Artificial intelligence (AI) is having a transformative impact on industries like ad tech, but can the current rate of advancement be maintained? Journalist Mark Smith takes a look…

The unpredictability of the industry’s immediate course was outlined in dramatic fashion only recently, with the release of the low-cost Chinese AI DeepSeek sending some US tech stocks plummeting. 

But regardless of the fact that it is still very much a sector in flux, businesses are proving eager to reap the benefits of AI’s growth, with 54% saying AI provides advertising efficiencies and cost-savings, while 30% have diverted more than 40% of their marketing budget to AI-driven campaigns. 

In Smartly’s latest digital trends report, the firm found that 90% of marketers are now using automation for their campaigns, with a majority (70%) successfully leveraging AI tools. And it is easy to see why. 

From campaign management to creative execution, AI is driving ad tech advances in numerous ways. 

These include:

• Enhanced creativity: Whether it is art, voice samples or video, if it can be imagined - AI can bring it to life. The quality and quantity of AI tools means there are virtually no limits to what can be realised.
• Improved scalability: By taking care of the basic tasks, AI enables teams to focus on strategy. This in turn enables them to move on to new aspects of projects sooner. 
• Greater personalisation: Brands can expand their digital strategies to connect with audiences in ways and at depths which have never been possible before. 
• Customer insights: AI’s ability to analyse consumer behaviour leads to more effective and targeted campaigns. While machine learning algorithms have provided these types of insights in the past, advanced AI provides a whole new level of accuracy and detail. 
• Ad placement analytics: Predictive analytics which harness AI are enabling publishers to target the most valuable ad placements more easily.

The primary benefits of AI are coalescing around three central pillars – reduction of time spent on simpler tasks, providing greater insights, and empowering teams to be truly creative. 

Taking care of the back-office work is something which is providing major benefits in the industry, says Smartly’s vice president of creative services, Stephen Vallera. “The ability to remove remedial tasks like resizing, test setups, and minor asset optimisation unlocks the ability for creative teams to focus on more strategic aspects of campaigns, way more often and much earlier.”

Tying up the back office work is all well and good, but the ad tech market is at its core a creative one – and unlocking creativity is something at which AI can really excel. 

"If you have an idea there’s surely some AI that will help breathe life into it," Vallera comments. "New surfaces, tools, formats, and ways of working are appearing every day – it couldn’t be more exciting."

But from social media to the .com bubble, history teaches us innovation rarely goes smoothly, nor does it evolve in a straight line. There is an initial flurry of excitement around the early breakthroughs – often pejoratively termed a 'Wild West' phase, followed by a lull as society re-adjusts to the changes in its midst and legal and legislative frameworks 'catch up.' The rate of advancement then picks up again, but not at the same pace.

With tech that is evolving as quickly – and some would say unpredictably – as AI, it is also difficult to see how seemingly 'out of the blue' leaps in progress will impact the wider market too. 

The release of DeepSeek has illustrated that in dramatic fashion. Made at a lower cost than OpenAI and containing fewer chips, its unveiling sent shockwaves through the industry as it topped the Apple download charts. Billions were wiped off chip manufacturers and the US administration scrambled to contain questions about how it would retain its dominance in the sector. 

But despite all the questions which still surround AI, Vallera argues that AI is not something which is simply 'happening' to the industry and which it must just get used to. On the contrary, the nascent technology is something which the sector can and should mould to its own benefit – and to that of its clients.

"At the end of the day," he adds, "AI is a collection of dials, not a switch. It is our job as creative thinkers, leaders, and collaborators to fine tune these to get the most impactful, most exciting outputs."

While rapid advances in technology virtually never follow a straight line, with at least a 'pause' in the rate of growth expected – there are no signs that is happening with AI just yet, particularly considering DeepSeek’s release. 

AI will continue to be used by the ad tech sector to tackle the simpler tasks, augment human creativity, provide a new level of granular insight on consumer behaviour, and underpin scalability and campaign planning. 

And if anything, rather than AI plateauing any time soon, these most recent developments suggest a new race is underway to break barriers in both cost and performance – with ad tech in prime position to reap the benefits.