So, are you ready for the creative apocalypse? That’s what Smartly CEO Laura Desmond seems to be shouting from the rooftops, and frankly, she might be onto something. We’re not just talking about more ads; we’re talking about an AI-driven tsunami of content so vast it’ll make our current internet saturation look like a trickle. Desmond pegs it as a thousand, even ten thousand, fold increase in the sheer diversity and variation of creative marketers will need to churn out. A hundred-fold increase? That was TikTok. This is… well, this is something else entirely.
And who’s actually making money here? For now, it’s the folks building the pipes. Desmond, speaking at the POSSIBLE conference, is clearly positioning Smartly as one of those pipe builders. Their big play? An Amazon CTV partnership designed to inject performance marketing chops into the connected TV world. Think personalized creative, not just branding. Sounds nice, but it’s essentially trying to cram a performance-first, data-driven approach into a medium that’s traditionally been more about reach and eyeballs. It’s a smart bet, given the insatiable appetite for measurable ROI, but the execution will be key. Can they actually prove it drives business growth through creative nuance, or will it just be another layer of analytics on a TV screen?
Why Measurement is Getting Messier
Then there’s the INCRMNTAL acquisition. They bought them in May 2026, and the stated reason is the shaky ground of measurement. Media mix modeling, Desmond points out, is a “look back currency” that takes ages to get a true read. Multi-touch attribution? Increasingly unreliable thanks to cookies biting the dust and algorithms doing their own mysterious thing. Marrying INCRMNTAL’s real-time data with Smartly’s activation and creative smarts is supposed to offer immediate insights into what’s actually driving purchases. It’s a classic MarTech play: buy a problem solver, integrate it, and hope the sum is greater than the parts. The real question remains: how much real-time insight can you get when the whole system is designed to be opaque and fragmented?
The OpenAI Gambit
And the OpenAI partnership? That’s the flavor of the month, isn’t it? Being their first creative ad tech partner. The idea is to reach people while they’re hanging out with ChatGPT, offering “contextual, relevant search experiences.” In other words, ads that don’t feel like ads (or at least, ads that are less intrusive). It’s smart positioning for Smartly, getting in on the ground floor of generative AI’s integration into daily life. But let’s be honest, this is a bet on a future that’s still being built. The “creative relevance possibilities” are still largely theoretical.
“CMOs and marketers are going to need to embrace new approaches to training, to development, and really helping their teams become AI ready,” Desmond said. “It is such a big game changer.”
This brings us to workforce transformation. Desmond, with her background moving from traditional to digital media, sees AI readiness as the next big evolutionary leap for marketers. She’s right, of course. You can’t just throw AI tools at a workforce that’s trained on last decade’s playbook. But are these training programs going to be meaningful, or just another box to tick in the corporate HR department? History suggests the latter is more likely, at least initially. The transition from traditional to digital media wasn’t always a smooth, universally beneficial experience. Expect similar bumps and bruises here.
Ultimately, Desmond is painting a picture of a marketing future dictated by AI’s sheer output. The challenge for platforms like Smartly is to prove they’re not just building more complex ways to manage the chaos, but that they’re actually enabling marketers to thrive within it. The partnerships with Amazon and OpenAI, the acquisition of INCRMNTAL – they’re all pieces of a larger puzzle. But the picture that emerges needs to show clear, demonstrable value for the marketers who will be footing the bill, not just more sophisticated ways to create endless variations of the same thing.
Will AI Replace My Job?
Probably not entirely, but it will definitely change it. Expect roles to shift from creative execution to creative strategy, AI prompt engineering, and managing AI-generated content. The focus will be on guiding AI, not doing the grunt work yourself.
How much creative volume can AI really generate?
Desmond suggests a thousand-fold or even ten-thousand-fold increase. This implies near-infinite variations in ad copy, visuals, and even video, all tailored to hyper-specific audience segments or even individual users in real-time.
What is Smartly’s strategy with these new partnerships?
Smartly is building an integrated system to manage the predicted AI-driven explosion in creative volume. The Amazon CTV partnership aims to bring performance marketing to TV, the INCRMNTAL acquisition enhances measurement capabilities, and the OpenAI partnership positions them for contextual relevance in AI-driven search environments.
