Traditional research can be slow, expensive and hard to scale but agencies are increasingly testing AI-generated personas to supplement things like media planning and concept testing.In theory, the pitch makes sense: Synthetic audiences can model real consumer behavior, pressure-test ideas and uncover insights without the long wait times that come with human focus groups. In reality, it’s a harder sell.
Synthetic audiences are only as good as the data they’re built on. Even if a project needed to launch right away, a fully synthetic data set would only take the project 80% over the line, leaving the remaining 20% to be vetted by real humans, said Andrea Berki-Nnuji, senior vp of data analytics at Crowley Webb, an advertising, PR, and digital marketing agency that has worked with clients like Evergreen Health, Niagara University and M&T Bank.
The agency has used synthetic audiences on behalf of some of its clients over the last 18 months layering synthetic data on top of human insights and social listening data.
Digiday recently caught up with Berki-Nnuji about how the agency is using synthetic audiences, how it tests and vets synthetic data tools, and how AI changes the agency’s pricing policies.
