cautioned, referring to both “benefits” as well as “unintended consequences” created by its acceleration, citing one that already appears to be manifesting:

“The potential for the open web and other user-generated content platforms to become cluttered with content that you don’t know whether it was created by AI or not. Whether it is true or not.”