In this episode of The Human Element Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer at KERV; Kavita Cariapa (cariepa), SVP Head of Commerce Activation at dentsu; and Mike Liu, EVP Head of Innovation at Carat sit down to discuss the role of AI within the evolving retail advertising landscape.
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Q: Jay, let's kick off the conversation with you and give a brief overview on KERV and its impact within the advertising landscape.
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
We know AI is a loaded word. And you guys have been talking about AI for a long time. But today we get to talk about creative AI, and how AI is going to impact creative solutions and commerce and all great things that we want to talk about. We're an AI video technology company, but focused on the creative part of video, we drive business outcomes, we have the ability to drive commerce, we have the ability to drive KPIs such as leads, we think video should go from passive to active. And we are a solution that really helps takes advertisers and publishers to the next level few sides of our business. One is with brands and agencies obviously. But the other is with publishers, and providers like NBCU, and Disney and others that have announced curved partnerships that are using our technology to power their infrastructures. So we're just blessed to be in the space at a great time AI content, commerce, and video and really looking forward to the podcast today.
Q: What do you think the role of video across the retail consumer journey is?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
Commerce is king right now. AI is helping make commerce more valuable and shoppable media is a vernacular term that is actually all over the place. The experts will say that consumers now use QR codes to shop on television, but in my opinion, either you love or you hate them, but you don't just like them. So, you either use QR codes as a benefit or you say I don't think it drives impact for my business. I think user adoption and behavior over the last how many years since COVID shows that consumer adoption is going up for QR codes. But how we think it curves, is that if it's personalized or dynamic, you have more of a shot to actually convert and scan. And we talked about commerce, which is what was the question, you're more likely to scan and transact versus do it through your remote. User experience ends up being what's major, what's happening with NBCU and Disney and others is that they don't want to interfere with user experience on television. So as KERV as a technology, we're finding ways to inject our technology into these ecosystems, we're trying to make the user behavior seamless and QR codes and our relationship with QR is as we believe they should be personalized, dynamic to the consumer, and that makes it more effective than just throwing up a QR code. So, there are a ton of dynamics here. But shoppable, and I'm sure, Kavita, that you can comment on commerce, I would love your thoughts on how AI is going to impact that world. Because I know you've probably been thinking about that.
Kavita Cariapa, SVP Head of Commerce Activation, dentsu
I agree with you. I think there's a time and place for when we want customers to engage and making content shoppable for the purpose of a QR code, that's not it. We're trying to really create seamless shopping experiences, because we know shopping is so complicated at this time. And if we think about the role of how AI and personalization can happen, I honestly think it brings it back to what they are actually looking for some of our customers we know those real time data signals from if they're deal shopping, if they respond to certain ads, other purchase signals based off retail first party data, we can pull all of that those great data points in and create highly customized ads back to our customers. And that's actually what they're responding to, versus a QR code, which is really just a static image at the end of the day.
Q: What role does AI play in optimizing video ad placement, targeting and engagement in your mind?
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
I think it kind of has a role between every single piece of it from how the content is created, the insights that drive what the content is being created, how it's being served, how it's being targeted, how you're measuring it, and then optimizing off of it. I think there's a lot of opportunity for the landscape and the ecosystem, that ecosystem to actually build around this and how AI intersects within each of these different verticals of the business and I know it's a very broad answer but I do think it's everything.
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
Just an acronym learn, explore, transact. AI is powering those three words across video content, and you couldn't say that years ago. I think this upfront is going to be very different. Video has ever been so engaging and attentive and I think if you can power through the clutter and give consumers the opportunity to opt in, right AI is doing that, especially creative AI. It's allowing consumers to opt in. But it's on the back end that the triggers are changing. So I think that's really cool from an ad perspective, from an agency perspective is you don't need 150 creatives for 150 markets anymore, you need one creative on the back end, the tiles can change the images continuously, objects can change in terms of what you hover on. So I think we're in a new age, I think TV is going to be impacted, I think it's the last medium to be impacted specially by commerce, and really excited for the future, I think AI has had to have a really big role in it, and we're glad to be leading that charge.
