PR/Advertising Giant Publicis to Invest $325M in Major AI Initiative

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Changes in the marketing landscape keep coming fast, as major players like Publicis embrace AI with open arms and certain select tech startups attract investment capital to scale their solutions and disrupt existing business models.

TODAY’S AI-POWERED MARKETING UPDATE:

• Top News: PR/Advertising Giant Publicis to Invest $325M in Major AI Initiative

• Top AI Marketing Trend: Report: Majority of Marketers Have No Plan to Use ID 2.0 or Digital Fingerprinting

• VC News: OpenDialog Raises $8 Million to Expand Conversational AI Business | EDBI Invests in $150M Deal for AI Market Intelligence Platform AlphaSense

• Today’s Master Marketing Tip: Adam Osborne—author, software publisher, and computer designer

TOP NEWS

PR/Advertising Giant Publicis to Invest $325M in Major AI Initiative

On the heels of a strong earnings report for 2023 with an organic growth rate of 6.3%, Publicis announced on Thursday it plans to invest around $325 million over the next three years in a major initiative to unify the company’s entire operations around a new AI infrastructure.

One of the four largest advertising and PR firms in the world, Publicis said the effort to create a completely AI-integrated organizational network—to be called CoreAI—will be led by its Sapient subsidiary that provides technology and data services to major corporations and government agencies around the world.

“The group is building this unifying AI-led foundation in-house and across its full enterprise, thanks to Publicis Sapient’s unrivalled AI expertise and partnerships, which span designing chips for Nvidia that are used in the training of AI models like ChatGPT, to developing AI-powered digital consumer journeys across multiple industries,” the company announced.

“Sitting at the center of the group, CoreAI unifies all of Publicis’ proprietary data including the leading consumer data across 2.3 billion profiles of people around the world, with trillions of data points about content, media, and business performance, and almost a petabyte of assets on Marcel, all combined with 35 years of business transformation data and coding owned exclusively by Publicis Sapient.”

Headquartered in Paris, Publicis has a presence in over 100 countries and employs more than 100,000 people.

TOP AI MARKETING TREND

Report: Majority of Marketers Have No Plan to Use ID 2.0 or Digital Fingerprinting

A new survey of 200 agencies, brands and publishers conducted by Basis Technologies, a provider of programmatic advertising and media automation solutions, reveals that a majority have no plans to begin using ID 2.0 or digital fingerprinting tech to target potential customers, despite the impending phase-out of third-party cookies by Google.

More than one-third of the marketers and advertisers surveyed said they’re not confident they’ll be able to confidently reach their target audiences if Google follows through on its plans to fully phase out third-party cookies in Chrome by late 2024, Basis reports.

“Contextual targeting (80.4%), first-party data (77.0%) and lookalike audiences (75.5%) are the most popular solutions industry professionals are already using,” according to Basis. “No other alternatives top 25% adoption.”

“Marketers need to take action,” said Ryan Manchee, SVP of brand marketing at Basis. “The industry is approaching deadline time for a cookieless Chrome, and our survey shows that fewer than half of advertisers are ready for a cookieless world,”

“It’s critical for holdouts to start testing and implementing new solutions immediately to ensure business continuity,” Manchee added.

VC NEWS

OpenDialog Raises $8 Million to Expand Conversational AI Business

OpenDialog, a startup that offers a conversational AI platform designed for highly regulated industries, has raised $7.3 million in its first round of venture capital, which was led by AlbionVC. 

Founded in 2017 with an initial focus on the healthcare and insurance sectors, OpenDialog offers companies a way to manage customer conversations while leveraging AI to ensure regulatory compliance. Its no-code platform allows customers, which include the insurance giant Davies Group, to safely deploy conversational AI chat services on a single automation platform.

“Businesses are keen to take advantage of the technology they see manifested in applications like ChatGPT, but they’re struggling to figure out how to make that a reality in a business context without exposing themselves to risks,” said Terry Walby, co-founder and CEO of OpenDialog. “We’re building a category-defining business that redefines the way humans interact with technology and that makes advanced and Generative AI realizable for enterprises.”

Healthcare will be the leading industry vertical for generative AI through 2029, according to ResearchAndMarkets.com. API-enabled solutions will be fasted growing opportunity at 47% CAGR through 2029, while Generative AI services will grow at 43.9% CAGR, representing a $2.5 billion market by 2029. The media, advertising, and entertainment vertical will be a $17.9 billion opportunity by 2029.

EDBI Invests in $150M Deal for AI Market Intelligence Platform AlphaSense

AlphaSense, the provider of an AI-powered market intelligence and search platform, announced that the Singapore-based investment firm EDBI has invested an undisclosed amount in the company’s $150 million, fifth round of venture capital.

The investment from EDBI relates to AlphaSense’s push to establish a beachhead in the Asia-Pacific region, having recently hired Mark Leadercramer as its APAC Regional Director. He previously served as head of enterprise sales for Stripe in Southeast Asia, and as general manager of South APAC at Mintel, a global market intelligence agency.

AlphaSense’s AI-based technology helps users make smarter business decisions by delivering insights from an extensive database of public and private content—including equity research, company filings, event transcripts, expert calls, news, trade journals, and clients' own research content.

More than 4,000 enterprise customers use AlphaSense. The company employs over 1,000 people across offices in the U.S., U.K., Finland, India, and Singapore.

AlphaSense’s latest investment round valuated the company at $2.5 billion.

TODAY’S MARKETING MASTER TIP:

Adam Osborne produced the first commercially successful portable computer, the Osborne 1.

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