Marketers have always had to work with ideas that are intangible such as brand, emotion, aspiration or culture. Today those forces are joined by something a little less poetic or creative but arguably even more powerful: adtech, algorithms and AI.
The point struck me again during a recent conversation with Stijn Demeersseman, Head of Amazon Ads for the UK and Ireland. Stijn told me about a meeting he had called with colleagues where he had found out by accident that he had not really understood how the ‘AdTech’ – as he called it – worked.
Stijn is an expert in both brand marketing and advertising is far from alone. Many senior marketers still treat AdTech as back-office plumbing best left to media buyers or agencies.
I would argue that outsourcing your thinking like this is an error of judgement, just like not understanding what a brand is or how human behaviour affects purchasing behaviour.
Today, AdTech, algorithms and AI are part of the infrastructure of modern marketing. They are the ‘plumbing of the Internet’. Therefore, understand the logic behind the tools and the plumbing that now decides which audiences your brand reaches, how often and under what conditions is very important.
The ‘plumbing’ chooses the audience, decides the auction price, limits the frequency and even determines the creative variant a customer sees. Just as knowing how to write a good brief, leading a team, or judging a piece of creative is important, our new world can offer a real opportunity to marketers who know how the ‘machines’ work.
Why are marketers and professors of marketing in denial?
Years ago, Professor Karen Nelson-Field offered an elegant explanation for the lingering confusion from marketers and even marketing professors: “they do not understand the plumbing of the Internet”.
They still divide channels into ‘brand’ and ‘performance’ as though algorithms recognise such distinctions. They cling to the trope that only broadcast television builds reach, that Google and Meta are mere direct-response tools and that digital cannot deliver storytelling at scale.
The evidence says otherwise, yet the myths persist because the underlying systems remain opaque.
The gulf between myth and reality was on display again at the 2025 Cannes Festival of Creativity. Gerry D’Angelo called it “The Great Divergence”.
D’Angelo was referring to what he saw was two different Cannes Festivals: “One Cannes happens inside the Palais, where creativity if lionised and where you can ‘walk the work’ in the basement, where CMOs and creative leaders take to the stage to evangelise the power of creativity and big ideas; then there’s the other Cannes that happens outside the Palais. The other Cannes is the belle of the ball, where business gets done, whether it’s product demos, QBRs, networking or even new business pitches”.
In D’Angleo’s view, this year, it felt like they had finally become untethered from each other. Virtually all the recaps were dominated by AI and its application to media planning and buying, the creator economy, privacy-preserving data collaboration, and other technology-related topics.
D’Angleo nailed it here: “Creative excellent is no longer enough and it must now coexist with data and technology to drive consistently high levels of performance”.
His conclusion was clear: the tools exist but the mindset shift has not yet happened. Until it does, creative directors will still avoid data-clean-room panels and engineers will still feel unwelcome in story-telling forums, and brands will continue to leave money — and insight — on the table.
AdTech, algorithms and AI: the inevitable
All the talk about whether AdTech, algorithms and AI are ‘good’ ‘bad’ or that ‘AI is bad for creativity’ is a waste of your time. Author and founder of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly talks about 12 trends in his 2016 book, ‘The Inevitable’.
Just look at the ideas from the first three chapters:
Becoming: We are moving from fixed products to always upgrading services and subscriptions;
Cognifying: Everything that can be cheaper is being made cheaper using cheap powerful AI tools that we get from the cloud;
Screening: We are turning all surfaces into screens.
These have all come true in various ways. The point is that, if you understanding exponential technologies, you will see how much of the impact of AdTech, algorithms and AI on marketing is inevitable.
Meta’s vision of automating marketing campaigns using AI recently caused a furore, with Mark Zuckerberg getting a lot of heat for saying it.
But, as Shiv Singh writes: “That is a mistake. The deeper reality is technological inevitability. AI is transforming every aspect of marketing: insights, creative, content, media, targeting, and optimization. Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, Microsoft and others are all building toward a future where marketers contribute little beyond budget inputs. This is not hype, it’s the roadmap.”
Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Pinterest and TikTok and increasingly retail media networks like Amazon now dictate how marketing works. They have the most valuable audiences, the first party data, the algorithms, the measurement tools, and now, the creative shaping consumer behaviour.
Have a look at what Amir Rasekh, Managing Director, Nectar360 said about Pollen, its new unified retail media platform, Nectar360 Pollen: “Nectar360 Pollen will bring together audience insights, media planning, activation, optimisation and real-time measurement, alongside a market leading multi-touch attribution model into one single, unified platform… we are unifying the instore, onsite, and offsite environments through AI-powered technology and market-leading client service. Nectar360 Pollen central to our retail media strategy as we look forward and a platform for continuous innovation, bringing further AI smarts and integrations as the market develops.”
