Smartly Advance Opens in New York with a Call for Reinvention

The 2025 edition of Smartly Advance opened this morning in New York with a keynote from Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, that challenged the advertising industry to acknowledge the scale of disruption it is facing. Her message was clear: technology has always reshaped marketing, but artificial intelligence is altering the landscape with a speed and depth not seen before.

The mood in the room was part anticipation, part urgency. Desmond began by reminding her audience that advertising has always adapted - television, the internet, mobile and streaming each transformed how brands connected with people. But she drew a distinction between the current wave of change and those that came before. Earlier disruptions unfolded over years; today, the velocity is far faster, and the implications reach across every aspect of the business at once.

A familiar pattern, at unfamiliar speed

Desmond has lived through several eras of upheaval. She described echoes of earlier moments when new media made marketers feel overwhelmed, from the rise of search to the explosion of social platforms. The difference now, she argued, is that AI is not simply another channel or device. It is a force that rewires how consumers behave and how brands must respond.

New research from Smartly underscored that point. Nine in ten consumers already use AI, nearly half engage with it daily, and 70 per cent say they use it more than they did just a year ago. For marketers, this represents a fundamental shift in expectations. Consumers no longer accept the passive model of browsing, nor the one-way broadcast of advertising.

The challenge, she argued, is not about whether brands embrace AI but how quickly they can integrate it into the core of their strategies.

Lessons from history

To frame the moment, Desmond reached back to 1965 - a year she described as one of collision between culture, politics, technology and media. The civil rights movement, Vietnam protests and the space race all marked a period of reinvention. In advertising, Volkswagen’s “Think Small” campaign became the emblem of that change, rejecting polish for wit, spectacle for simplicity. Instead of one iconic ad, Volkswagen ran more than 100 variations, each designed to be more personal and relevant.

The impact was profound: annual sales doubled to more than a million cars, and Volkswagen became the best-selling foreign brand in the United States. More than sales figures, the campaign redefined the craft of advertising itself.

For Desmond, today’s shift is of the same magnitude but with even greater reach. Instead of a hundred variations challenging convention, AI makes it possible to deliver hundreds of thousands, tailored at scale and speed. The old playbook of reach and repetition, she argued, cannot create relevance in an era of infinite choice.

The AI imperative

Desmond’s keynote was not simply an exploration of change; it was a call to action. She set out three imperatives for the industry to embrace if it is to keep pace.

First, marketers must commit to using AI as a collaborator in creativity. For decades, creative effectiveness was measured after campaigns went live. AI, she argued, allows ideas to be tested, refined and predicted before launch, stress-tested for attention and impact in real time.

Second, the walls between creative and media have to come down. In her view, silos are unsustainable when consumer experiences are increasingly one-to-one. AI-first workflows can integrate creative development and media targeting, enabling personalization at scale without losing brand coherence.

Third, the industry must lead with responsibility. Governance, intellectual property protection and ethical standards will determine whether AI strengthens consumer trust or undermines it.

Her forecast was unequivocal: by 2028, she expects 100 per cent of advertising to be powered by AI. The question is not whether adoption will happen but how responsibly and imaginatively the industry approaches it.

Human imagination at the centre

While her focus was on the transformative potential of AI, Desmond was careful to stress that technology alone is not enough. The calculator did not eliminate accountants, she reminded the room, nor did the telescope make astronomers obsolete. Tools redefine work, but human imagination, empathy and originality remain the essence of storytelling.

Even in an age of automation, it is the ideas that resonate emotionally - not the mechanism delivering them - that create brand love, fuel growth and drive cultural impact. As she put it in one of her most pointed remarks:

Setting the agenda for Advance

The opening session also framed the themes for the day ahead. Advance is designed as a forum where practitioners and leaders can confront the challenges of complexity, cost and consumer expectation in a privacy-first world. Discussions will turn to how AI reshapes the balance between creative and commerce, how demand is generated in new environments, and how measurement can keep pace with marketplaces and retail platforms.

For Desmond, the significance of Advance is not theoretical. Last year, she said, was about hope and progress. This year is about decision, action and commitment. Her challenge to attendees was to move beyond debating the implications of AI and to begin embedding it across their organisations now.

Why this moment matters

The broader context for Desmond’s remarks is a marketing ecosystem under pressure. Rising acquisition costs, signal loss from privacy regulation, and platform automation have left many brands questioning the value of their spend. Traditional models of attribution and last-click reporting have been exposed as inadequate, undervaluing the channels that generate demand.

Against that backdrop, AI is not simply another efficiency tool. It is the mechanism by which the industry can reinvent itself - simplifying processes, scaling creative variation, and restoring relevance at the consumer level. The risk for brands that delay, Desmond argued, is not just slower growth but cultural irrelevance.

A force for reinvention

As the opening morning closed, Desmond left her audience with both a challenge and an invitation. The challenge: to accept that the AI era is already here, reshaping consumer behaviour and creative possibilities. The invitation: to treat this not as a threat but as an opportunity to reimagine advertising as a force for cultural good.

The parallels with earlier eras of reinvention were deliberate. Just as the 1960s forced advertising to rethink convention, the 2020s demand that brands embrace scale, speed and responsibility in equal measure. For Desmond, AI is the collaborator that makes this possible, but it will be human creativity that determines whether it inspires cultural change and fuels the next wave of growth.

Advance, she concluded, is about moving advertising forward together, not in theory, but in practice. The day now belongs to the leaders and practitioners willing to make that commitment.

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