Bundling human intelligence with AI is a winning recipe: John Wittesaele, Xaxis

With the introduction of Copilot, John Wittesaele, Global CEO at Xaxis, is confident of the company helping its clients navigate their way into a cookieless, AI-powered future. Speaking to exchange4media during his recent visit to India, Wittesaele delved further into the AI topics that are driving today’s conversations, the creative and nuanced output of humans, and where the two shall meet.

“I think first of all, what is super important for Xaxis group and WPP is that we comply with everything that is happening into the personal data protection acts in India, in regions and globally, which we did take very seriously,” says Wittesaele, noting that the company did not panic even when they first heard of the depreciation of the cookie.

“In that time, we had already invested heavily into AI-driven tools, and we have developed a proprietary tool called Copilot. We've realized that you can deliver true results for a client without a cookie as well, because basically what we are doing is based on an input, which most of the time is a campaign, which is then resulting in an output,” he says.

On the learnings from that output, Xaxis via Copilot has created an algorithm thereby making sure that they’re driving the best results by optimizing the output and creating better outputs.

“So our positioning is leading towards the fact that even in a cookieless world, we will keep on being outcome driven. And we would focus on building solutions on behalf of the agency's clients to grow the clients’ expectations and to grow their KPIs,” he says.

Wittesaele is proud to say that Xaxis started their AI journey in 2015. And indeed, “talking about this over the last 24-48 hours that I've been in the (Indian) market, and I think that AI can only be amplified by human intelligence.”

“We're pioneering artificial intelligence through Copilot, but at the same time, we're heavily focused on our expertise, so bundling human intelligence with artificial intelligence is a winning recipe, and that's why we call it Copilot. Our AI tool is the copilot of the human person and the human experts,” he adds.

“Next to that, I think that we have a wealth of insights, thanks to the fact that GroupM obviously has a lot of offline insights, a lot of creative insights. And then thanks to machine learning, we have now developed our AI-driven capabilities to compile it. If you bundle human intelligence with the insights that we're having from offline media and from digital media, and then you amplify it through artificial intelligence, that's a winning recipe for any client out there.

Wittesaele notes this has also helped in the group’s positioning in the market, given that 50% of their campaigns are powered by artificial intelligence. Wittesaele says the company has a clear goal that in the future, all their campaigns should be bundled with human intelligence and artificial intelligence.

Wittesaele adds that creativity can be assisted by AI, but what is really needed is nuance. “You still need a human to understand what does truly matter for our clients. So we need to understand, what are the needs for the client and what does success look like for a client?”

“The way that we do this at Xaxis is we start a campaign and through all the input of data (and data would be the impressions) and through all the learnings Copilot is generating. And then we're building an optimized algorithm to make sure that we're bidding only on the impressions that truly matter for a client. And that can only happen with the first input of human strategic planning,” he says.

“So we're planning it, and then based on the output, we see the outcome and then the AI kicks in. And that's the beauty of our positioning: we're creating bespoke algorithms for certain clients,” he says.

“The best example I could give you is Ford, which is our global number one client, where we've created an algorithm for them. We've understood that in the sales cycle of Ford's, there are four components (I'm not going to disclose them) that are very important for them to measure success,” he says.

So what Xaxis is done is that they’ve booked separate line items in the campaign to drive towards those four components. “And based on the outputs, we've created an algorithm knowing that okay, in the sales funnel on the first output 70% is leading towards the results, the other one has 20% is leading towards a result, and so on” says Wittesaele, with the bespoke algorithm highlighting the impressions that they’re buying needs to go towards that particular business KPI.

“So we have two sets of algorithms. One is the standard algorithm we have, based on the wealth of insights and data that GroupM and WPP have gathered over the years, and help deliver our clients the outcomes they need. Then there is the algorithm we create for clients who come to us as their programmatic experts, and then that is the journey we take them on towards the results they’re looking for,” he concludes.