15 agency executives leading personalization efforts

Advertising has never been more complicated for brands, which need to reach an array of different types of consumers across a seemingly endless number of media channels—and still resonate with each customer they reach. Aiming to do so cost-effectively has led agencies to beef up their capabilities to provide personalized content at scale. The major holding companies, in particular, have made big investments in the space, but small and independent agencies have also stepped up their efforts in tech and AI to compete. Last year, Deloitte projected that brands would increase their annual personalization budgets by 29% compared to the year prior and reported that the number of brands incorporating personalization had increased by 50% in two years. While personalization in advertising isn’t new, the scale and speed with which it’s executed is constantly evolving as generative AI, modular content systems and predictive performance platforms become more prevalent at agencies. Personalization is often viewed as mass-producing content, but it also shows up in the creation of AI products for brands and in simpler ways, such as making the most of production shoots for clients. More news: Behind the rise of agency chief AI officers From building proprietary tools that produce thousands of localized assets to architecting full-stack AI production engines, these 15 executives aren’t just adapting to change—they’re designing the infrastructure for it. Mike Barrett and John Elder Co-founders, Supergood Supergood, an agency with around 40 employees, aims to prove that scale doesn’t require size. Launched by Mike Barrett and John Elder, Supergood uses its AI tool Supercharger across the creative and strategic process. Supercharger is also being promoted separately as a Saas company that brands can work with. “The true power of AI in marketing isn’t about scaling traditional personalization—it’s about achieving genuine personal relevance,” Supergood’s co-founders wrote in a statement to Ad Age. “For years, consumers have been targeted based on purchase history and digital footprints, but that’s merely personalization by metadata. What AI now enables is understanding the ‘why’ behind consumer choices—their values, aspirations, and contextual needs.” For example, Supergood created six target audiences for its largest client, U.S. Bank, backed by thousands of data points. By communicating with AI avatars of the different audiences, Supergood was eventually able to create 200 audience-specific videos rooted in psychographic values. Daniele Codega and Nick Lee Design and engineering partners, Work & Co Daniele Codega and Nick Lee are behind some of the most technically sophisticated personalized experiences in the market. Codega brings UX and visual design expertise from work with clients such as LVMH and Goldman Sachs, while Lee’s engineering leadership experience spans over 15 years, including mobile, digital, and AI product builds for clients such as BNP Paribas Open, Steinway & Sons, Audacy and Comedy Central. Lee recently collaborated with Pfizer as part of a team that designed and built “Health Answers by Pfizer,” a generative AI-powered health assistant that helps consumers find credible information tailored to their health needs. Codega also led the creative design of Gatorade’s AI-powered bottle design tool launched last year, which allows consumers to create custom Gatorade squeeze bottles using Adobe Firefly. Lee led the architecture and development of the product. “Brands can now make the leap to personalizing entire digital experiences,“ Codega said. ”The era has begun where we can integrate gen AI into brands’ platforms to see content that reflects our wants and needs, be our personal curator to assist in shopping or information quests, or even actually create one-of-a-kind products like Gatorade AI.” Margot Eddy Partner, head of social, creative & influencer, Acadia Margot Eddy joined Acadia in 2023 after running her own social agency, Imagine Media. She helps Acadia think about personalized content as it relates to social and influencer work. Acadia’s model emphasizes what it calls “impact at value,” which means the agency focuses on helping clients get the most out of their budgets, even if they aren’t big spenders. “Our large-scale productions yield hundreds of assets, and our in-house production team never shows up to get one job, or one campaign done. We recognize that a win for our clients comes from the volume of work, fit to platform,” Eddy said. “On a CTV shoot, we’re creating social assets, inviting influencer partners and creators to join and then extending the shelf life through AI tools and performance creative iterations.” During a recent video shoot for Fresh Thyme Market, for example, Eddy’s team turned a single production night into a multi-asset opportunity by adding an extra photographer and shooting assets on the side. The single shoot led to the creation of more than 65 assets to be used across the retailer’s paid and organic efforts, many of which will be remixed through performance creative testing to create more assets. Acadia uses software systems such as Icon AI and Darwin AI to create additional assets and to test and identify the best pieces of content to iterate and inform upcoming campaigns and shoots, Eddy said. Brianna Gaskill Technical solutions director, PMG Brianna Gaskill has been at PMG since 2018 and is one of