Kavita Cariapa, SVP Head of Commerce Activation, dentsu
It's minimizing waste. I agree, minimizing waste for agencies, it's minimizing content fatigue for the customers, too. We've never been in this time where we have so much content thrown at us and every single aspect across every channel every medium, physically, digitally, it is everywhere. And I'm so excited just from minimizing the waste, obviously, we want to have the right impression at the right time, but just as a customer too, I want the right content delivered to me and the ways that I want it, and opting in is exactly where I think customers, they want a choice, but they also want to be delivered that right impression. So it's a win for everyone.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
Yeah, I was actually just kind of commenting on what you said like TV is one of the last channels to be impacted for with commerce and is KERV, like trying to build TV to be a DVR like a direct response channel. Like what's the future of where you see this space going?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
Yeah, the best thing about it is we're not building it. I think the broadcaster's the publishers, they're building it. We're just technology that sits in the middle between content and commerce and identifies every object logo seen contextual, shoppable, we make the connection. The user experience will be up to NBCU. Disney, how do they want you to see it? Amazon built a whole ecosystem about pausing your TV, and then up comes the car and the show and you can buy it, they have an ecosystem. I think where we sit is we have technology that helps all these publishers and broadcasters, monetize, engage and then help sell products if that's what they want to do. And VCU created My Shop TV, they came out with that last year during 123, which is their big tech and data showcase. KERV is powering that from identification of objects to their product feeds, which is their commerce marketplace. I think all of the big broadcasters are going to talk about how commerce and content are coming together. We want to be glue that connects those dots. But the user experience has to be defined by the actual publisher themselves, how you do it through a remote, how you do it through a scan, it's up to them. We're here for it all. Because we're connecting your blazer, your shirt, your hat to a product feed with zero friction, to that exact product and that exact skill. The technology's there. Now it's about user experience. And we could debate here all day about user experience. But we need consumers to adapt to it so much like anything we've done digitally. There will be adaptation and adoption and it will take time, but it will get there.
Q: How are you seeing the adoption right now from consumers on some of the campaigns you have out?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
So we powered blow deck on NBC, we had the first shoppable scenes and you could buy the luggage. NBCU is doing another four or five shows with KERV where we're KERVing everything in the episode and actually connecting it to commerce. And so you're going to see some really great shows actually link out to product feeds, we've ingested Walmart's product feed through below deck that was the big partnership that NBC did with Walmart. But now we have a billion skews from Walmart just sitting there that KERV ingested that we can connect to ads. You’ll see a lot from us in terms of partnerships, and connecting to product feeds, because of the real time AI nature of the connection points. But the data from NBC they showed tremendous brand engagement, brand affinity, you know, I think, again, user adoption for commerce, you're not going to see, you know, 1 million pairs of socks sold in a show, but you're going to start seeing directional data. And I think that's what we have to look at right now is directional data on commerce. Also, how are consumers interacting with the brand on the TV screen? And we're seeing much, much better correlation.
Q: What are some of the unique insights that KERV's platform can provide, or the technology can provide to advertisers when it comes to content creation following the campaigns?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
So we've authored a metric called active attention. Mike and I have actually worked on this a little bit, attention is a loaded word right now, we think of attention as page level, where the ad is on the page, and we decide to qualify all of our media based on attention. However, video attention and attention on video does not have a metric for the creative. So, we created active attention index, were able to score 15 Plus metrics in video based on where you engage where you opt in and optimize towards that attention variable. So, we're scoring video, we're providing object level detail scene level data in video on a typical 30 second pre roll, all of a sudden, I know, who cares about atopic dermatitis, who went to a patient story. We're collecting data, we're scoring it, and we're saying, hey, guys, creative one had a 74 active attention index. But creative two had a 92. Because for some reason, consumers really cared about, you know, the patient in the office talking about something versus the person riding a bike. We think of active attention metrics actually helps close the loop to your attention story on the page and our whole thing is attention is just a fancy way of saying interactivity, not going to lie, that's what it is. But it's a buzzword, it really means that you're opting in because we're looking at different variables, not you just hovered, but you actually interacted you engage, you went deep into a creative, and we think that it shouldn't just be where the ad is, it shouldn't be who cared about the ad. So, we're going to continue doing that for advertisers, we think this is a metric that's going to solve some problems. Will it solve every problem? No. But for advertisers, or agency leaders that are listening to this, or just folks, if you want deeper data on your video investment KERV is a great solution for that. And it's our job to help you guys look smart. And that's what we're going to continue doing when it comes to video.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
What have you seen as the output or outcome from learning about where people hover or spend more time with certain elements of the video, like what happens next? What does the brand do?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
So, every brand is different. Every brand has a third-party mechanism that they look at conversions, you know, some use a Foursquare others use Lucid. It's tough to sit here and say that every advertiser is treated equal, right? However, if you do tie in Amazon attribution pixel, a third party, if you look at the data off of a KERV’d unit, versus a static ad, that we're getting reach, we're just getting GRPs, you're going to see a huge lift, in both top line metrics, back end metrics, lower bounce rates, and then you're going to see actually more conversions through the third party that you're using. That's what we've seen. You know, we're working with a few of your clients like Intel, JC Penney's, another good case study that we have, we've seen a lot of success from third parties measuring the current media versus standalone media, and we'll continue to push out those use cases.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
Yeah, because I think also, if we're learning something about maybe mid midway through the campaign, does that impact the creative and what we do for the rest of the campaign, just knowing where they're spending more of their time?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer at KERV
Yeah, we should always take a step back to take a step forward. I think everyone's so busy, that if we can establish a good framework for that we can be looked at almost as like a discovery mechanism or an optimization mechanism. And that's something we'd love to talk about with you guys. But to date, it's been a lot about pushing out ads using the KERV tech to enhance those ads. And then at the end of the campaign, we look at what happened. But to your point, it's great to understand those as we go through the campaign.
