AI Can Make Ads More Conversational, Relevant: IGN Entertainment’s Karl Stewart
Advertisers have spent decades perfecting the art of putting banners in front of consumers, only to discover that people occasionally want more information than a rectangle with a catchy slogan can provide. Worse, some consumers have the audacity to be interested in different things.
IGN Entertainment is betting that artificial intelligence can help advertisers move beyond the limitations of traditional display advertising by creating personalized conversations that reflect consumers’ interests and behavior.
Speaking with Lisa Granatstein, editorial director of Beet.TV, at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) PlayFronts, Karl Stewart, senior vice president of marketing and head of Imagine AI at IGN Entertainment, discussed the company’s partnership with Firsthand, an AI technology provider. The collaboration uses audience intelligence and conversational AI to help brands guide consumers through more relevant advertising experiences.
Giving banner ads a much-needed promotion
Stewart said his experience developing marketing campaigns exposed a longstanding problem: advertisers invest considerable resources in creative storytelling, then reduce the consumer experience to a single advertisement.
“The challenge that we have is, is that once you put a banner in front of somebody, the journey kind of stops there,” Stewart said.
IGN Entertainment, which Stewart said reaches 470 million monthly users and has 96 million social followers, has been developing ways to understand how audiences interact with its content. Its Imagine AI initiative uses first-party behavioral data to identify audience segments and predict what consumers might want to explore next.
Firsthand’s technology adds another dimension through AI-powered brand agents that can engage users in conversations informed by their interests and previous interactions.
The approach could help advertisers deliver more of their campaign narratives instead of hoping a single creative execution accomplishes everything from generating awareness to explaining product features and driving purchases.
Campaigns that remember what comes next
Consider a video game launch. Traditional advertising might repeatedly show consumers the same promotional message, regardless of whether they’ve already learned about the game or are ready to buy it.
Stewart described a more progressive approach. An initial advertisement might introduce the game’s fictional world. Subsequent interactions could explore characters, weapons or downloadable content, depending on what the audience has already encountered.
“So for an advertiser, it feels like I’m able to talk about my product in more than a linear fashion,” Stewart said.
The technology allows advertisers to organize campaigns around audience cohorts and advance their messaging as consumers become more familiar with a product.
For media buyers, that could mean greater flexibility in sequencing creative messages across campaigns lasting weeks or months. It also offers publishers an opportunity to provide more sophisticated advertising experiences using their first-party audience data.
AI knows which gamers want what
Stewart emphasized that IGN’s approach to adaptive advertising isn’t primarily about generative AI producing endless variations of creative assets. Instead, the company is using AI to interpret audience behavior and improve targeting.
IGN processes approximately one trillion anonymized data points monthly, according to Stewart, to understand how users arrive at its properties, navigate content and engage with different subjects.
“AI is allowing us to do a better job of understanding how they came in the front door,” he said.
That information can help Firsthand’s brand agents tailor interactions based on what an audience segment has already demonstrated an interest in.
Stewart pointed to a campaign involving AMD and Capcom’s Onimusha game. AMD is promoting graphics processing hardware through a bundle that includes a game with a qualifying GPU purchase.
The challenge is that not everyone interested in the promotion approaches it from the same direction. Some consumers are fans of the game. Others are PC builders evaluating hardware. Still others may be trying to figure out which GPU they actually need, a process that can involve enough specifications and acronyms to make buying a toaster seem intellectually rewarding.
IGN’s technology can distinguish among those audience segments and offer different starting points for their interactions with the brand.
“It’s like an on-ramp to a freeway,” Stewart said.
Rather than directing everyone to the same product page and leaving them to sort through the details, the experience can provide relevant information before presenting an opportunity to purchase.
Audience segments shouldn’t have expiration dates
Another focus for Imagine AI is keeping audience segments current.
Stewart said IGN is developing technology that rebuilds segments every three to five days as new behavioral information becomes available.
That contrasts with campaigns that rely on audience definitions for 30 days, even as consumer interests change.
The company has observed improvements in impressions and click-through rates as it refreshes and refines its audience segments, Stewart said, although he didn’t provide specific performance figures.
For media planners, more frequent updates could help reduce the deterioration in targeting relevance that occurs when audience data becomes stale.
IGN is also applying its audience intelligence to broader editorial and product decisions, including homepage design and social content development.
Nobody needs 50 reminders about a T-shirt
Stewart said IGN’s longer-term strategy includes combining its behavioral intelligence with research into generational differences.
He cited Generations in Play, a study produced with Kantar and the University of California, Berkeley, that examines how gaming behaviors differ among Gen Z, millennials and Gen X.
Those insights could help IGN develop advertising experiences that better reflect how different audiences discover content and make purchasing decisions.
Stewart also offered a familiar example of where digital advertising frequently goes wrong.
“You go onto Instagram or any platform, and immediately you say, ‘I like a T-shirt,’ now I get flooded with 50 T-shirts to buy,” he said.
“I like the T-shirt at that moment, not every day for the next week.”
It’s a concise description of one of digital advertising’s enduring frustrations: confusing a passing expression of interest with a lifelong commitment to purchasing additional merchandise.
For IGN, the opportunity is to use AI to understand consumer intent more precisely and respond with information that advances the relationship rather than simply repeating the same sales pitch.
As Stewart sees it, the work of improving audience understanding will continue evolving alongside the technology. For advertisers accustomed to celebrating increasingly precise targeting, the next challenge may be demonstrating that they understand when consumers are ready to hear something new.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of the 2026 IAB PlayFronts. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
Advertisers have spent decades perfecting the art of putting banners in front of consumers, only to discover that people occasionally want more information than a rectangle with a catchy slogan can provide. Worse, some consumers have the audacity to be interested in different things.
