Dot Com(plex), Bot Simplex: How AI is Rewriting the Media Mix

Time of India

11 hours ago

Imagination is running a race against artificial intelligence.
Every year in June, Cannes is the venue of a glittering celebration of creativity, ambition kept fuelled by very expensive rosé and champagne.
This year the techies were all 'demonstrating' AI like fruit merchants at a fresh market.
Meta
's Mark Zuckerberg declared that his platform will deliver everything from creative to deployment , end-to-end. He calls it 'Infinite creative'.
OpenAI
's
Sam Altman
claimed that 95% of tasks traditionally performed by agencies and creatives will soon be handled 'easily, instantly, and at nearly no cost' by AI.
Reality is probably going to be much less dramatic in terms of the pace and scale of disruption. But the train is definitely headed there.
Technology has destabilized the ad world as much as provided it opportunities for growth.
From print and billboards to radio . There onwards to TV and to digital platforms in the early 2000s . Each time the rules of media buying and consumer engagement were rewritten.
But creative work lived through disruption. Humans had agency. Maverick copywriters, visual artists, and brand strategists ruled the Ad world and they were the ones whose names earned
Cannes Lions
.
But now AI has started to claim that agency.
Tools from
TikTok
, Meta, and Google can now generate video ads, rewrite copy, translate messages into multiple languages, and even customize creative to user segments, all at the click of a button.
Meta's new features can personalize ad text across ten languages.
Google's Performance Max and TikTok's AI Studio churns out campaigns from simple text prompts.
All this and more was on display across tented pavallions, beachside seminars and fancy demos in hotel suites, at Cannes.
The cost -quality equation is quite persuasive.aAI is perfectly suited to the staple humdrum of hardworking mass media run creatives.
Over the past few decades, the value chain in advertising was fairly linear: agencies devised the message, media firms distributed it, and tech platforms optimized the spend. But the platforms are no longer content being middlemen. They are targeting, measuring, and increasingly, making the ads too.
Search is now becoming a conversation more than a recommendation of sources. AI-powered search doesn't just know what users are searching for , but why.
This context-rich data promises even higher ad performance.
The industry's power structure is consolidating. In 2019, the four biggest players—Google, Meta, Amazon, and ByteDance—held just over a third of the global ad market. By 2024, that share had surpassed 50%. AI is reshaping targeting, tracking, and creation to add to this concentration.
These digital overlords have the infrastructure, the data, and now the creative tools. While DIY tools empower small businesses, the real gains are accruing to the giants. Building and running effective AI systems requires computing power, vast datasets, and technical sophistication .
Whether 'buy or build', it is expensive and scale-dependent to win in AI.
In this way, AI is less a great equalizer than a great multiplier of existing power.
The Rebirth of PR—and Congregational Branding
Here lies one of the most surprising twists in AI's rise: it may revive public relations as a core pillar of branding.
As users shift from search engines to conversational AI agents like ChatGPT, Bard, or Gemini, the inputs that influence recommendation engines are no longer just ads—they're text, tone, and trust.
To influence chatbot recommendations, brands must now influence the sources that feed them.
That means press coverage, reviews, and long-form content. Infographics must be translated into readable text.
At a collective level , reputation was not developed from the fine print. But, AI systems have the capacity to make every fine print legible. Hence the reputational signals will be picked up irrespective of how upstream they may be.
The cruel irony is that the most powerful branding in the AI era may not be flashy visuals, but plain, factual prose.
This also brings new value to congregational moments. The human collective is precious. events that draw attention, create conversation, and get into media coverage . Think product launches, partnerships, charity drives, sustainability summits.
These generate press, buzz, and backlinks, signals that AIs absorb.
As attention fragments, these tentpole moments become focal points of influence, especially in a media ecosystem where LLMs are the new gatekeepers.
But this makes it very important for attribution to be strengthened.
The corroboration of media efforts to economic value of a brand needs the stature of an axiomatic truth.
Agency models are melting like never before
Because of the changes afoot, the agency organisation and revenue model both will need to change hugely.
From paying for time clients will want to pay for end outcomes
Hence, agency stocks have tumbled. Four of the five major holding companies have seen share price declines since 2023.
Omnicom
and
Interpublic
are set to merge by year-end in an effort to save costs and stay competitive.
WPP
is in CEO transition mode. Publicis, the standout, has retained investor confidence by pushing a narrative of deep AI integration.
AI won't just create and place ads. It will also read them. Google recently introduced an AI-powered shopping agent that not only alerts users when prices drop but may soon be able to make purchasing decisions on its own.
Brands will soon need to optimize not just for human persuasion, but for machine logic. By the way this 'trigger at a threshold' Agentic action exists in many cases even today : auto bill pay, banking instructions, fees, interest computation, insurance renewals and so on..
What happens when the viewer of an ad is an AI agent tasked with buying a product on behalf of its owner?
Should the price of an ad impression be different when seen by a bot than by a human?
These are the next frontiers of media pricing, targeting, and influence.
'Marketing -Advertising- PR- Media'has survived extinction-level events globally : radio in the 1920s, television in the 1970s, internet ,web , social in the 2000s.
AI is doing three things not ever faced earlier .First , human creativity and machine replication is shrinking faster than expected.Second, AI is not democratizing intelligence. It's centralizing it. While small brands gain access to tools, the largest players are securing the most value by leveraging capital, data, and infrastructure at scale.Third, AI is scrambling and reordering the importance of media channels and brand strategies in unpredictable ways. Outdoor, PR, Institutional events and awards will gain strength.
LLMs don't care how a consumer feels. They care what they read.
(The author is the Global CMO, CVBU at Tata Motors and is part of the Forbes 2025 list of the World's Most Influential CMOs. Opinions are personal)