{"slug": "how-ai-is-transforming-streaming-adtech", "title": "How AI Is Transforming Streaming Adtech", "summary": "Streaming platforms and adtech firms are operationalizing AI for contextual advertising, with Revry's Alia J. Daniels emphasizing a privacy-first, human-touch approach to preserve cultural nuance, and Digital Culture Group's Crystal Foote unveiling a nine-metric Resonance Convergence Coefficient Score and the Audience Resonance Index (ARI) platform to quantify cultural relevance before campaigns go live, as discussed at Streaming Media Connect 2026.", "body_md": "#\nHow AI Is Transforming Streaming Adtech\n\nAI’s potential to transform CTV and OTT ad preparation, ad serving, ad placement, contextualization, video analysis, performance, and reporting is fairly well understood and rarely understated. But how are streaming platforms, content owners, and advertisers actually operationalizing AI today? [Revry’s Alia J. Daniels](https://www.linkedin.com/in/aliajdaniels/), [Digital Culture Group (DCG)’s Crystal Foote](https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystal-foote/), [Dataxis’ Ophelie Boucaud](https://www.linkedin.com/in/oph%C3%A9lie-boucaud-572a07bb/), and [Sargeway’s Sarge Sargent](https://www.linkedin.com/in/sargeway/) discuss how publishers are leveraging AI’s advantages and also addressing some of its limitations in this clip from [Streaming Media Connect 2026](https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/News/Online-Video-News/Instant-Replay-Streaming-Media-Connect-August-2026-176152.aspx).\n\n## Operationalizing AI at Revry: Preserving Nuance, Protecting Privacy\n\nFraming the discussion around the impact of AI integration on the growth of [contextual advertising](https://www.streamingmediaglobal.com/Articles/Editorial/Short-Cuts/What-Is-Contextual-Advertising-and-How-Is-it-Changing-TV-166275.aspx), and the ways LLMs and [multimodal models](https://www.momentslab.com/blog/multimodal-ai-and-media-assets-the-future-of-content-intelligence) are reshaping the ways CTV ads are prepared, sold, and delivered, Boucaud asks Daniels, \"From [Revry](https://www.revry.tv/)'s perspective, what have you been implementing? What have you been experimenting with?\"\n\n\"For us,\"Daniels replies, \"it's a combination of where can we operationalize utilizing AI without losing the nuance that still requires still a human touch. AI is fantastic at a lot of things, and I think there's still a bit of room to grow. But because I'm coming from this perspective of we are targeting a specific, multicultural audience, we operate from a [privacy-first](https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Post/Blog/How-Streaming-Services-Can-Deal-With-Consumer-Privacy-Concerns-148522.aspx) place. With anything that we're doing, we start from there. After that, it's about, how nuanced can AI be with regards to certain cultural contexts that it may not be fully aware of? So we're still really focused on utilizing a human touch when we're talking about specific content and how our advertisers are serving against that content.\"\n\n\"It's still a moment where we need a lot of calibrating,\" Boucaud agrees, \"especially for more [niche segments](https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Editorial/Featured-Articles/Mining-for-Riches-in-the-Niches-Dynamic-Approaches-for-Targeted-Growth-172817.aspx) that may not be so well catered to by more generic models.\"\n\n## Quantifying Cultural Relevance at Digital Culture Group\n\nTurning to Foote, Boucaud asks, \"Crystal, can you tell us a bit more about how you've been experimenting with\" AI in contextual advertising at [DCG](https://www.digitalculture.group/), \"especially with brands? What is the outcome so far?\"\n\n\"Our engineering team created a nine-metric system, which is now our currency, called the [Resonance Convergence Coefficient Score](https://www.digitalculture.group/resonance-convergence-coefficient),\" Foote explains. \"Within that nine-metric system, we're looking at platform relevance, cultural relevance. We're looking at vernacular when it comes to certain audiences to make sure that before we even go live with a campaign, we take that brief or that RFP, we put it into our AI platform, [Audience Resonance Index (ARI)](https://www.digitalculture.group/post/what-is-audience-resonance), an aggregator of all the different APIs that we have for our AI and our new models that we created to provide intelligence for audience targeting, which we didn't have before. We were just an ad tech company, and we were putting together different data points and data taxonomies to create these audiences and find them in the digital ecosystem. But now the SaaS platform we created using AI is making more informed decisions and the outcomes are incredibly better because of it.\"\n\nBoucaud concurs that older approaches to ad content matching \"were based more on assumptions and hypothesis and understandings of what an audience would like, but without really grounding it in data. That's a really interesting change.\"\n\n## AI as Scene-Analysis Workhorse\n\nBoucaud then shifts the conversation in Sargent's direction and broadens the question a bit: How is AI making the whole ad tech industry evolve?\" Earlier in the discussion, she notes, he mentioned the increasing role of AI in \"making sure we understand the context of a scene or the mood. How do we do that? What is AI bringing in terms of in video analysis that we were not able to touch before?\"\n\n\"Before, everything was done manually,\" Sargent recalls. \"So what's actually changed is the workhorse. Now you see AI involved in multiple different layers from the ad creative side and creating ad assets or dynamically creating them out of existing libraries of assets, so combining multiple different previous campaigns into one on the fly.