• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, December 5, 2024

Simpli.fi has announced AI-powered programmatic advertising tools that the demand-side platform (DSP) will make available in January 2025.  

One tool -- Autopilot AI -- completely automates the process using campaign goals creating briefs and creatives on the Simpli.fi platform. It is intended for advertisers with smaller budgets that are more interested in automation and fewer controls, and has a creative generator that looks at the brand’s website or product pages to generate creatives editable by the advertiser.

Autopilot AI takes images from the website, and does not generate new images.

“If we were to generate images without taking them from the websites, we would leverage a large language model,” says Frost Prioleau, co-founder and CEO of Simpli.fi. “There are a few out there that do that.”

The other tool, Media Planner, supports planning. It is trained on campaign data from the 140,000 live monthly campaigns for 40 unique advertisers that Simpli.fi supports, and is intended for more sophisticated advertisers that want full transparency. The advertiser inputs goals and Simpli.fi comes back with planning recommendations for media and audiences.

Prioleau says advertisers can see the results for audience and make media-planning suggestions to approve and edit the campaign before it goes live. “It creates suggestions based on all the data from past campaigns,” he said.

Data has become one of the biggest differentiators that Simpli.fi offers when it comes to AI-powered automation tools, Prioleau says.

The automated solutions transfer information from the campaign planning suggestions to a live campaign without having to re-input the data. The tools include insights rarely seen in other tools.

The tools may not impact CPMs advertisers pay for the exact same inventory, but it does leverage AI to look for ways to deliver the best value that meets advertisers’ goals.

It also should lower CPAs and improve return on ad spend (ROAS) because it is examining the performance of thousands of similar ad campaigns without making the advertiser spend a lot of time experimenting and optimizing.