Turning Possibility Into Reality: 3 Key Insights From POSSIBLE Miami

POSSIBLE, organized by MMA Global, first launched last year with the goal of curating content and offering masterclasses, workshops, programming and more focused on the future of marketing, communication, culture and technology—all delivered by the biggest names in the business. Naturally, we were there too, where Monks from across our practices together shared a holistic view of practical ways that AI is transforming marketing right now. Touching on content, data, media and the technology that makes it all possible, here's what we covered on the stage.

Brands accelerate success with a test-and-learn approach to AI implementation.

First, our Co-CEO, Content Wesley ter Haar joined MMA’s AI Leadership Coalition (ALC), a group of marketers dedicated to responsibly and effectively integrating AI into marketing. The coalition seeks to equip the industry with tools and resources to harness AI across creative, media, and operations—and met on the stage to share how major brands are embracing the technology through a test-and-learn agenda, where ter Haar shared insight into our strategic approach to AI adoption.

We follow a three-phase process designed to create self-evolving systems that are not only efficient, but also effective. This includes an initial consulting phase where we define high value workflows quickly: ones that increase revenue, decrease costs, and most enhance productivity. Next, we integrate tools and technology into cutting edge software workflows to deliver growth, cost reduction and performance effectiveness. The process concludes with an execution phase—but that’s actually just the beginning, because as the brand rapidly reaches cost neutrality, investments can be made to fuel further innovation.

“AI has transitioned from toy to tool,” ter Haar said. “This evolution is outpacing even the most optimistic forecasts from industry experts. With these advancements, we are finally on the path to realizing the initial promise of digital advertising: enhancing precision and delivering personalization at scale.”

Augmented by AI tools, teams extract more value from their data.

SVP, Media Greg Kirby participated in a panel hosted by Tracer, the marketing reporting and analytics platform, which focused on data-driven trends that are defining digital marketing. Tracer’s technology enables brands to unify data sources to gain a holistic understanding of their audiences; likewise, Kirby shared how our focus on embracing emerging media helps brands better follow their audiences and engage with them more effectively, especially when augmented by AI-powered workflows that span the entire marketing function.

This can lead to surprising insights, three of which were covered in the talk. For example: Taylor Swift drove female viewership for the Super Bowl—but social media ad delivery to women dipped because they were so busy watching the game instead of scrolling. The finding opens up interesting conversation into ways that consumer data and content can reach new audiences in innovative ways.

On a related note, the panel moved on to how AI is driving creative analytics. Marketers increasingly rely on AI to optimize their creative, identifying variables like messaging, colors and objects or models depicted and their effects on performance. But this is also familiar territory for marketers in the data and digital media space.

Finally, the conversation turned to emerging platforms and formats, including new ones from Pinterest, which enable high-engagement, low-cost opportunities for brands. It can be tricky for a brand to understand how to best engage their audiences on emerging channels, but with Persona.Flow, an expansion of our Monks.Flow professional managed service, brands can translate their first-party data into interactive audience personas, then converse with them to quickly adapt to trends and fuel continuous learning and evolution in their marketing strategies as formats continue to evolve. This exemplifies the crucial role of a mature first-party data strategy, enabling brands to not only respond to but anticipate market dynamics data that continuously feeds into AI-driven workflows.

AI-powered platforms drive emotional relevance in creative delivery.

In addition to understanding audiences more effectively, AI-powered tools are also helping marketers make the most of their media investments. Our Head of Brand Investment Matthew Kramer participated in a panel, hosted by marketing platform business Wurl, whose tools power advertising, marketing and distribution across the world’s connected TV (CTV) ecosystem. The panel ruminated over the prevailing challenges that advertisers face in CTV today, including clutter, fragmentation and breaking through the noise.

One solution to these problems is building emotional resonance with audiences. This is being solved by a newly launched service from Wurl called BrandDiscovery, which Kramer and his team got to explore hands-on in work for a financial client. This led to impressive results, including a 33% lift in aided brand awareness and a 15% increase in purchase intent. “What’s even more promising, the campaign saw a 200% improvement in cost per engagement—as measured by EDO—when the ad creative’s emotions matched the content right before the ad break,” he told StreamTV Insider.

The use of new, AI-driven tools like BrandDiscovery to overcome significant challenges like capturing attention in the competitive CTV ecosystem, and nurturing close partnerships with the teams who build those tools, reinforce our approach to embracing new media channels and formats to better serve consumers. “From a partner perspective, we’re thinking about how we use these data tools and targeting driven by AI to make CTV—which historically hasn’t been tied to lower-funnel results—into a full-funnel driver,” Kramer said.

You can hear Kramer cover some of these possibilities in a recent episode of the Nex6 Project, hosted by John Ghiorso, where the two discuss how CTV is affecting creative and the role that AI is playing in that evolution.

Embrace the future, now.

From ter Haar's insights on AI's evolution from a novelty to a fundamental tool, to Kirby's exploration of data-driven audience engagement, and Kramer's discussion on emotional relevance in CTV advertising, POSSIBLE captured a detailed picture of how AI is transforming marketing—along with actionable strategies of how marketing teams can adapt and thrive within it. It's clear that as we continue to build and harness these tools, the potential to drive brand growth and engage with audiences in meaningful ways is not just possible—it's happening now.