Kavita Cariapa, SVP Head of Commerce Activation, dentsu
There's also just like a workflow of other processes off video too, like that attention signals you're getting to, can also impact creative, which is what our Ecommerce clients really care about. One of our challenges where we look at some media as we have brand clients, and we have Ecommerce clients, and they're spending investments in different ways. But you're qualifying really great attention metrics that can provide downstream impacts down to retailer.com, or dtc.com. And we can make those real time adjustments based off what you're seeing. So that's one of the things that we have to connect, I'd say as an agency, and also our brands have to connect the dots between a KERV’d video and bringing them back to the Commerce metrics and what we can affect in real time.
Q: How should brands lean into AI technology to personalize the offering and potentially, you know, in real time, real time moves and changes?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
Let me give you a quick example. So we worked with Audi, this one Mediapost and the synopsis award, where they had over 100 dealers, and they had one static video creative just to commercial. On the back end, we basically had 120 plus different QR codes based on where you scan from. So, they were able to take a static base creative and not change the creative, but just to manipulate the QR on the back end to direct you to your closest dealer. That's a good example of AI, we did not create 120 QR's, AI helped change the QR is based on the mechanism of where you were and when you scan from. We're doing the same thing in tiles. For Kavita, you can have if you have a DTC brand, you can have Amazon, Walmart, and Target the three tiles and you let the consumer choose where they want to shop from. But that can change. So if we see more goods are being sold at Target, the tile can actually change and go to the top for target agnostic to the retailer. If you just care about moving product, the tiles can change based on those variables. But it's all AI powered. So I mean, DCO has been around forever, but the opportunity for AI to change and manipulate the tiles based on consumer intent, that is different, and that I think is the angle that we're offering. And the successes that we've seen, just like the Audi example, is when you can change variables based on AI, you get better data, you get better performance, there's no downside, and there's a lot of opportunity to get for rich data to then inform other creative decisions or other mediums.
Kavita Cariapa, SVP Head of Commerce Activation, dentsu
It's down to like hyper personalization to even taking it to like past the retailer level, it's to what product they're most likely to purchase based off retail signals. It's what price they want to see in the ad itself, whether they're likely to purchase at a certain time of the day, we get all those data signals that and that's what AI can really help us solve for. Right now we're still in a very static environment where we're choosing maybe specific retailer, specific products, at a specific price point, a feature and an ad, but AI will solve for a lot of that. And once again, and kind of minimizing waste, we can deliver that exact right message to the customer when they want to see it.
Q: Based off those I guess help people interacting with some of the units or even checking out, it requires the pipeline to be all connected to be able to inform the best time and target and optimize that on the fly. Like how far away are we from doing that? Or can that be done now, but it's just not easy to do it.
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
We do it today, time of day, day of week, weather.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
But based off of the results that you're getting from purchase?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
Yeah, but we're also ingesting first and third-party data. I mean, there's a lot of ways to skin the cat there. But we can actually change based on different variables and different triggers. And those include weather, time of day, location, audiences. We're seeing it now, the future is now I mean, it's happening. JC Penney is another good example of somebody we've done this with successfully.
