The ad agency giant Omnicom has created a new AI tool that is poised to completely change how ads get made

John Wren Omnicom

On Thursday, Omnicom Group publicly rolled out Omni, an internal platform that allows its agencies to use data to create, plan and buy ad campaigns.
One of the more intriguing potential uses for Omni could be to use artificial intelligence to make better ads.
For example, Omni can scrub videos for specific colors or images which better resonate with consumers.
While AI has increasingly played a big role in media buying, its use cases in creativity are newer and marketers see an big opportunity for the tech to shake up how ads are made.

Ad agencies are increasingly investing in technology and analytics to comb through reams of data and serve precise messages to specific groups of consumers.

But mostly that push has been about hitting the right people at the right time, and less about the art of making a great ad.

That may be changing.

AI may be able to make better ads by figuring out what colors and images people like

On Thursday, Omnicom Group, one of the world's biggest ad agency groups, unveiled Omni, a platform that allows for all its agencies globally to access data from third parties like The Trade Desk, Liveramp and Salesforce. The tool also includes tools for planning, buying and tracking media.

In an interview with Business Insider, Omnicom Digital CEO Jonathan Nelson said that he's particularly interested in how creatives will be able to use the tool. Omnicom's roster of creative shops includes BBDO, DDB and TBWA.

Artificial intelligence has been a buzzword in the advertising industry for a few years but its uses have mostly been limited to media buying with souped-up programmatic algorithms that are able to set pricing and determine the best time to run a campaign.

The creative side of the industry has been notoriously slower to embrace the technology, partly due to fear that AI will replace roles like creative directors that come up with ideas for clients.

In one example, Omni can create "mood boards," said Nelson. A telecom advertiser, for example, will able to zero in on digital audiences of people who show characteristics of wanting to switch to a new service. Omni can also dive into what those people are specifically looking for in a new service—like the cost or features of a telecom package.

From there, artificial intelligence can surface 30 videos that an audience is interested in and pick apart the individual colors, words and images featured in the video. A video with a lot of blue in it can spark a creative agency's idea to create a campaign for the telecom brand, Nelson said.

"Each of these things starts to trigger ideas for the creatives," he said. "I'm really trying to figure out how to bridge the left and right brain."

TV advertisers can also finally figure out how many people are looking for their brand online

Omni also claims to have a feature that allows for brands to see how many people searched for a brand after viewing a commercial for the brand on TV.

Nelson was mum on details on how the integration works but said "you've never been able to do that before."

For brands that spend hefty amounts of money on TV ads, the feature could potentially open up troves of insights about the impact of TV ads on digital media.

TV-to-digital tracking is limited to inventory purchased via advanced TV like over-the-top platforms and addressable TV tactics that serve targeted ads from set-top boxes.

While advanced TV only makes up a sliver of total spend today, Nelson expects for the digital ad-buying options to become more mainstream in the coming years.

"We’re going to get there," he said.

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