The Trade Desk’s Amber Browne on the industry’s ‘false narrative’ about AI

Amber Browne, vice president of business development for EMEA at The Trade Desk, knows a thing or two about the region’s advertising landscape and how it differs from that of the U.S.

For starters, as she noted in an interview with The Current Global Editor Zac Wang, EMEA spans more than 100 countries: “A lot of the vision that they have is global in nature and global in scope,” she said.

Browne also weighed in on AI’s rise in advertising, pushing back on what she calls a “false narrative”— one that suggests marketers must either cede control to Big Tech or reject AI entirely.

“We were having this conversation 10 years ago about the importance of transparency in advertising and moving away from the world of black box algorithms,” Browne said. “I think a lot of those lessons that we learned a decade-plus ago we could learn again today.”

This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.

What is your unpopular opinion about advertising?

I would say the concept of working media needs to be completely redefined.

The idea that we are only talking about how much money is spent on the publisher itself and that the idea of data and technology not being something that's working for you, I think is a fallacy.

Of course, there are things to scrutinize and advertisers absolutely need to be doing this. I think it falls a lot back to the notion of efficacy and value. Is it driving sales?

Is it driving sales? If so, then does it matter that it costs a little bit more to add data on it, because that data is enriching the media that you're spending.

I think we're talking about return on investment here. And I think obviously in the current climate, that’s a huge thing for people now.

Exactly.

How should the ad industry move differently next year?

One thing that I would love to see more of is less waiting. I think that a lot of times we see that companies want to start in the U.S. first. They’ll start there and then see how it works, and then start to scale it elsewhere. And if we’re thinking about this from a product perspective, especially a custom product perspective, a lot of times it’s not just a lift and shift over into other regions or markets. It’s an entirely new project that’s aimed at solving the same problem. But it’s done in a really different way. 

When you put dedicated teams in place to help expand the region and help drive innovation there specifically, you see some [innovation] happen. You see some things that are starting from the U.K. or Germany or in France or others, and then expand elsewhere around the world. It’s really exciting to see that happen. We should stop thinking about this in terms: The U.S. has to break ground before we can do it. 

What changes have you seen in EMEA in the last seven years?

Everything is the short answer. There’s a lot that you can’t really understand until you’re here and on the ground. There’s very simple things, like the fact that we think about EMEA as the same as in the U.S. — we do this in the U.S., we do this for EMEA.

EMEA is over 100 countries. There’s a lot of nuance that exists in this market. There’s also just a lot of the ways that business operates differently here. Things like how long it takes to hire and get people on board the culture. 

Are advertisers’ goals different in EMEA than elsewhere?

I think that, in the world that I’m operating in — which is working with some of the largest advertisers in the world — a lot of the vision that they have is global in nature and global in scope. Some of the specifics in how those things are measured might be different, based on regulation and things like that.   

But overall, I think everyone’s still operating under the same large umbrella, which is driving their business forward. And that doesn’t change based on the location, just the nuance in the specifics of how we get there.    

What is your take on AI in advertising? 

I think that it’s important for advertisers to take a beat and to really evaluate the technologies that are in front of them, to really evaluate the kind of ethics involved and how they’re using AI.

And I’ve seen some advertisers do that really, really well and make really informed deliberate decisions on how and when — and when not to, more importantly — leverage that technology. 

Something that goes part and parcel to that is just this idea of transparency in AI. There’s a bit of a false narrative that exists in the market today, which is this idea of marketers having to choose to either embrace this technology and cede all control and all transparency to Big Technology in order to leverage the wave of the future, or don’t do that at all. And I think that’s not actually true. It’s a choice.   

We were having this conversation 10 years ago about the importance of transparency in advertising and moving away from the world of black box algorithms. A lot of those lessons that we learned a decade-plus ago we could learn again today in the world of AI and how we’re approaching it now. 

The Current is owned and operated by The Trade Desk Inc.