AI Transforms Ads, But Branding Needs Human Touch

In a German interview, Ben Weiss discusses the current role and limits of generative AI in display advertising. He says AI delivers clear efficiency gains—particularly in mass creative production, asset variants, format adaptation, campaign optimization and reporting—but is not a substitute for human strategic thinking or brand building. AI excels at scalability and variation but tends to amplify existing, interchangeable creative patterns rather than invent new brand meaning. Weiss notes AI cannot restore lost third‑party cookie data, though it can sharpen targeting through contextual signals, behavior and probabilistic methods. He recommends future-proof approaches including contextual targeting, publisher-side hashed IDs and first‑party data. Weiss is skeptical of fully autonomous AI campaign agents and stresses that human oversight remains essential, while highlighting potential value in integrating creative, media and data and shifting measurement toward attention metrics.