The rise of AI is causing ripples in the business world as executives try to identify the predator causing a stampede in the savannah. Whole industries are experimenting with generative and agentive AI to improve performance, reduce costs, and launch new revenue opportunities.
Consequently, they collectively aim to boost commercial activity with better ROI and fodder for the labs where the techies tinker, fiddle and fuddle to find the next big thing.
Consider Facebook’s Dynamic Creative feature, where AI supports advertisers by formulating ads for each individual. Under this system, AI crafts visuals and messages for specific users from a comprehensive set of design elements fed into it by creatives. Facebook analyses massive amounts of user data to enable hyper-personalisation to a degree that hasn’t previously been possible.
The role of agency studios is thus changing with the emergence of the Prompting Engineer, who guides generative AI to deliver the output of creative excellence – artistry, originality, and strategy.
The many tentative videos that pop up on social media are quite spectacular, like the clip of a gorilla that speaks in local, melodic Swanglish lamenting the hordes of new tourists invading his band’s privacy.
Human-like facial expressions and compelling body language complete the video. We know that Mr Gorilla is not real and are amazed by how far generative AI has come. Once again, the medium has become the message, as Marshall McLuhan observed in the sixties.
If influencers crashed the advertising party and descended on its delicious pie, AI barged in right behind them and interrupted the savour.
Take the AI influencer, Bloo, who has accumulated over 700 million views on the back of his real-life creator, Jordi van den Bussche. Jordi is convinced that, in time, he will relinquish control and unleash this Frankenstein into the digital universe.
These and other important topics are what we’ve incorporated into the upcoming PAMRO conference this September in Nairobi. Every year we bring together delegates consisting of business leaders and top executives across Africa who represent prominent research organisations, media networks, ad agency groups and major brands.
This year we will hear from a crop of top CMOs who are busy navigating the choppy waters of technological change as they strive for significant returns and to demonstrate the effectiveness of new campaigns.
Ad agencies and content creators have a say in how the planning landscape has changed. A quartet of agency CEOs discuss current applications of AI and how they foresee its use in years to come.
The conference opens on Sunday, September 14, with an opening cocktail and closes on Tuesday, September 16, with a crowning gala dinner.
In between these are sessions packed with insights and worldly knowledge that shape the future of media and advertising on the continent.
Joe Otin is the Chairman of the Local Organizing Committee for the Pan African Media Research Association 2025 (PAMRO 2025) conference.
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