The ad industry’s dirty little secret? Roughly half of all creative assets produced never see the light of day – they are simply never used.
This squandering of resources is crying out for a solution, and artificial intelligence (AI) may hold the key.
This waste is occurring because advertisers often lack clear visibility into their creative assets, making it difficult to search for and repurpose existing content, said James Shears, VP, Business Development & Client Partnerships, XR, in this video interview with Beet.TV.
“They don’t get delivered, they don’t get utilized in campaigns. That’s waste management that needs to be addressed.”
Leveraging AI for Creative Optimization
XR is a creative management platform that leverages AI and machine learning (ML) to optimize the creative workflow for major brands.
XR processes around a million assets annually, using AI-powered “smart tagging” to analyze content, identify demographics, activities, and objects within commercials, and assign unique identifiers. This allows for holistic management across both linear and streaming TV ecosystems.
“We take a look at what’s in the asset itself, thinking about demography information, activity that’s happening within the commercial, objects within the commercial, and then assigning IDs, capturing all that information, and really allowing it to be holistic across the TV ecosystem, which is inclusive of linear and streaming,” Shears told Beet.TV’s Lisa Granatstein.
This contextualization of creative assets is at the heart of XR’s new product, XR IQ, which aims to address the issue of wasted creative material and enhance the viewer experience. By providing advertisers with a deeper understanding of their assets, XR IQ enables more effective searching, repurposing, and ultimately, better targeting and resonance with viewers.
Measuring Representation in Advertising with XR RX
Female Quotient’s Shelley Zalis on Ad Representation Index’s First Findings
Beyond optimizing creative workflows, XR is also applying AI to promote diversity and inclusion in advertising.
Their Representation Index, RX, developed in partnership with The Female Quotient, analyzes creative assets to identify representation across age, skin tone, gender expression, and body type. This information provides insights to advertisers, helping them create more representative and inclusive campaigns.
Shears emphasized that RX is not intended as a grading system, but rather as a tool to drive meaningful change in the industry. “It’s designed to allow for insights to be created, that can actually drive meaningful change, and really alert people to what should be opportunistic in terms of managing the whole creative process,” he explained.
You’re watching “The Impact Era: Harmonizing Technology and Humanity in Advertising”, a Beet.TV Leadership Series at CES 2025, presented by XR Extreme Reach. For more videos from this series, please visit this page. You can view all of our CES 2025 content here.