the minds behind the evolution of the agency’s AI operating system, Alli. For the past six years, she has led the growth of Alli’s “Creative Engine” from a creative retargeting tool to a full-scale personalization platform. Some of the agency’s largest clients using this tool include Intuit TurboTax, Best Western, JCG and Kohler. For TurboTax, PMG generated more than 24,000 localized creative digital assets featuring real tax professionals from a user’s area. A campaign for JSX, an air travel service offering semi-private charter flights across the U.S., used real-time route pricing and produced over 30,000 variations of ads based on location and flight prices across social and display ads. Chris Gokiert CEO, Critical Mass Chris Gokiert has been with Critical Mass for over 25 years and rose from design and strategy roles to president and eventually CEO in 2020. Under his leadership, the agency launched ArtBot—an AI-powered content orchestration platform that enables creative performance programs in over 60 markets for global clients. ArtBot is meant to integrate with parent Omnicom’s Omni system to work across the audience creation side from planning to creative decision-making for certain ads. Critical Mass launched Artbot in 2022, and Omnicom rolled out the tool across the broader holding company in 2024. Here’s how it works: Before a single piece of creative goes live, the AI in Artbot pre-scores it for brand and platform fit, so that every execution is optimized for effectiveness from the start. Critical Mass client British Airways uses ArtBot to address a critical business challenge: selling unsold seat inventory efficiently. The airline relies on Critical Mass’ platform to deliver personalized creative tied to real-time route data, enabling dynamic pricing to be embedded directly into messaging. By connecting to the airline’s internal database, ArtBot automates the delivery of content that adapts every two hours across all digital touchpoints. Bryan Kane CEO, FCB Canada Bryan Kane joined FCB in 2019 after more than two decades at Publicis Groupe, where he built and scaled its Canadian digital capabilities. Since taking on the CEO role at FCB Canada, he has elevated its creative data and tech agency FCB/SIX into a high-performing personalization engine. Part of this growth stemmed from Kane and the team’s investment in marketing technology to ensure every team member is proficient in Salesforce, Google and other leading platforms. Under Kane’s leadership, FCB/SIX has delivered major transformations for brands such as Scene+, one of Canada’s largest loyalty programs. By activating Salesforce and first-party data, the agency last year created a hyper-personalized experience across email, video, banners and websites for the client. More than 5,000 distinct assets were generated to align with audience behaviors and brand loyalty goals. Jayna Kothary Chief solutions officer, IPG Appointed in 2023 as IPG’s first chief solutions officer, Jayna Kothary brings a background in technology architecture, customer experience design and consulting leadership from her tenure at MRM. Since taking on the role, she has built tech teams and solutions for clients that connect IPG’s creative, media, production, commerce and data capabilities through its operating system, known as Interact. She has also developed partnerships and resources for the holding company, such as its global partnership with Adobe. One client that uses IPG’s AI and automation capabilities is Swarovski, through IPG’s creative production unit, Craft. IPG is able to produce tens of thousands of assets per campaign within weeks for the client using AI. Cayal Mathura Executive VP, creative, North America at Jellyfish Cayal Mathura joined Jellyfish, part of Brandtech Group, about six months ago, but has 15 years of experience in advertising. He most recently served as a senior VP, growth & partnerships at Monks. At Jellyfish, Mathura is responsible for integrating AI-powered tools into its creative operations. One of those tools is Pencil, an AI software company that Brandtech acquired in 2023 (the same year it acquired Jellyfish). It’s designed to streamline asset development for social and digital media by identifying which creative combinations are most likely to succeed. A recent example of Jellyfish’s work using Pencil is for Virgin Atlantic, where the agency created 972 social assets in four days. Mathura’s arrival coincided with Jellyfish’s year-long shift to an AI-first business model. In March, Jellyfish announced its new AI media platform, which taps into AI agents to automate aspects such as media research, content strategy, activation and optimization for clients who can access the tool themselves. Jellyfish has also overhauled all aspects of its process to use AI. “In merely a year, we have been able to create 235,000 pieces of content for three of the world’s top 10 advertisers, with the content on average being produced 62% faster, 55% cheaper and delivering a 40% improvement in ROI,” Natalie Winford, Jellyfish’s chief solutions officer, said in a statement in March. Priti Mhatre Chief product and AI officer, Hogarth Priti Mhatre joined Hogarth in 2021 and leads the WPP-owned company’s product and AI strategy globally. She has been instrumental in developing WPP’s NVIDIA-powered content engine, which enables large-scale, brand-safe asset production using 3D, generative content, and computer vision, which is a type of AI that allows