Firsthand’s Michael Rubenstein: Static Ads are Giving Way to Adaptive Brand Experiences
For all of digital advertising’s sophistication, marketers have spent three decades doing essentially the same thing: deciding in advance which static message to put in front of a consumer. Firsthand is built on the premise that AI makes that approach obsolete.
“The history of digital marketing to date, as sophisticated as it’s gotten, is marketers still fundamentally deciding on what static ad or message to place in front of a consumer. With AI, that all changes,” Michael Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO of Firsthand, told Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein at the IAB Playfronts in New York. “Now brands can put an adaptive ad in front of a consumer that is based on the context and the signals that we have available and can engage with the consumer and adapt on the fly.”
A new partnership with IGN illustrates what that looks like in practice. A reader reviewing Capcom’s new game Onimusha who then moves to an article about building a gaming PC will encounter an AMD display ad that asks specifically whether they need to upgrade their graphics card to play it. The ad responds to where the reader has been and what they’re reading, not just who they are demographically.
Publisher intelligence enters the ad experience
The partnership connects IGN’s IMAGINE audience intelligence platform directly to Firsthand’s adaptive ad units. Until now, publishers have been able to use audience signals only to help brands decide who to target. The IGN integration allows those signals to shape what happens inside the ad itself.
“Publishers have built wonderful relationships with consumers. They have premium content, they have consumer trust, they have a tremendous amount of insight and knowledge about their audience. But to date, they’ve only been able to use that to help a brand figure out who to target,” Rubenstein said. “Now they can actually use those signals to pull into the experience of the ad itself and to influence what the consumer experience is and what actions they take next.”
The arrangement creates value across all three sides. Publishers go deeper with their audience data. Advertisers deliver more contextually relevant messages. Consumers encounter advertising that responds to their actual interests.
The static era ends
Rubenstein’s view of where this leads is expansive. The predetermination of ad messages across the entire internet will give way to real-time adaptive experiences as AI makes static formats feel as outdated as banner ads once made print look.
“We believe that the entire internet will shift to adaptive experiences. In the AI era, brands need to use AI to build relationships with consumers in real time and to adapt as the consumer engages. By doing that, be able to deliver something that really is exactly what the consumer wants from them right there and then,” Rubenstein said.
For all of digital advertising’s sophistication, marketers have spent three decades doing essentially the same thing: deciding in advance which static message to put in front of a consumer. Firsthand is built on the premise that AI makes that approach obsolete.
“The history of digital marketing to date, as sophisticated as it’s gotten, is marketers still fundamentally deciding on what static ad or message to place in front of a consumer. With AI, that all changes,” Michael Rubenstein, co-founder and co-CEO of Firsthand, told Beet.TV editorial director Lisa Granatstein at the IAB Playfronts in New York. “Now brands can put an adaptive ad in front of a consumer that is based on the context and the signals that we have available and can engage with the consumer and adapt on the fly.”
A new partnership with IGN illustrates what that looks like in practice. A reader reviewing Capcom’s new game Onimusha who then moves to an article about building a gaming PC will encounter an AMD display ad that asks specifically whether they need to upgrade their graphics card to play it. The ad responds to where the reader has been and what they’re reading, not just who they are demographically.
Publisher intelligence enters the ad experience
The partnership connects IGN’s IMAGINE audience intelligence platform directly to Firsthand’s adaptive ad units. Until now, publishers have been able to use audience signals only to help brands decide who to target. The IGN integration allows those signals to shape what happens inside the ad itself.
“Publishers have built wonderful relationships with consumers. They have premium content, they have consumer trust, they have a tremendous amount of insight and knowledge about their audience. But to date, they’ve only been able to use that to help a brand figure out who to target,” Rubenstein said. “Now they can actually use those signals to pull into the experience of the ad itself and to influence what the consumer experience is and what actions they take next.”
The arrangement creates value across all three sides. Publishers go deeper with their audience data. Advertisers deliver more contextually relevant messages. Consumers encounter advertising that responds to their actual interests.
The static era ends
Rubenstein’s view of where this leads is expansive. The predetermination of ad messages across the entire internet will give way to real-time adaptive experiences as AI makes static formats feel as outdated as banner ads once made print look.
“We believe that the entire internet will shift to adaptive experiences. In the AI era, brands need to use AI to build relationships with consumers in real time and to adapt as the consumer engages. By doing that, be able to deliver something that really is exactly what the consumer wants from them right there and then,” Rubenstein said.
