By Sam Bradley * June 23, 2025 *

Ivy Liu.

The less exciting, but more important change is how AI is used to gain operational and competitive advantages through applications that alter the way decisions are made, media is allocated, and how campaigns perform.

Let’s take media planning. Today, a large part of the job is between the marketer’s media budget and the media owners that ultimately get it. It’s a job built on relationships, institutional knowledge and reputation. These qualities are still important, but AI can replicate them or at least complement them.

An example is the still nascent practice of using synthetic audiences to conduct market research, test creative ideas and increasingly plan and target media (the practice is sometimes referred to as “digital twining”). This is the practice of using a composite audience created by generative AI, using multiple data sources, to target specific media.

Japanese holding Dentsu signed a commercial partnership with start-up Evidenza (the terms of which have not been disclosed) last week. This move heralds a more widespread use for synthetic audiences.

Paul Kang, Dentsu’s head of alternative investments, told Digiday that the company is taking a strong, assertive approach to how brands and clients can move from insight into activation.

Although the data on which they are based is real – in Dentsu’s case, it plans to use its own Consumer Connection System research panel as well as Evidenza’s data – the profiles that result from them are artificial. The personas are not based on personal information, but rather are created from probabilistic data. Hence the “synthetic’ moniker. Dentsu announced other alliances in addition to the Evidenza one this month. It also formed partnerships with MiQ, to use the Sigma programmatic platform from the adtech firm, and with Criteo, to use its Commerce Media Platform. These moves show a different approach than its holdco competitors. Instead of racing to acquire, they’re prioritizing partnerships with other marketing industry participants. Kang did not rule out future M&A in this space by the holdco but he suggested agency businesses should not be in a hurry to make cash offers for companies that have radically different business model to their own. “We must be very careful about how we bring [AI] technology in-house. You can’t just go and acquire a company, because that comes with inherent risks, especially for agencies,” he said. Kang said that the partnership would help Dentsu to move synthetic audiences from a “nascent” play to a tool that any of their media planners could use. He declined to reveal which client teams had already adopted the method. AI tools are able to create these profiles faster than traditional methods that rely on survey panels. This has advantages in terms of cost and speed. Shirli ZELCERT, chief data officer and technology officer of Dentsu said that the technique had delivered “greater accuracy, speed, agility, and planning in activation.”

Dentsu released its six-month forecast of ad spending, Color by Numbers

. Following recent forecast downgrades (mainly due to U.S. tariff policy), IPG and WPP Media also downgraded their forecasts. The report indicates that global ad spending is expected to grow by 4.9% to $992 billion in 2025.

• The digital ad budget will account for 68.4%, growing by 7.9%.
• The U.K. leads the ad spending growth in Europe, Africa, and the Middle East (6.9% growth versus an average of 4.5%), but investments in the Americas are lagging, with growth of only 4.2%
• Retail Media Spend is projected to grow by 13.9% in 2025 and social 9.2%.

Takeoff and landing

• More executive changes have occurred at IPG Mediabrands.Stacy DeRiso is the new president of Initiative, replacing Dimitri Maex. Jackie Stevenson, formerly EMEA Chief Growth Officer at IPG, has been appointed global chief strategy and innovation officer by M+C Saatchi Group (19459027). The merger between IPG and Omnicom is being scrutinized by regulators. The Competitions and Markets Authority (CMA) of Britainhas launched an investigation into the deal. This is the same CMA that slammed Google for its efforts to end the third-party cookies.
• Yoshinobu isse was appointed global head of sports at Dentsu. The firm has expanded its sports unit to the Middle East and North Africa. It has also expanded its anime unit to North America, China and South East Asia – the first time that it offers anime licensing and merchandise outside Japan.
• Merkle’s Chris Freeland has been appointed as CEO for the U.K. & Ireland. Nadine Young, who replaced Emil Bielski, is now CEO of Publicis Media Shop Spark Foundry. PMG announced a martech platform called Alli after acquiring Momentum Commerce. This allows marketers to toggle apps in the media planning and buying workflow with a single click. Havashas launched a new AI creative tool named after Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. (He painted Girl with a Pearl Earring). Mod Op an independent full-service agency, will invest $11 million in AI and data science by 2025.

Direct quote

: “While Google fights these antitrust suits, it’s unable to focus on the business. Amazon, on the contrary, is moving. They’re the ones Google should be concerned about.”

–A candid assessment of one of the big dramas of this year, overheard by Digiday’s Editors in Cannes

Speed reading

• The news and notes from the Riviera dominated last week. We reported on the two major obsessions of industry executives and dealmakers – the creator economics and AI. Michael Burgi covered a beachside blitz by Omnicom which announced strategic partnerships with YouTube Amazon Meta Disney Walmart PayPal and X. Krystal Scanlon reported that as President Donald Trump kicked TikTok down the road again, marketers were hounding executives of the platform for answers. The rest of our coverage from Cannes can be found here. She also profiled Unik Ernst, one of Croisette’s most prolific Fixers.
• Jess Davies covered The Guardian’s decision to consolidate their programmatic operations and move further into curation.
• Lastly, if you want to read something that has nothing to do with France I wrote a piece that looked at top brands investing digital out-of home — including a Sprite ad campaign that uses heat- and humidity-activated billsboards.

https://digiday.com/?p=581471