computers to analyze images and videos. She also conceptualized and launched the production studio within Open, WPP’s AI marketing operating system launched last year. The content engine, which allows WPP to make more assets in a shorter amount of time for clients, is currently being used by clients such as Ford and L’Oréal. PJ Pereira Co-founder, Silverside AI PJ Pereira is the creative chairman of Pereira O’Dell and the chief creative officer for Serviceplan Americas. In 2024, he also became the co-founder of Silverside AI, a lab dedicated to developing new AI tools for marketers. Silverside AI made a splash last year with its AI holiday ads for Coca-Cola Co. Using AI, Silverside delivered 110 different versions of the spot, including 12 key market localizations that featured skylines customized to the cities in which they would air. The intent was to use localized content to help Coca-Cola stand out during a busy holiday season from competitors using non-customized creative. More: Coca-Cola’s AI lead on the polarizing response to its holiday ads Pereira also recently spearheaded a partnership with AmaliTech, a tech company that connects African talent with companies globally. Through the partnership, Silverside hires and trains developers in Ghana and Rwanda to build parts of the agency’s AI stack. Deadra Rahaman Executive VP, client services and strategy, Hero Collective Deadra Rahaman has over 20 years of strategy experience. She joined Hero Collective in 2023, where she leads client services and strategy with a focus on culturally intelligent, AI-powered campaigns. Her work fuses data science with cultural nuance to create content that speaks to a changing American audience. While Rahaman acknowledges the importance of personalized advertising, she believes it must go beyond a focus on behavior data, and agencies should be thinking about the biases that can come when working with AI. “Data has been the ‘drumbeat’ in adland for a while now. Yet advertising has fallen flat. Why? Because the boardrooms and the C-suite do not look like our changing demographics,” Rahaman told Ad Age. “What separates Hero Collective is we reflect the audiences we serve with insights, authenticity and our ability to translate the data into nuanced prompts to shape our outputs.” Using large-scale analytics and AI frameworks, the agency uses cultural trends to inform its creative strategy. This approach has helped the agency break through with Gen Z and multicultural audiences across CPG, entertainment and health care. Rather than relying solely on first-party data, the agency draws from social listening and proprietary sentiment modeling. While Hero declined to name specific clients utilizing its personalization capabilities, Rahaman said AI was used for an exhaustive research and intelligence project for Hero’s largest client that was executed by partnering with the agency’s data and analytics team. “Analyzing large data sets for a small agency was once challenging,” Rahaman said. “AI helped us to verify not just the data but also our hypotheses and validation in our approach by expanding once traditional qualitative and quantitative research into deeper, contextual understanding methodologies for this client.” Wesley ter Haar Chief AI officer, Monks Wesley ter Haar, a co-founder of Monks, became its first chief AI officer to lead its AI strategy and adoption of generative tools across content, data and the agency’s overall workflow. He has spearheaded the creation of Monks.Flow, an AI suite that connects production pipelines to real-time optimization and campaign feedback. In 2024, Monks won a significant remit with General Motors to create customized content at scale. Google is another large client utilizing similar capabilities. In a recent winter campaign for GM’s Cadillac, Monks used AI to change landscapes in images and videos to create localized content and deliver more than 75 market-specific assets across vehicles and geographies. This creative process would have taken weeks, but that time was cut in half, Monks stated. Domenic Venuto Executive VP, chief of product & data, Horizon Media Domenic Venuto joined Horizon Media in 2024 to lead its product, data and technology strategy and has been focused on transforming Horizon into an AI-native organization. This has included building up Horizon’s tech platform blu. The system utilizes agentic workflows and is natively integrated with performance data, which means Horizon can adjust creative, spend, and targeting in real time. Prior to joining Horizon, Venuto held chief operating officer roles at M&A advisory firm Progress Partners and demand-side platform Amobee. Before that, he held executive roles at Publicis, The Weather Co. and Razorfish. Blu has played a key role in recent wins for Horizon, including its largest win of the year, Spectrum’s media business. The future of the platform will be embracing AI agents across different client workflows. Using more agentic workflows, campaigns will be able to self-adjust in response to shifting consumer behavior and cultural signals, Horizon shared in a statement to Ad Age. Data-driven Marketing Playbook: Join industry leaders on May 22 to explore how data can drive marketing strategies, optimize media buying and improve customer engagement. Learn more here.

15 agency executives leading the charge for personalization through AI and other tech innovations

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