IGN Entertainment is betting that artificial intelligence can help advertisers move beyond the limitations of traditional display advertising by creating personalized conversations that reflect consumers’ interests and behavior.
Speaking with Lisa Granatstein, editorial director of Beet.TV, at the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) PlayFronts, Karl Stewart, senior vice president of marketing and head of Imagine AI at IGN Entertainment, discussed the company’s partnership with Firsthand, an AI technology provider. The collaboration uses audience intelligence and conversational AI to help brands guide consumers through more relevant advertising experiences.
Giving banner ads a much-needed promotion
Stewart said his experience developing marketing campaigns exposed a longstanding problem: advertisers invest considerable resources in creative storytelling, then reduce the consumer experience to a single advertisement.
“The challenge that we have is, is that once you put a banner in front of somebody, the journey kind of stops there,” Stewart said.
IGN Entertainment, which Stewart said reaches 470 million monthly users and has 96 million social followers, has been developing ways to understand how audiences interact with its content. Its Imagine AI initiative uses first-party behavioral data to identify audience segments and predict what consumers might want to explore next.
Firsthand’s technology adds another dimension through AI-powered brand agents that can engage users in conversations informed by their interests and previous interactions.
The approach could help advertisers deliver more of their campaign narratives instead of hoping a single creative execution accomplishes everything from generating awareness to explaining product features and driving purchases.
Campaigns that remember what comes next
Consider a video game launch. Traditional advertising might repeatedly show consumers the same promotional message, regardless of whether they’ve already learned about the game or are ready to buy it.
Stewart described a more progressive approach. An initial advertisement might introduce the game’s fictional world. Subsequent interactions could explore characters, weapons or downloadable content, depending on what the audience has already encountered.
“So for an advertiser, it feels like I’m able to talk about my product in more than a linear fashion,” Stewart said.
The technology allows advertisers to organize campaigns around audience cohorts and advance their messaging as consumers become more familiar with a product.
For media buyers, that could mean greater flexibility in sequencing creative messages across campaigns lasting weeks or months. It also offers publishers an opportunity to provide more sophisticated advertising experiences using their first-party audience data.
AI knows which gamers want what
Stewart emphasized that IGN’s approach to adaptive advertising isn’t primarily about generative AI producing endless variations of creative assets. Instead, the company is using AI to interpret audience behavior and improve targeting.
IGN processes approximately one trillion anonymized data points monthly, according to Stewart, to understand how users arrive at its properties, navigate content and engage with different subjects.
“AI is allowing us to do a better job of understanding how they came in the front door,” he said.
That information can help Firsthand’s brand agents tailor interactions based on what an audience segment has already demonstrated an interest in.
Stewart pointed to a campaign involving AMD and Capcom’s Onimusha game. AMD is promoting graphics processing hardware through a bundle that includes a game with a qualifying GPU purchase.
The challenge is that not everyone interested in the promotion approaches it from the same direction. Some consumers are fans of the game. Others are PC builders evaluating hardware. Still others may be trying to figure out which GPU they actually need, a process that can involve enough specifications and acronyms to make buying a toaster seem intellectually rewarding.
IGN’s technology can distinguish among those audience segments and offer different starting points for their interactions with the brand.
“It’s like an on-ramp to a freeway,” Stewart said.
Rather than directing everyone to the same product page and leaving them to sort through the details, the experience can provide relevant information before presenting an opportunity to purchase.
Audience segments shouldn’t have expiration dates
Another focus for Imagine AI is keeping audience segments current.
Stewart said IGN is developing technology that rebuilds segments every three to five days as new behavioral information becomes available.
That contrasts with campaigns that rely on audience definitions for 30 days, even as consumer interests change.
The company has observed improvements in impressions and click-through rates as it refreshes and refines its audience segments, Stewart said, although he didn’t provide specific performance figures.
For media planners, more frequent updates could help reduce the deterioration in targeting relevance that occurs when audience data becomes stale.
IGN is also applying its audience intelligence to broader editorial and product decisions, including homepage design and social content development.
Nobody needs 50 reminders about a T-shirt
Stewart said IGN’s longer-term strategy includes combining its behavioral intelligence with research into generational differences.
He cited Generations in Play, a study produced with Kantar and the University of California, Berkeley, that examines how gaming behaviors differ among Gen Z, millennials and Gen X.
Those insights could help IGN develop advertising experiences that better reflect how different audiences discover content and make purchasing decisions.
Stewart also offered a familiar example of where digital advertising frequently goes wrong.
“You go onto Instagram or any platform, and immediately you say, ‘I like a T-shirt,’ now I get flooded with 50 T-shirts to buy,” he said.
“I like the T-shirt at that moment, not every day for the next week.”
It’s a concise description of one of digital advertising’s enduring frustrations: confusing a passing expression of interest with a lifelong commitment to purchasing additional merchandise.
For IGN, the opportunity is to use AI to understand consumer intent more precisely and respond with information that advances the relationship rather than simply repeating the same sales pitch.
As Stewart sees it, the work of improving audience understanding will continue evolving alongside the technology. For advertisers accustomed to celebrating increasingly precise targeting, the next challenge may be demonstrating that they understand when consumers are ready to hear something new.
You’re watching Beet.TV coverage of the 2026 IAB PlayFronts. For more videos from this series, please visit this page.
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