\"\n\nSargent illustrates his point with an example from a current project. \"I'm working with a client now who is launching an AVOD platform, and they're using [Vionlabs](https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=175220) to introspect each thematic asset and break it down. Not only does it pick out where the cues should be placed, but also [identifies] the tone and sentiment at those ad markers. One of the things that's missing is what Crystal's company does: adding in cultural significance and faith-based significance and also vernacular. So that I see is missing in what I'm looking at today that Vionlabs is pulling out.\"\n\nMoving on from the \"content prep side\" to the \"ad server side,\" Sargent continues, \"ad servers are now adding into their ecosystems the ability to pull out context or to accept context. This is important so that they know exactly what's in the actual content that the user is looking at. When they get to the ad break,\" he explains, this makes it possible to \"match the context at that ad marker and then use that to make a decision.\"\n\nReferencing contextual advertising technology developed when he worked at Disney, Sargent says, \"Disney has this down pat. While I was there, they launched what they call [Magic Words](https://press.disneyadvertising.com/disney's-magic-words:-connecting-advertisers-to-the-moods-and-moments-in-premium-content), which is basically contextual keywords about the content, and then adding that into the ad server since they have their own ecosystem. That's all fair game for them. But if you're using [Google Ad Manager](https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/Post/Blog/Boosting-Ad-Fill-Rates-with-Advanced-Ad-Prefetching-A-Solution-Overview-166521.aspx) or [FreeWheel](https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=171627), you need a way to signal that ad server what's actually in your content. Then at that ad break, it signala 'this is the context of the scene either before the ad break or the scene after the ad break' so the ad server can make that decision.\"\n\nMoving on from the ad server realm to what he describes as \"the marketplaces,\" Sargent says, \"now on the ad agency side, they're using AI to pull out the context in the actual ad asset itself. And then you need to package that and deliver that so that the ad servers in the marketplaces know exactly what's in your ad. So it's not just a Coke ad, but it's a Coke ad about X, Y, and Z, or 'here's the tone of that Coke ad,' so it should match the tone that the ad server wants to serve into.\"\n\n*Join us November 9–11, 2026 for more thought leadership, actionable insights, and lively debate at Streaming Media Connect 2026! Registration is open!*\n\nRelated Articles\n\nOn Tuesday, Aug. 11, Revry's Alia J. Daniels, DCG's Crystal Foote, Servers.com' Bradley Lewington, and Sargeway's Sarge Sargent will join Dataxis' Ophélie Boucaud, Principal Analyst, Dataxis for the Streaming Media Connect panel \"Match Game: AI, Ad Tech, and Contextual Advertising.\" This panel of ad tech and ad strategy experts provides a snapshot of the current and evolving state of contextual ad-targeting—one of the fastest-moving targets in the streaming and CTV industry.\n\n06 Aug 2026\n\nNew research from Video Elephant shows that contextual relevance is the 'missing link' in achieving meaningful brand lift. The new report, titled The Power of Context: Driving Lift Through Video, finds that contextual alignment between an ad and its surrounding content is a primary driver of brand perception, with the power to 4X brand lift compared to industry averages.\n\n22 Apr 2026\n\nMatching ads to programming context and audience interests is theoretically what CTV and OTT can do better than traditional linear television, but it requires gathering data and leveraging it effectively to make sound contextual calls. Philo Head of Advertising Partnerships Aulden Kaye Yi and Roku Head of Supply Side Ad Platform Charlie Goodman discuss what works on their platforms and how their teams approach contextual advertising in this conversation with SVTA Subject Matter Expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya at Streaming Media Connect 2026.\n\n13 Mar 2026\n\nCTV contextual advertising, like many things in life, is all about making good decisions, and making informed decisions based on a wealth of data means leveraging the right tools—often AI-driven—to gather and distill and interpret that data. Sometimes developing sound contextual media plans involves working with in-house tech and other times it means working with third-party tools, as Team Whistle (a DAZN company) president Joe Caporoso and Intersection CEO Chris Grosso explain in this discussion with SVTA subject matter expert Bhavesh Upadhyaya in this clip from Streaming Media Connect 2026.\n\n09 Mar 2026\n\nThe buzz around contextual targeting is ramping up in the online advertising world, with the promise that it will solve issues surrounding privacy, transparency, and more. But where is its impact registering in the ad-supported streaming ecosystem? TVREV's Alan Wolk, Fremantle's Laura Florence, Philo's Aulden Kaye Yi, Roku's Charlie Goodman, and Vevo's Melissa Sofo offer their perspectives in a clip from the latest Streaming Media Connect 2025.\n\n05 May 2025", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/how-ai-is-transforming-streaming-adtech", "canonical_source": "https://www.streamingmedia.com/Articles/ReadArticle.aspx?ArticleID=176403", "published_at": "2026-09-01 06:55:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-09-01 19:51:46.230125+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "generative-ai", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Revry", "Alia J. 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