It’s all an abstraction
Understanding the infrastructure is no longer optional because the infrastructure now shapes almost every customer moment.
Vince Jones, Head of ecommerce at PepsiCo frames it through the lens of the digital shelf. In a physical store you and I see the same physical store shelves.
However, ‘digital shelves’ generate in real-time in response to search terms, location, browsing history and thousands of other signals.
What you see on your Walmart App, Amazon App or Tesco App will be different to mine and the person sitting beside you.
In effect, an algorithm spins up a million versions of a retailer’s site, most of which the brand team will never personally witness.
The whole thing is an abstraction, an idea that exists in the cloud as an idea that we cannot really imagine that well compared to the ‘real shelves’ instore.
This explains why discovery is harder online and why brands increasingly turn to TikTok, Instagram and to surface products long before a customer types anything into a search bar.
The challenge for CMOs: know how the machines work
The CMO role is hard. They are asked to own brand strategy, performance marketing, customer experience, ecommerce, and AdTech, yet, they do not understand the tech, may not have clear accountability, resources, or proper support.
Retail media networks do not help. Retail media networks like Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect and Tesco Media, Unlimital or Cartolog create new walled gardens with proprietary shopper data and closed-loop measurement with their own tech and own algorithms
And AI will accelerate this shift.
Are we looking at a new generation of marketers to tackle the challenge? Or is it time to reinvent talent development and rethink the in-house versus agency equation.
Just as knowing how to write a good brief, leading a team or judge a piece of creative is important, our new world can offer a real opportunity to marketers who know how the ‘machines’ work.
What do I suggest?
Admit that none of us know
Get curious about the plumbing of the Internet. Talk to the engineers, the data scientists, the product managers inside platforms and agencies. Ask them to walk you through the pipes, not just the dashboards.
Change your definition of talent by identifying underrated, brilliant individuals is one of the simplest ways to give yourself an organisational edge.
Invest in this talent that so you can learn to translate between marketing and machine-learning: hybrid thinkers as comfortable with SQL as with the Super Bowl.
Having worked at intersection of marketing, technology, digital commerce and media, for years, I believe these new realities about the role of AdTech, algorithms and AI must be addressed by all marketers now. If not, the marketing discipline itself will suffer and it will not be cut out for the future.
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You are in: Home » Retail Media » OPINION AdTech, algorithms and AI – how marketers need to understand the plumbing of the internet
OPINION AdTech, algorithms and AI – how marketers need to understand the plumbing of the internet
Colin Lewis
Marketers have always had to work with ideas that are intangible such as brand, emotion, aspiration or culture. Today those forces are joined by something a little less poetic or creative but arguably even more powerful: adtech, algorithms and AI.
The point struck me again during a recent conversation with Stijn Demeersseman, Head of Amazon Ads for the UK and Ireland. Stijn told me about a meeting he had called with colleagues where he had found out by accident that he had not really understood how the ‘AdTech’ – as he called it – worked.
Stijn is an expert in both brand marketing and advertising is far from alone. Many senior marketers still treat AdTech as back-office plumbing best left to media buyers or agencies.
I would argue that outsourcing your thinking like this is an error of judgement, just like not understanding what a brand is or how human behaviour affects purchasing behaviour.
Today, AdTech, algorithms and AI are part of the infrastructure of modern marketing. They are the ‘plumbing of the Internet’. Therefore, understand the logic behind the tools and the plumbing that now decides which audiences your brand reaches, how often and under what conditions is very important.
The ‘plumbing’ chooses the audience, decides the auction price, limits the frequency and even determines the creative variant a customer sees. Just as knowing how to write a good brief, leading a team, or judging a piece of creative is important, our new world can offer a real opportunity to marketers who know how the ‘machines’ work.
Why are marketers and professors of marketing in denial?
Years ago, Professor Karen Nelson-Field offered an elegant explanation for the lingering confusion from marketers and even marketing professors: “they do not understand the plumbing of the Internet”.
They still divide channels into ‘brand’ and ‘performance’ as though algorithms recognise such distinctions. They cling to the trope that only broadcast television builds reach, that Google and Meta are mere direct-response tools and that digital cannot deliver storytelling at scale.
The evidence says otherwise, yet the myths persist because the underlying systems remain opaque.
The gulf between myth and reality was on display again at the 2025 Cannes Festival of Creativity. Gerry D’Angelo called it “The Great Divergence”.
