Using AI to Turn Smarter Signals Into Sales 

This post was created in partnership with Fetch

Key takeaways

• In the age of AI, personalization and tailored messaging have become table stakes.
• To keep pace with culture, marketers and advertisers must rethink their workflow.
• Brands shouldn’t expect loyalty from customers if they don’t practice it themselves.

Pairing verified purchase data with AI innovation can be a potent combination, helping brands and agencies plan, personalize, and stay nimble. The end result: greater performance at checkout.

During an ADWEEK House Advertising HQ Group Chat, co-hosted with Fetch, industry leaders dug into the shift from impressions to outcomes, how customization and incentives can fuel loyalty, and the internal operating changes needed to act on insights in real time.

(L-R) Chobani’s Wilma Faget, Fetch’s Zoe O’Neill

Personalization with purpose

Fetch’s senior partner director of agency, Zoe O’Neill, opened the discussion by calling out the necessity of hyper-personalized experiences to drive loyalty from today’s shoppers. She noted how increasingly sophisticated AI products are allowing brands to leverage their data to tailor messaging at a level they’ve never seen before. “Personalization is table stakes at this point—but personalization with purpose and relevance is really where we’re going and what AI enables us to do even better,” O’Neill said.

Amie Owen, global chief commerce officer at IPG Mediabrands, seconded that view, adding that advances in AI are allowing brands to offer individualized marketing opportunities that simply weren’t possible in the past. “We tried 10 years ago and it just did not work—the technology wasn’t there, the data wasn’t there,” she shared, noting that the current ability to look at a shopper’s journey from start to finish has major impacts on shrinking the funnel.

The pandemic has only accelerated ecommerce’s centrality, allowing companies armed with today’s tools to collect and act on digital consumer signals faster. O’Neill shared that Fetch, for example, now has visibility into $179 billion in annual gross merchandise value (GMV). It’s consumer data that marketers can better tap into as AI capabilities evolve.

AI’s ability to assess datasets and gain a deeper understanding of what’s driving shopper motivation and purchase behavior has already led to stronger messaging and conversions, added Sally Barton, marketing excellence lead, U.S. for MondelÄ“z International. “How we talk to Gen Z might be different from how we’re talking to a millennial mom because we understand what’s important to them,” she said.

With the right guardrails in place, agentic tooling has utility in supporting overall strategy. “We think of AI as an assistant,” said Wilma Faget, director of digital at Chobani. Although the brand is not looking for a tool to replace the human thought process, it knows the benefits of embracing technology. “You can use it very wisely if you input all the data that you have with trends—a really good recipe will come out,” Faget explained.

(L-R) Mondelēz International’s Sally Barton, Assembly’s Jason Lim

Agility wins—but only with new workflows

As the trend cycle continues to speed up, rapid insights are outpacing the infrastructure to act on them.

Since the industry isn’t set up to capitalize on such fast-moving trends as, say, the Labubu craze, agencies, clients, and media partners need a new way of thinking, argued IPG’s Owen. The timeline to get content ideated, approved, and executed runs long. By the time teams check every box, she said, the moment has passed.

Starcom’s SVP and head of retail media, Lee Dunbar, agreed, saying there’s a need to embrace more of a flexible environment for creation, or, in the case of updating product flows, a sandbox or vibe coding approach.  

Ultimately, the panelists recognize AI’s ability to move workflows out of what Owen called “the mundane tasks of the execution pieces” in manual spreadsheets—where commerce infrastructure long centered—toward more active tools and dashboards that complement each other and drive faster business outcomes.

“There’s never been a dashboard that I presented to a client who responded, ‘Oh, that’s perfect. That’s all I needed. No questions,'” Dunbar shared. “But with AI, being able to have the client ask questions and be able to share data that was important to them that week … I think that’s near term. That’s where I’m the most excited for—less time in Excel, less time in reporting.”

IPG Mediabrand’s Amie Owen

Leveraging data to stay nimble as today’s consumer evolves

While richer consumer signals through AI help brands move faster and engage shoppers with personalization and rewards, the panelists agreed that the biggest gains will come from predicting the next purchase—and the next customer.

“I think the conversation is slowly but surely moving from ‘What did they buy yesterday?’ to ‘What can I accurately predict they will buy tomorrow?’” said Jason Lim, North America chief media officer at Assembly. “That’s the promise of where that dataset should be able to take you, so that we can more accurately predict not just demand, but everything from the supply chain.”

(L-R) Starcom’s Lee Dunbar, ADWEEK’s Zoë Ruderman

At a time when price points often trump brand relationships and innovations like GLP-1s are disrupting long-held lifestyle behaviors, looking ahead and pivoting quickly can protect a brand’s bottom line.

Fetch’s O’Neill emphasized using audience insights to make connections across experiences, revealing marketing opportunities and incentives that speak to real life. “We have the insights to say, okay, these people going to Pizza Hut are also buying this brand of frozen pizza, so let’s reward them for going to Pizza Hut,” she said. “Those rewards and that loyalty are getting them to take that next trip, stretch the basket, and continue to make those behaviors that we all want them to make.”

To translate cultural relevance into future brand fidelity—especially with younger audiences—MondelÄ“z International’s Barton pointed to the success of fandom-driven collabs that deliver surprise and delight while speaking to genuine intersections in consumers’ lifestyles, from snack foods partnering with serialized TV shows to music artists crossing over with CPG brands.

Loyalty, however, is a two-way street. As Assembly’s Lim noted, “you earn that loyalty each and every time,” making smarter signals a must-have for brands aiming to drive a strategy that balances engagement with utility.

Featured Conversation Leaders

• Sally Barton, Marketing Excellence Lead, U.S., MondelÄ“z International
• Lee Dunbar, SVP, Head of Retail Media, Starcom
• Wilma Faget, Director of Digital, Chobani
• Jason Lim, North America Chief Media Officer, Assembly
• Zoe O’Neill, Senior Partner Director, Agency, Fetch
• Amie Owen, Global Chief Commerce Officer, IPG Mediabrands
• Zoë Ruderman, Chief Content Officer, ADWEEK