Omnicom on Wednesday announced ArtBotAI, a new technology solution for clients that uses generative AI to quickly create and deliver marketing assets, from social posts to video ads, and measure campaign performance.
Executives leading ArtBotAI said the AI is different from other ad agency holding groups' AI products because it is built on ArtBot, a content automation tool launched by the company's Critical Mass agency in 2022.
“Artbots have been around for a while,” Omnicom's chief technology officer, Paolo Ubienco, told me. “It's not just a generative AI tool; it's an automation tool in production for large-scale clients.”
ArtBot has previously been used by Omnicom clients including Apple, McDonald's, Unilever, Pfizer and Volkswagen, according to the company.
ArtBotAI also draws insights into consumers, their behavior, transactions, and campaign performance from Omni, a marketing operating system that the company says stores more than 30 petabytes of data and also has its own Chat-GPT-like virtual assistant, Omni Assist. This data can be used in the early ideation process as well as downstream optimization stages of campaigns, allowing agencies to tweak ads to improve performance.
“I don't think our competitors have cracked the code on this, so to speak,” Yubienco said.
The company also plans to introduce a “synthetic neural voice” option, which will allow agencies to negotiate with brand ambassadors to capture voice samples and then play those voices in different accents, languages and genders.
ArtBotAI's generative AI capabilities are driven by Omnicom's large-scale language models, created through partnerships with companies like Microsoft, OpenAI, Google, Getty, Adobe and Amazon. ArtBotAI integrates software like collaborative design tool Figma, Unreal 3D game engine and Microsoft Teams to help agencies and clients create ads. The system also allows clients to plug in their own preferred marketing tech, ad tech and data providers.
ArtBotAI user interface. Omnicom
AT&T says ArtBotAI has made its production and media investments “more impactful”
For AT&T, Omnicom's agency used ArtBotAI to acquire assets from two TV commercial shoots and produce 8,000 ads, reducing the time and manpower needed to create the campaign across digital channels. Valerie Vargas, senior vice president of advertising and retail marketing at AT&T, said in an emailed statement that since starting to use ArtBotAI, production and media investments have become “more effective.”
“While data storage and power demands are increasing, the physical carbon footprint of filming that AT&T previously had to tackle multiple productions is being significantly reduced,” said Alisa Hansen, Omnicom's chief product officer, who leads ArtBot. “Live-action production is the wasteful part of the business.”
Omnicom Chief Product Officer Alisa Hansen. Caitlin Morman
Omnicom said its clients using ArtBotAI have seen an average 40% increase in ad engagement, such as clicks and video views, since they began using the platform.
AI is revolutionizing the advertising industry
The advertising industry is grappling with the disruptive power of AI in areas ranging from content creation to budget planning. A United Talent Agency survey of 500 creative professionals across North America and the UK found that 70% of marketing and entertainment creative professionals use AI in their work, with 47% using it weekly.
While most ad agencies have positioned themselves as AI experts who can help clients leverage the technology, the relative ease of using AI tools may encourage some marketers to bring advertising work in-house. Omnicom said in a February financial filing that using generative AI comes with risks, including ethical considerations, a negative impact on the company's public image and the need to comply with various regulations.
As agencies use AI to streamline their own operations, the technology could also fundamentally change how agencies pay. Traditionally, agencies have charged under an “FTE” model based on the number of full-time employee-equivalent hours spent working on a client's work. Ultimately, using technology like ArtBotAI means agencies need fewer staff members.
Hansen said Omnicom is experimenting with different pricing models for ArtBotAI, from software-as-a-service-style charges weighted according to a client's usage to charging based on agencies delivering pre-agreed-upon outcomes.
Omnicom has previously said it has invested “tens of millions of dollars” in artificial intelligence over nearly a decade.
Ad agency holding companies like Publicis, WPP and Havas have committed to investing hundreds of millions of dollars in AI over the next few years, and have also recently unveiled new solutions for ad creation that integrate data and generative AI technologies.
Ingo Duckerschein, an independent business consultant who has previously held senior roles at Intuit, Taboola and LinkedIn, says the winners in this space will be companies that can directly link improved marketing performance to the use of AI tools.
“My understanding is that it’s still hard to train these models for multiple targets, so I suspect some agencies will end up narrowing their focus to specific targeting networks like Google, Meta, TikTok, etc.,” Duckerschein said. But if any of these tech companies start to refocus their models from clicks to conversions, for example, agencies’ performance could suffer until they catch up to the new goals of those specific platforms, Duckerschein added.