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
Tthe JC Penney team use Foursquare to identify if dynamic URLs actually drive results. And we saw over 600,000 additional store visits from the KERV tack with the dynamic URL. So in a really low cost per store visit, it was like a little bit over $1, that in comparison to just running your CTV spots, has shown more effectiveness, and allowed us to work closer with JCPenney and with dentsu on driving more business outcomes from dynamic variables within CTV. Do they do the weather or time of day or day parting? No. But is the location a really nice proxy for Dynamics and AI? Yes. And we've seen that, and we hope to do it with more brands, especially the Subways of the world here. If you're listening.
Q: What would you say are some of the biggest challenges currently faced in creating seamless shoppable digital experiences?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
I think going back to consumers, right? Are they ready to shop on TV? Everybody loves the notion of oh, I'm watching the Bachelorette and I can buy the dress that she's wearing out of the limo, that's the coolest thing I've ever seen. Oh, I would do that in two seconds. Reality is, are they? And I think it's going to take a while for user adoption to catch up with technology. But I think we have to start now. It has to start now. And I think if we're behind the eight ball, the connection of screens, right your mobile device to your TV, that's something that's been out there for 10-15 years, right? Like the connection point. But in today's world, shoppable TV means I see it on TV, I like it, I explore it, I buy it, without having to put it into search engine.
Q: Break it down for me if I'm a consumer, how are you educating consumers even know what to do with shoppable experiences like where do you even begin?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
It goes to the publisher user experience. How do they want the consumer to interact with that show? How we've advised them to say is pause the shop, so you've seen pause ads. They've been around now for a while, but pause to shop on your screen if you're watching The Bachelorette and it says pause to shop the dress, they'll prompt you. In our ads, we have a call to action that says, click to interact, hover to interact, we let the consumer know there's an ability to interact.
Q: So on top of consumer education, then an adoption. Do you feel like your clients, are staffed to be able to come up with these ideas to utilize the technology to the fullest extent on their platforms?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
I think for digital ads, yes. Yeah, that's, that's, that's more simple. I think for TV, especially with an Upfront looming, I think you're going to see more publishers, big publishers talk about how to bridge content and commerce. And it's going to be up to, obviously, us collectively, to figure out the use cases that work the best.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
Yeah, I'd say like, a big part of it is culturally, we're just not there, at least in America. For these types of commerce interactions within TV, it boils down to like the intent of it, the desirability of whatever that product is. And ultimately, it is the UX. So whether it's, you're using a fire stick, and they have their own platform for making everything shoppable, which should be if you got like the OS level, Apple TV, Firestick, Google Android TV, like that will probably open up way more doors than a publisher themselves. But I don't think it's a very seamless experience right now.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
It reminds me also of live stream shopping. We were talking about that a few years ago, during COVID, and made a lot of sense. But you know, after that, and it was mimicking a lot of what's going on in Asia. But culturally, we're not there yet, as a behavior as well as the products, I'm not going to buy deodorant off of my TV, I don't need to, you know, but if it's something that might be a timely buy or purchase that, you know, I can only get this thing because I like this actor or this thing that's on TV, and I can only buy it through my TV, sure. Or driven by price, or only I can get it on a discount here. Sure. Or if something that's a collaborative, super limited-edition thing, they're like, that makes sense. But for the majority of our clients, a majority of the business has been done in the US market, there's very little commerce that can't happen right now on the TV or even livestream shopping. See the success of that we're kind of paying attention to what kind of products are moving, what kind of incentive deals are actually pushing consumer behavior. But then I think it also boils down to as a UX, right? Like there's so many, these streaming platforms are just horrible, even when you're just searching to like, turn the captions on or off. It's not consistent. It's not intuitive.
