As AI becomes more deeply embedded in programmatic advertising, automation alone won’t guarantee better outcomes. According to Niki Chana, Programmatic Strategy Director at digital and programmatic advertising company SBS, says human judgement will remain essential to cutting media waste, navigating complexity and ensuring AI serves brands and audiences.
Every generation of media has its existential threat. 20 years ago, it was Google eating into the pie of traditional broadcasters and publishers, or even the rise of the first iteration of social media platforms like MySpace and YouTube which raised fears that brands and media owners would lose control of the conversation.
An all too familiar fear of losing human control is now following AI into advertising.
There’s a recent ad from Meta which acknowledges fears that are shaping the narrative around AI and its impact on society. These are fears of people being left behind or disregarded. Still Meta chimes in with optimism, hailing its legacy of bringing people together and promising a future of advanced tech which caters to everyone.
While nobody wants to have the wool pulled over their eyes, it does allude to a key challenge, how do we get there? Is there any room for ‘human exceptionalism’ to thrive in an era dominated by AI?
Programmatic advertising faces a similar challenge as AI is already helping planners process information more efficiently and assess opportunities across the supply chain. There are, however, clear signs that human expertise will remain central to programmatic operations, and the evolution of automated media buying in the future.
Waste Not, Want Not
Advertising is already learning that adopting AI and finding value from it are different measures. As AI becomes embedded in everyday work, the industry is trying to understand whether rising usage is producing better outcomes or simply adding another layer of cost. Programmatic should be very familiar with such warning signs. There was a period where automated buying scaled before the industry could see where value was leaking, and the same mistake should not be repeated with AI.
I often consider media waste as a useful benchmark for where the human in programmatic matters. It’s a growing challenge that many might try and fix with AI. On the one hand, AI can help buyers identify poor-quality inventory and understand where ads are running. Across a complex supply path, it can surface patterns that would take a person much longer to spot. However, those insights still need human judgement to become better planning decisions. AI alone cannot completely resolve bad operations, manual intervention is often required to identify discrepancies and that comes with human experience.
It would be deeply frustrating for everyone involved in a campaign, if a client pays for something that doesn’t align with its intended vision. That’s where a human-first approach is vital. Experienced planners know the brand and its audience, and are well equipped to distinguish technical efficiency from a decision that creates true impact.
Finding the Right Balance
AI is as exciting as it is provisional because for better or worse it still operates from patterns and inputs created by people. A model can learn from a specific framing of the past and suggest what may happen next, though we’ve seen how media can be transformed by changing behaviour and emerging innovations.
Even if you get a solution which is AI driven there are no guarantees it will be correct 100% of the time, and there’s a tendency to overestimate the capabilities of models trained on human input with specific framing and flaws. When it comes to fully autonomous decision-making, human oversight will always hold incredible value. AI can model behaviour but humans must invent strategy and lead with creativity and discernment.
The Case for Human Judgement
Oversight depends on experience and judgement. A creative choice can appear reasonable when treated primarily as data before falling apart when somebody actually reads the room. AI cannot replace the instinct that comes from knowing a brand and its audience within a wider cultural context. For the foreseeable, effective programmatic will always depend on people making informed decisions that create better outcomes. And this will remain the case, even for whatever comes after it.
The industry is wise to evolve with the times but it remains paramount to keep human exceptionalism at its forefront. That requires a combination of creativity and emotional intelligence, with strategic thinking and AI fluency. That is the core of what has kept the industry thriving for as long as it has. Whether automated buying in the past, or AI in our present future, tech has always proven most effective when human judgement gives it direction and context. Keeping the work connected to the audiences it is meant to impact.
