Xaxis, the outcome media company by GroupM and WPP, is opening up a huge space for marketers and advertisers. With a collective approach of advanced technology, machine learning, unique data sets and automation, Xaxis is helping brands to reach their business outcomes in the most efficient and effective ways. In a chat with exchange4media, Arshan Saha, APAC CEO, Xaxis, spoke about the future of AI and data in terms of marketers. Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning will have a massive effect on the advertising and marketing world, says Saha. "The majority of media channels will be automated in the near future," he said. This will mean consumers will become addressable across different channels as they will be driven by a digital footprint, Saha added.

AI is infiltrating everything we do, even if we aren't aware of it. In this piece for ExchangeWire, Cheryl Guzman Ng (pictured below), APAC head of marketing and innovation, Xaxis, explains how marketers can look to adopt it in their marketing operations. For advertisers, the objective of a media buying strategy is simple but challenging: to reach the right audience with the right message, at the right time, in the right context, and the best price. To achieve these measures often requires a tedious process of gathering enough information to formulate a plan, and then to implement that plan and continuously optimise towards the desired results. On the other hand, Artificial Intelligence (AI) – a much-hyped technology in recent years – is steadily infiltrating every industry; and advertising is no exception.

There's been a lot of skepticism about the future of advertising. For most of the past decade, digital advertising has advanced considerably, with major corporations spending a majority of their marketing budgets trying to increase their online visibility. And with this, one of the main challenges facing marketers is breaking through the clutter to reach their target audience. However, the rise of obtrusive and irrelevant ads on the web has led to a backlash in public opinion and an increase of ad-blocking software. In response, some of advertising's biggest spenders have started to shift their focus towards other avenues such as experiential marketing - a strategy that focuses on creating a physical experience for consumers.

The vast majority (80%) of media practitioners view the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) as on a par with the industrial revolution in terms of the potential impact it will have on their industry. Feelings are generally positive about the potential impact of the rise of AI with practitioners citing improved productivity and better targeting as notable advantages, but concerns over "less human control" are notable. These were the findings of a survey of more than 1,000 media practitioners from GroupM adtech platform Xaxis and IAB Europe which quizzed multiple tiers of the industry during the months of March and April this year. Almost a third (30%) of advertisers and publishers are not confident at all in understanding AI and how it could apply in their work, according to the survey, which also found that all respondents felt AI has a positive impact on their job with 62% believing it improves strategic decision making. More than three-quarters of respondents believe AI innovation is the next industrial revolution.

"It is mind-boggling the amount of data our media consumption generates across all our devices. Making sense of it all becomes very difficult with a human-sized brain – you get lost in the details" Nicolas Bidon is Xaxis' global president and he's talking about the future of programmatic at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. MWC is an apt setting for discussions on The Future. Away from these gigabytes of invention, the calm of Xaxis' networking garden is cool relief. So, how has programmatic evolved and what's next for the industry?

"It is mind-boggling the amount of data our media consumption generates across all our devices. Making sense of it all becomes very difficult with a human-sized brain--you get lost in the details" Nicolas Bidon is Xaxis' global president and he's talking about the future of programmatic at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. MWC is an apt setting for discussions on The Future. Away from these gigabytes of invention, the calm of Xaxis' networking garden is cool relief. So, how has programmatic evolved and what's next for the industry?

The Drum shines a light on how the GroupM media investment unit is leveraging its relationship with AppNexus to harness machine learning, and better improve the performance of its media traders, and usher in the age of'programmable marketing'. Machine learning, Artificial Intelligence (AI) – for many of those involved in the advertising industry such terms are nothing more than buzz phrases used by panelists on the conference circuit, with little real application to contemporary media practice. However, while the more cynical in the industry may dismiss the above phrases as merely the domain of science fiction, the impact of such technologies (be it positive, or negative) will be felt a lot sooner than such cynics think. The latest issue of The Drum magazine, guest edited by IBM's AI system Watson demonstrated that, while not without its problems, the technology is within the grasp of the contemporary marketer. Meanwhile, at the cutting edge of the media industry's use of AI, is the ad tech sector (or'programmatic advertisers').