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
It's so clunky, today. But that clunkiness leads to opportunity. And opportunity is that there will be an evolution as there always is, and who will be there to actually make it happen. And I think you've got many different broadcasters and streaming companies right now vying to do that, because they see that it's an opportunity for a JCPenney to sell more or at least to drive more store traffic. And I think there'll be proxies to that.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
So I was just thinking about, like, you mentioned the future of video and where things are moving in evolution, and you are building the platform, and technology that's helping catalog all these different shows on these platforms like NBC was one of your partners, who else is on there?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
A Few will be named in the next few weeks at the Upfronts.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
So there's more platforms, more shows being named, that you're cataloging their shows. And it seems to me that they're all building their own ecosystems in a way that they don't want people to leave for any reason, or kind of divert any sort of attention. So, they're building their own versions of shoppable shows or shelves and you are powering that from an identification level, are you also powering the connections to Commerce too?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer at KERV
Okay, you ready for the mind blow moment? Commerce is good, contextual is better. So we are starting to process content and shows to understand contextual moments. We're talking about libraries and libraries and libraries of content to understand that this is a podcast scene. And you're Sirius XM, and you want to put a 30 second commercial on TV, you can have this in the first part in the ad break, because KERV is partnering with the ad server and with the publisher to make that happen. You will be able eventually, hopefully, to buy a new daypart, which is basically contextual scenes and moments down to a beach scene or a podcast scene, or an office scene. And what we're using our AI and technology to do is identify every single scene in every single show down to the object level to understand the context of the scene and provide the metadata back to the publisher so that they can sell you scenes. And that's big, because contextual was always, oh, I'll buy House Hunters because I want to be in a Home Show. Now we're going to see a gardening scene in The Sopranos and there might be an opportunity to buy the first ad break or an ad break in a gardening scene. So I'll just give you one stat, which is great. We've obviously worked with NBC, we've analyzed a lot of the Real Housewives content and we identified one episode, we saw over 1100 scenes, and over 17,000 objects, and over 250 unique objects, just in one episode of Real Housewives. That's what AI can do. It can identify precision, it can make contacts and metadata, and then understand the context of that scene, and populate that. So an advertiser has the opportunity to be contextually relevant. So again, I think commerce is good to your point, it'll be an evolution. I think in future Upfront, if you can buy if you can take subway, and every time there's a turkey sandwich, you want every show that has a turkey sandwich in it.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
So team, I hope you're listening, this is, for you.
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
But contextual triggers powered by AI across the major content providers and content owners, and being able to buy into that, is different than buying prime, fringe, different dayparts, KERV will be the underpinning technology. What we want to do is give advertisers and agencies the opportunity to opt in to a more relevant scene and content, and then do all the data that shows that when you can be adjacent to a contextual moment, it actually provides either more brand lift, the MMM spikes, we'll measure it. That's I think, is a huge opportunity for TV.
Kavita Cariapa, SVP Head of Commerce Activation, dentsu
Do you think brands are ready for that type of buying methodology though, just like understanding, now we're looking at content, but now getting down to the scene level, at an aggregate level, are brands ready to think about that form of buying?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
I think they're still going to buy their sports, right? That's going to be huge. I think they're going to buy their day parts wherever they may it makes sense, right? Primetime is you time, that's for sure. Like, wherever you decide this primetime is your primetime. But contextual is rampant on OLV and CTV right now. Cookies are going away, everyone's talking about contextual. Contextual TV, again, it's just, I'm buying the food network because I'm Kraft Heinz. But there could easily be 10,000 restaurant scenes across Law and Order.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
Yeah, I think it complements it, we have a very similar purpose product through our dentsu contextual intelligence partnership, where we're looking at context of shows as well to be within like the first pod or third pod or whatever that the ad break would be, Based off of what's going on the shows. I don't know how in depth, it's might not be even on the pixel level, like y'all are doing it's like very detailed out. So we're seeing that when we do our traditional buys, it could be prime, it could be sponsoring certain shows. But then if we want to go off and kind of be more relevant to certain moments, that's where it lends us. So it's not just House Hunters, it's House Hunters that has something to do with a bathroom, reno, or something to do with, they're using a certain tool.
Q: With your product, you're looking at every single object that's in the scenes. Are you also looking at sentiment of certain things as well like, energy? Is it dramatic? Is it comedic of these sorts of scenes that you've got?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
Yeah, I don't know about sentiment. Honestly, I don't know if it takes in sentiment, that'd be a cool thing to do. But I do know that we can, we can identify the knife in Law and Order versus the knife and Top Chef, and make that difference because we know it's a cooking scene versus a crime scene. What you're going to see more from KERV is we're actually identifying brand safety plus contextual, so you're going to see more publishers use us as a tactic to understand brand safety on an ad and in a piece of content. I'm confident, I don't know if that sentiment, but I do know we can understand brand safe elements. And I think that's one of the most important parts right now.
Q: What advice do you have for brands looking to venture into this space? Where do you even start?
