• by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer, 9 hours ago

Caroline Giegerich, vice president of AI and marketing innovation at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), has always had an affinity for technology. While at Warner Media Group, she worked on a project embedding near field communication chips (NFC) in "merch." By reading the embedded chip consumers found additional information.

This week for the IAB, Giegerich, and about 250 committee members released an interactive map project that mixes and matches outcomes to help advertisers and marketers understand artificial intelligence (AI) and the relationships between uses across advertising and marketing.

The squared-off interactive map, which the IAB calls AI in Advertising Use Case Map, reminds me of a periodic table -- like the chart that arranges known chemical elements in rows, columns and groups. The elements are organized to show relationships, which is the key to predicting chemical behavior and outcomes for best outcomes.

Combining the tasks in the IAB's map can reveal patterns and trends for outcomes, helping marketers and advertisers understand relationships between various uses, Giegerich said.

Earlier this year, the IAB brought on Giegerich to co-develop the map with committee members. The group analyzed the list of challenges and solutions and divided tasks into company segments like analytics, agencies, ad servers, and publishers.

The group wanted to “scope the entire universe,” Giegerich said, and determine the specific problems based on industry segment.

Publishers, for example, focus on how AI large language models (LLMs) train on their data to achieve monetization and click-through rates to sites. When that doesn’t happen, they want to know what it means.

The map organizes applications by category, listing established vs. emerging uses, as well as detailed descriptions. It is intended to elevate the ad industry’s understanding and adoption of AI across media and marketing.

When a user hovers a cursor above the map, this reveals definitions to clarify how to use AI in a specific scenario. Some uses are marked with stars on a crystal ball icon to signify an emerging use of the technology.

Measurement and analytics descriptions include performance forecasting.

Media buying and activation includes topics such as autonomous pacing and spend optimization agents, as well as rules-based media agents. Measurement and analytics provides tips on AI-driven attribution and conversion path analysis, for example.

“Start with determining problems your organization to prove out the highest return on investment to achieve faster and better results,” Giegerich said. “If I still worked at Warner Music, I would think about the things that would drive music streams, because that’s how Warner Music Group makes money.”

Before joining the IAB, Giegerich served as vice president of global marketing and innovation at Warner Music Group, where she led generative AI and immersive media campaigns for artists such as Cobrah and A Boogie. Her background in technology spans AI, gaming, augmented and virtual reality, as well as near-field communications (NFC) and experiential media.

Giegerich said the group that helped design the interactive map discussed adding lists of companies that could build these tasks for agencies and advertisers, but Giegerich said providing that type of information makes the organization walk a fine line to remain neutral and balanced.

MediaPost showed the interactive map to midsized agency Aimclear, which said it was interesting but also described it as an "'AI 101' summary for advertising because it would make more sense to give advertisers and marketers “deep, gritty examples of how to creatively and effectively deploy AI to solve actual problems."

Giegerich would like to add a list of companies to make this tool more useful, but acknowledges that new companies in these areas enter the space every day, and it would be difficult to keep it current and up to date.

“I would love to, in a very neutral way as to not prompt any company so people can be directed to the proper place,” she said. “People are still trying to figure out the 'what' part of it.”

When asked to name one advertising challenge AI could solve, Giegerich said that because of the siloed nature of the industry -- including media, creative, measurement and others -- none work well unless all communicate with each other.

“The creative goes into the media machine, which is then measured,” she said. “The media people feel they are disconnected from the creative, because that happened upstream. The media is driven from the messaging, so to me it would be amazing if AI could help solve this disconnect by connecting to integrate the system.”

The interactive map describes many ways to use agents that could diminish silos within advertising.

“Sometimes, between strategy teams, buys and measurement within a company’s system are not shared," she said. "Not for any malicious reason, they just are not, but this where AI can help surface the information through AI agents,” she said, citing an example from an agency.