MIAMI — Artificial intelligence’s tsunami of creative production is expected to dwarf the internet’s already overwhelming content saturation. That’s going to force marketers to build entirely new management systems for thousand-fold increases in versioning and variation.
“TikTok ushered in a big change to creative volume and velocity, where many of our marketers were saying, ‘I need to increase by a hundred X the amount of creative versioning and variation I have,’” Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, told Beet.TV contributor David Kaplan at POSSIBLE. “Marketers are now going to need to be ready for AI unleashing more affordable, more available creative, and factors of now a thousand or even 10,000 in terms of the type of creative diversity and variation that people want to see to engage.”
This exponential leap beyond current social media requirements demands fundamental operational transformation alongside workforce development for AI-ready teams.
Amazon CTV partnership enables performance scaling
Smartly’s Amazon connected TV partnership emerged from industry conference discussions about unlocking personalized creative at scale, combining campaign management tools with intelligent creative optimization and real-time audience data integration.
“We really believe we can take everything we know how to drive return on ad spend and ROI to the CTV environment by connecting all of our campaign management tools with our intelligent creative tools,” Desmond said.
The collaboration aims to bring performance marketing capabilities that brand marketers need for business growth through enhanced creative personalization rather than traditional CTV branding approaches.
INCRMNTAL acquisition addresses measurement evolution
Smartly’s acquisition of INCRMNTAL, which closed in early May 2026, is viewed as a response to measurement currency shifts as mixed media modeling becomes outdated and media mix attribution loses reliability due to algorithm-based optimization and cookie changes.
“The problems with [media mix modeling] is that they are a look back currency and it takes a while to get a true read of what’s happening. The problems with [multi-touch attribution] are that MTA data is getting less and less reliable,” Desmond said.
Real-time INCRMNTAL data married with Smartly’s activation and creative optimization provides immediate insights about purchase drivers and mid-to-lower funnel performance in AI-driven campaigns.
OpenAI partnership positions for contextual evolution
As OpenAI’s first creative ad tech partner, Smartly enables brands to reach consumers spending time with ChatGPT through more contextual, relevant search experiences that demand sophisticated creative responses.
“Our marketers need to reach people where they are, and we know that ChatGPT is something that consumers are spending time with and will increasingly spend time with,” Desmond said.
The partnership enables building and collaboration during AI’s early development phase while exploring creative relevance possibilities in contextual search environments.
Workforce transformation becomes imperative
Beyond creative volume scaling, the shift requires systematic training programs that help digital-native teams become AI-ready through structured learning approaches similar to traditional-to-digital workforce transitions.
Desmond draws from personal experience transitioning from traditional media to digital expertise, viewing AI as the next evolutionary learning opportunity for marketing professionals.
“CMOs and marketers are going to need to embrace new approaches to training, to development, and really helping their teams become AI ready,” Desmond said. “It is such a big game changer.”
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