Kavita Cariapa, SVP Head of Commerce Activation, dentsu
I mean, every brand should have a testing budget. It's often like the first one to get scrapped. I think when times get tough, but it's so integral to just any type of evolution for your investment strategy. I do think from like the commerce angle setting, also the intention of what you want your ad to do, like a TV ad is not going to move 1000 rolls of toilet paper or whatever the product is. But the brands have to be very clear on what the intention of that ad is here to serve and you're trying to get intention, you're trying to get loyalty, you're trying to get some form of customer engagement, and we have to think about it that way versus trying to use a TV ad for the sake of shopability or slapping a QR code on it, there has to be a specific reason for serving that ad to a customer.
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
I also don't think you need a shoppable ad to become shoppable. I don't think you need to have the world's best performance creative. There's something called the mid funnel, where you bring an upper funnel ad or placement down the funnel so that it becomes, I can transact or I can learn more, I can learn more about a recipe or I can buy the ketchup. So, like giving consumers the optionality is an easy way to take a standard piece of creative and actually do that. So, we encourage testing, we encourage A/B testing against normal ad buys. But I don't think it needs to be overcomplicated, it doesn't have to be an innovative budget if you're using the video partner. You can easily work with KERV. Last week, we announced a partnership with Magnate. It's easy programmatically to create deal IDs and use technology to do that in a curated marketplace, on good inventory. So, we're trying to make it easy for buyers to buy us. So, I think in that vein, it shouldn't be It shouldn't be hard. But if you have an innovation budget, of course it’s great opportunity.
Q: Now, last question, why do you love this business?
Jay Wolff, Chief Revenue Officer, KERV
I guess I wake up every day fulfilled beyond my day job, which is the CRO of KERV. I'm also the President of 212 NYC, which is the largest industry networking organization in New York for digital media and advertising. I've been part of that organization for more than 15 years and grew up in that industry. I like disruption, I like innovation. Speaking of Mike's heart, probably, I like new things that are going to transform the industry and thinking outside of the box. If you look at my LinkedIn, you'll see other companies I've been at, that have done the same thing at the right the right time, right place, but I just believe that we can do better. I believe that in order for us all to be in business, we need to create ideas and innovation and try to do well. I don't care about programmatic machines and AI in the extent of you know, AI to me is powerful, but I want it not to take our jobs, I want it to be an enhancement to what we do. And I wake up every day fulfilled and I tried to lead by example. And I really love the people we work with, especially you folks. So yeah, I love disruption and innovation. And I think we're at a prime place for that right now. It just feels like we're here.
Michael Liu, EVP Head of Innovation, Carat
You know, similar to Jay, I also believe that we work in a very fun and great industry that is shaping how we interact with each other, how society is being shaped, and culture is being born. And I find it in this innovation field, I feel very blessed to be able to explore and experiment and to kind of theorize and build hypotheses around what is the future of a brand? What is the future of media? What's the future of how we're all going to connect with one another? And kind of hearing Jay speak about how excited he is about building a great platform that is utilizing new technology to sort of revamp an old legacy model is exciting for me. And I'm really glad that we get to work together on these types of programs with our brands. Yeah, I mean, it's never dull, I have the most fun job in the industry. And it's you know, working with in gaming and AI and AR and data and influencer and content, it's being able to sort of see where things are moving and have a seat where you speak to brands every day and hearing about their pain points. And then you speak to the startups and the VCs and the different companies that are building products and trying to find where those dots connect and I think sitting at the agency side has never been more fun.
Kavita Cariapa, SVP Head of Commerce Activation, dentsu
My answer is so shallow. I like said this on the last pod, I'm a commerce lead, I love shopping. I'm a customer first and selfishly this job solves a lot of problems for me because I want the right ad, I want the right content, the right deal. And I've been in multiple forms of commerce across my career, I've been that merchant before when someone first gave me a budget and told me I had to buy product I had millions of dollars to buy product and I had to hit like a margin goal. I was like I have to find the right deals to buy. But I've continued on in that field and for me, just seeing how customers make decisions towards buying something, seeing the psychology behind it, that's really exciting for me and I have a pathway here working at the agency, working with our partners like KERV to figure out the right means to get what a customer wants, in real time. I mean that's it's really just fulfilling all my shopping desires.
The Human Element: A Carat Podcast, explores how insight and humanity impact modern marketing to build stronger brands. Want more of this conversation? Tune in to the full podcast episode here.
