AI will dictate the future of strategy

LONDON: Technological developments will dramatically change the role of agency strategists as they move from a free-associating, subjective approach to a more empirical, objective and advisory role, a leading industry figure has said. Writing in the current issue of Admap, Mark Holden, Worldwide Strategy and Planning Director at PHD, outlines the future direction of strategy that will start to emerge once attribution modelling and demand-side platforms come together. Currently, users log in to the former to pull out insights and then log in to the latter to execute their strategies. "When they are finally joined up, this will create the first closed system our industry has ever experienced," Holden says, "with this the basis into which we can drop a reinforcement learning algorithm." The point about reinforcement learning – an emerging area of artificial intelligence – is that it requires a closed system, where action and outcome are inextricably linked, in order to further develop.