Why Adtech’s Next Advantage Won’t Be Data Or AI. It’s The Trust Economy

Avi Chai Outmezguine is CEO of Becausal, powering next-generation audience intelligence through causal AI-driven data innovation.

​The data exposures I worry about most don’t begin with an attacker. They begin with someone doing their job well.

​It’s no secret that over the past 20 years, adtech has become incredibly sophisticated. We’ve built an extensive data ecosystem, AI tools and audience models that help us predict consumer behavior at an unprecedented scale. Marketers can make billions of decisions in seconds—even in real time.

But the same question still plagues marketers—and if it doesn’t, it should: Can I trust this data? Is this audience accurate? Can I trust the measurement?

I’d argue the next competitive advantage in our industry won’t belong to whoever has the most data or the smartest AI. It’ll go to whoever can earn marketers’ trust.

The Wrong Question

For years, our industry has focused on tackling one question: How do I build a bigger audience? That era is slipping away. Tomorrow’s question is: Can I trust the audience I’m buying?

If nothing else, it’s definitely a more interesting discussion, and I’m betting that it’s the one that will define the next decade of marketing.

Why? Today, everybody says they have AI. Everybody has machine learning, predictive models and better lookalikes. AI is no longer a differentiator. It’s table stakes. What’s important is whether the AI can explain and prove itself.

Marketing’s Black Box Problem

Too much of marketing today requires marketers to accept conclusions without seeing the evidence behind them. The platform tells you this is the right audience. The model assigns a probability. The measurement provider reports an outcome.

But nobody tells you why.

Why is this person in the audience? Why do you think they’re going to buy? Why should I spend media dollars on them? Marketers shouldn’t have to accept “because the algorithm said so” as an answer, but for years that’s exactly what we’ve been asked to do.