The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) this morning unveiled a new media audience-measurement initiative focusing on the role artificial intelligence (AI) can play in advancing the state of the art.

The initiative, dubbed Project Eidos -- the Greek word for "light" -- comes just as the Association of National Advertisers is rolling out another Greek-named advanced audience-measurement initiative of its own, Project Aquila.

But ancient language aside, the two projects could not be more different.

While the ANA's project is based on a new framework leveraging Big Data and consumer identity spines to better understand the reach and frequency of the ads they see, the IAB's effort seeks to "modernize" advertising and media measurement for a future in which AI is expected to play an increasingly central role.

This morning's announcement comes with just-released findings from a survey of more than 400 advertiser and agency decision-makers with expertise in planning and/or analytics, which finds that about half already are scaling AI technology in their advanced audience-measurement systems -- a percentage that is expected to rise to about 70% within the next two years (see below).

The study also finds that about 40% of the demand-side execs already have contracts with the media that include clauses related to AI, with that number expected to double in the next one to two years.

The IAB said the survey was intended to understand the current state of AI adoption in advanced audience measurement, explicitly.

It comes just days after one big agency holding company, Dentsu, unveiled a new AI-powered audience targeting system dubbed "Generative Audiences," which it says will "redefine how brands plan and buy media in the algorithmic era."

The new Dentsu AI-generated audience data is being deployed in the U.K. initially before being rolled out to other markets, but Dentsu Data & Technology President Ben Gott calls it a "game-changer, noting: "This isn’t just another targeting tool. It’s a new sophisticated approach that blends human insight with AI to help brands stay ahead of cultural and consumer shifts.”

Early U.K. trials find upwards of a 60% improvement in "meaningful reach," and a 33% improvement in "precision" due to the contextual relevance generated by the AI audience-building system.

Details of Project Eidos are expected to be discussed during the IAB's annual conference starting today, but the initiative already has dozens of companies participating, including major agencies such as Havas, Publicis and WPP.

“There’s no single methodology that can answer every measurement question," Havas Media Network NA Executive Vice President of Analytics & Engineering Maggie Zak said in a statement unveiling the project, adding, "Different approaches exist in order to answer different business questions."

Specifics of the initiative were not disclosed, but the IAB released three bullet points outlining areas of focus:

• Unifying & Harmonizing Measurement — creating shared structures, classifications, and data flows that allow the ecosystem to speak the same measurement language and build interoperable systems.

• Cross-Channel Outcomes, Attribution & Incrementality — developing a unified but flexible approach that connects exposure to outcomes and enables consistent attribution and incrementality measurement across channels.

• Modernizing MMM — establishing a modern, comparable approach to MMM built on standardized, privacy-ready inputs, enabling consistent ROI signals, actionable budget guidance, and cross-channel comparisons across diverse channels, strategies, and tactics.

In terms of modernizing MMM, or marketing mix modeling, that seems an important imperative given another one of the findings from the demand-side survey being released today. Zero percent of the execs responding to the study said they believe all "paid" media channels are well-represented in the industry's current mix of marketing mix models, but they believe AI can "materially improve advanced measurement within one to two years," unlocking "$26.3B in media investment and $6.2B in productivity value."