Artificial intelligence already drives outcomes through embedded decisioning engines across demand-side platforms, supply-side platforms, and social media. Still, despite the ever-accelerating industry adoption of AI, there’s still a widespread tendency to underestimate how extensively AI optimization currently impacts campaign performance.
“AI is really changing outcomes and not just workflows in media because first it’s embedded in really any decisioning engine that exists — DSPs, SSPs, social platforms,” David Campanelli, president, global investment at Horizon Media, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at the Beet.TV/Horizon Media AI Media Summit in New York. “AI’s already embedded and I don’t think we quite talk enough about how it’s been embedded and it is driving outcomes, driving optimizations already.”
Connected TV’s evolution into a performance channel remains limited by measurement challenges that require bridging big-screen exposure to consumer actions.
Audience development gains precision
AI’s expanding impact appears most prominently in audience development through Horizon’s Blu platform and HorizonOS ecosystem, which integrates technology and data partners to enhance targeting precision and backend outcomes.
“How AI is impacting our audience development is giving us more precision with our audiences. We target better and we’re going to get better outcomes on the back end,” Campanelli said.
The Blu platform evolves from audience development toward comprehensive audience development, planning, activation, and measurement capabilities with AI embedded throughout workflows.
Screen-to-action gap persists
Connected TV performance potential remains constrained by measurement complexity that creates additional steps between television screen exposure and consumer actions, unlike direct phone-to-phone or laptop-to-laptop messaging paths.
“The biggest thing that’s missing in terms of CTV as a performance channel is measurement,” Campanelli said. “It is still an extra step to take the exposure on a TV screen to an action that someone’s taking. It’s a lot more direct when it is a message to your phone, an action on your phone.”
Big-screen advertising inherently maintains larger branding elements than intimate messaging formats, requiring continued refinement of measurement approaches that connect screen exposure to short-term and long-term actions.
AI enhances rather than replaces creativity
Horizon positions AI as creative enhancement and scaling tool rather than replacement for human creative development, enabling assembly of hundreds or thousands of creative variations for specific audience targeting.
“We don’t believe in AI as a replacement for the creative process. It’s an enhancement to it and it’s an enhancement to scale creative,” Campanelli said. “The development of creative still needs to be done by humans, but the ability to assemble hundreds or thousands of variations of that creative and message that creative to very specific audiences on a one-to-one basis, that’s where AI can really supercharge what we’re doing creatively.”
Consolidation drives platform buying
Mergers and acquisitions activity reduces players on both buying and selling sides, leading toward large-scale platform purchasing where traditional operators like Paramount potentially controlling Warner Brothers Discovery properties will sell on platform basis similar to Meta or Google approaches.
“There’s so many fewer players on both sides of the fence,” Campanelli said. “What that leads to is really large scale platform buying and having traditional operators sell more on a platform basis instead of individual networks. We’re going to have fewer competitors and more scale with each one.”
You’re watching coverage from The AI Media Summit, A Beet.TV & Horizon Media Collaboration, presented by Seedtag & The Trade Desk. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