D’Angelo was referring to what he saw was two different Cannes Festivals: “One Cannes happens inside the Palais, where creativity if lionised and where you can ‘walk the work’ in the basement, where CMOs and creative leaders take to the stage to evangelise the power of creativity and big ideas; then there’s the other Cannes that happens outside the Palais. The other Cannes is the belle of the ball, where business gets done, whether it’s product demos, QBRs, networking or even new business pitches”.
In D’Angleo’s view, this year, it felt like they had finally become untethered from each other. Virtually all the recaps were dominated by AI and its application to media planning and buying, the creator economy, privacy-preserving data collaboration, and other technology-related topics.
D’Angleo nailed it here: “Creative excellent is no longer enough and it must now coexist with data and technology to drive consistently high levels of performance”.
His conclusion was clear: the tools exist but the mindset shift has not yet happened. Until it does, creative directors will still avoid data-clean-room panels and engineers will still feel unwelcome in story-telling forums, and brands will continue to leave money — and insight — on the table.
AdTech, algorithms and AI: the inevitable
All the talk about whether AdTech, algorithms and AI are ‘good’ ‘bad’ or that ‘AI is bad for creativity’ is a waste of your time. Author and founder of Wired magazine, Kevin Kelly talks about 12 trends in his 2016 book, ‘The Inevitable’.
Just look at the ideas from the first three chapters:
These have all come true in various ways. The point is that, if you understanding exponential technologies, you will see how much of the impact of AdTech, algorithms and AI on marketing is inevitable.
Meta’s vision of automating marketing campaigns using AI recently caused a furore, with Mark Zuckerberg getting a lot of heat for saying it.
But, as Shiv Singh writes: “That is a mistake. The deeper reality is technological inevitability. AI is transforming every aspect of marketing: insights, creative, content, media, targeting, and optimization. Meta, Google, TikTok, Amazon, Microsoft and others are all building toward a future where marketers contribute little beyond budget inputs. This is not hype, it’s the roadmap.”
Google, Meta, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, Pinterest and TikTok and increasingly retail media networks like Amazon now dictate how marketing works. They have the most valuable audiences, the first party data, the algorithms, the measurement tools, and now, the creative shaping consumer behaviour.
Have a look at what Amir Rasekh, Managing Director, Nectar360 said about Pollen, its new unified retail media platform, Nectar360 Pollen: “Nectar360 Pollen will bring together audience insights, media planning, activation, optimisation and real-time measurement, alongside a market leading multi-touch attribution model into one single, unified platform… we are unifying the instore, onsite, and offsite environments through AI-powered technology and market-leading client service. Nectar360 Pollen central to our retail media strategy as we look forward and a platform for continuous innovation, bringing further AI smarts and integrations as the market develops.”
It’s all an abstraction
Understanding the infrastructure is no longer optional because the infrastructure now shapes almost every customer moment.
Vince Jones, Head of ecommerce at PepsiCo frames it through the lens of the digital shelf. In a physical store you and I see the same physical store shelves.
However, ‘digital shelves’ generate in real-time in response to search terms, location, browsing history and thousands of other signals.
What you see on your Walmart App, Amazon App or Tesco App will be different to mine and the person sitting beside you.
In effect, an algorithm spins up a million versions of a retailer’s site, most of which the brand team will never personally witness.
The whole thing is an abstraction, an idea that exists in the cloud as an idea that we cannot really imagine that well compared to the ‘real shelves’ instore.
This explains why discovery is harder online and why brands increasingly turn to TikTok, Instagram and to surface products long before a customer types anything into a search bar.
The challenge for CMOs: know how the machines work
The CMO role is hard. They are asked to own brand strategy, performance marketing, customer experience, ecommerce, and AdTech, yet, they do not understand the tech, may not have clear accountability, resources, or proper support.
Retail media networks do not help. Retail media networks like Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect and Tesco Media, Unlimital or Cartolog create new walled gardens with proprietary shopper data and closed-loop measurement with their own tech and own algorithms
And AI will accelerate this shift.
Are we looking at a new generation of marketers to tackle the challenge? Or is it time to reinvent talent development and rethink the in-house versus agency equation.
Just as knowing how to write a good brief, leading a team or judge a piece of creative is important, our new world can offer a real opportunity to marketers who know how the ‘machines’ work.
What do I suggest?
Having worked at intersection of marketing, technology, digital commerce and media, for years, I believe these new realities about the role of AdTech, algorithms and AI must be addressed by all marketers now. If not, the marketing discipline itself will suffer and it will not be cut out for the future.
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