Platforms have an identity crisis. Or it's a brand of the brand.
Whether they built a business with social graphs, short form videos or niche communities, last week's Cannes story was the same. They have always been an AI company. That's the new message being sold to marketers. The fact that AI rarely appears on pitch decks until recently appears beside the point. The key now is to be loud and first.
“This is part of our DNA. So, for over a decade, we've been investing tens of thousands of people researching and investing in capital investments and building open source models.”
Reddit created a similar case.
“We've always burned machine learning and intelligence into everything we do,” said Mike Romoff, Chief Revenue Officer at Reddit. “But we're actually seeing AI perform gamut on advertising platforms by helping community intelligence power one of its insight tools and enhance some of its advertising products and optimize it for results.”
All platform executives had their own version of this spill in Croisette. They are trying to ride the slipstream of moments of the era – AI isn't just a tool, it's the storyline. And it's no surprise that in an industry where recognition is still on sale, platforms are repositioning years of machine learning capabilities as evidence that they were much earlier adopters.
And there are some truths under the spin. AI has quietly powered the core components of the platform business for many years, including feed rankings, ad targeting, content moderation, and translation. The change was marketing. AI is now a story, and the platform is rushing to ensure that the story of its origins is maintained.
“Innovation has always been a big part of what we offer, but I think what we've done over the past 18 months is combining innovation with performance from a marketer's perspective,” said Ajit Mohan, Chief Business Officer at Snap.
“There's a lot of investment in the training model and ML, and we've now really been able to do it accurately about improving the ROI for advertisers,” added Mohan.
Melissa Nikolic, YouTube's Product Management Director, YouTube Advertising Surfaces and Experience, said that for advertisers and creators, he “really appreciates” the company's AI capabilities because it “issues that solve these issues much faster and easier than before.”
Rather than entertaining concerns about the latest concerns of the long-term expansion of the Tiktok ban, even Tiktok focused on the energy it boasts about its latest Gen AI capabilities.
“We've integrated some of the Symphony's capabilities into Smart+, and I think it has great potential,” said Moritz Bartsch, head of creative product strategy and operations at Tiktok. “Smart+ already automates a lot, and it makes advertising very easy on Tiktok, and it has a performance lift that's important, so we're going a little further and bringing in some of the creative elements that will be the next step in that path.”
Still, not everyone is buying wholesale relocation. Some people in the advertising industry see the platform's AI push as an attempt to turn intermediary agencies and vendors into man-in-the-middle and vendors through automation. Some of this may occur as a side effect, but that is not intended. Meta, Google and others have always treated holding companies and advertising technology partners as obstacles and as ecosystem extensions.
What's really happening is more practical. These platforms use AI to deepen the grip of our most important customer segment: SMEs. As AI uses more frequently that make those advertisers more money easier, the incentive for double down on the platform is clear.
