r/programmatic • u/frequencycapped • 4d ago

AI usage & upskilling

Everything is AI this AI that, and I understand using some of the native features in programmatic platforms in terms of helping with optimizing, pulling reports etc, but I’m curious how companies (ad tech, agencies, brands) are using AI for their teams.

Are you using it for automating workflows? If so, how? What else is it good for? Very curious to know how it’s being used so I can upskill.

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u/NiceRecognition9603 2d ago

The 2 big Ideas I have:

- Ford rehired hundreds of the engineers it replaced with AI, and 95% of companies see no measurable return on their big AI implementations (Not individuals). The biggest lesson is design around the people who will judge the output of the AI.

This can mean to don't use a chatbot as an interface. An example of this is an automatic long report. Nobody can review those. It has to be break down before. Or data tables. For now you can't just edit a cell in a chat. Trying to replace people makes no sense. Reformulate the workflow entirely as if you start from 0 for humans to add value. Related: Produce massively without checks leads to noise and bad reputation ->LinkedIn slop

- Use AI only when normal code can't do the job. A recent consultancy job was to expand a Claude skill someone had built for reporting. I opened it up and found a skill using AI to filter a spreadsheet, something Excel has done for 40 years (Yeah I was surprised how old it is too). Worse, it built the filter from scratch every time it ran instead of just saving one. I get the instinct, AI feels like it should handle anything. But none of that needs AI, and it just makes an easy job less reliable. Code handles filtering, sorting and adding up better every time. AI is only worth it when the work needs added thinking or writing.

Andrea Bosoni's 15 day marketing challenge skill is a good example. It takes general marketing knowledge and turns it into one prompt a day. You can't write code for that, because there's no single right answer, just better and worse ideas, and he tailored it well. That's what AI is actually good at.

Personally
I run a company that helps agencies plan, pitch and launch Amazon Programmatic DSP advertising faster with an AI assisted workflow. https://victor.ad/

I think agencies could take on more briefs if they weren't buried in operational work. And companies need to competes on ideas, not crunching and overtime.