CANNES — At the latest assembly of the world’s largest festival for creative marketing, the hottest topic up for discussion was… artificial intelligence?

It may seem incongruous, but, as executives in industries the world over scramble to assess the benefits promised by AI, advertising decision-makers are amongst those getting excited.

“At the agency level, we have a unique opportunity,” says Havas’ global managing director Dominique Delport. “The way we are going to reach new heights .. is the moment we can bring more and more automation.

And Delport draws a parallel with what happened on the New York Stock Exchange more than a decade ago, when new automated trading software was introduced, meaning many trades are now performed by algorithms, not traders on the floor.

“(It is) exactly what happened in the financial markets and the trading floor, where (the) computer sits next to traders,” Delport adds. “Traders and quant analysts and computer help to make the engine work better.”

At Cannes, discussion of AI’s application in advertising has ranged from interactive 3D faces to personalization. Delport says Havas has already begun to plug AI in to its software stack.

“We start(ed) implementing AI components in our latest version of the meta-DSP, and our new programmatic platform, CTS … to have smarter decision-making by providing the top 30 trading strategies,” he adds.

This video is part of Beet.TV’s AI Series from Cannes Lions 2017, presented by The Weather Company, an IBM Business. For more from the series, please visit this page.