Advertising exists to sell stuff: sell more of it, sell it faster, and sell it at a higher price. In many ways, adtech exists to accelerate that process. In an ideal world, adtech fosters an ever-more-efficient advertising system, benefiting media buyers (who sell more stuff), media sellers (who can better monetize their media if it delivers results), and consumers (who get more efficient information about relevant products as well as the free content advertising subsidizes). As a result of these efficiencies, the customer journey itself becomes more efficient.

It is critical, then, if you want to understand the future of adtech, to understand the future of customer journeys. I think there are three obvious ways they’re changing.

1. AI is making customer journeys more interactive and three-dimensional.

2. Customer journeys are becoming (or should be becoming) seamlessly omnichannel.

3. The mid-funnel (or research phase) is expanding, while the surfacing of options (or top-funnel) and decision making (bottom-funnel) are contracting.

All of these changes are downstream of AI. Let me explain — and then let’s consider how adtech should respond to these developments in customer journeys.

3 Ways AI is Changing Customer Journeys

I recently booked round-trip flights for myself and my mom to go see a tennis tournament. We’ll be traveling together to the tournament, and we were initially planning on traveling back together, but now I’m heading to another city at the end of our trip, whereas she’ll be returning to New York as initially planned. I went to Delta’s site to change my return flight — while leaving my mom’s initial itinerary intact. As far as I could tell, I couldn’t make the change on Delta’s site without changing both my flight and my mom’s (or canceling both my flights). So, I asked Delta’s chatbot to help me. The chatbot completely misunderstood my query, offering to tell me more about companion credits, a response likely triggered by my use of the word “companion” but one that had nothing to do with the intent of my question. I wasn’t looking for a credit of any kind. 

As a 29-year-old who grew up purchasing things with two-day shipping from Amazon and now uses ChatGPT for most queries, I found this experience as outdated and unsatisfying as when I go to CVS and need to ask an aisle attendant to unlock a glass box so I can buy Tylenol. In both cases, I just give up on the transaction. 

Instead, the ideal customer experience should look like this:

1. I tell Delta’s chatbot what I want, and it will understand my query, however nuanced. In fact, it should even ask data-driven follow-up questions like, “I see you’ve booked business class in the past, and you tend to fly around 11 a.m. Do you want me to book an 11:09am business class flight from Miami to LAX on [insert date] for [insert cost]?” In other words, the conversation should be interactive and three-dimensional — intuitive and informed by Delta’s past experience with me.

2. I shouldn’t even have to go to Delta to execute this transaction. For years, Google has accustomed consumers to researching and making purchases on its search engine results pages. ChatGPT and its competitors are bringing this to the next level, fueling those interactive and three-dimensional transactional conversations on their platforms (same idea as zero-party search but much more interactive and personalized). In an ideal world, I’d be able to talk to Chat or Siri, and they would be able to communicate with Delta and solve my problem. In other words, the customer journey should be seamlessly omnichannel.

3. Let’s say I needed to book a hotel for my new destination. Delta or ChatGPT (whichever chatbot I’m talking to) should assume that I may need a hotel. It should automatically give me five options based on other information about me (e.g. budget, past searches, and number of travelers). In other words, under the interactive AI paradigm, the top of the funnel is compressed. However, in my experience, the research phase then expands. Because if I’m used to an extremely helpful, personalized AI chatbot (or agent), I’m then going to volunteer additional information about myself and ask follow-up questions, confident that I’ll get helpful and accurate information. Finally, once I’ve considered my options, the bottom of the funnel is compressed because, as per items no. 1 and 2, the agent seamlessly transacts on my behalf. It may even make the decision on my behalf having ingested all the information to deliver and customize the options it offers me. In other words, the shape of the funnel changes. I get information faster, but I provide more information in return, and the research phase is deeper and richer. 

How Adtech Should Facilitate the AI-Driven Customer Journey

Some believe AI will contract advertising opportunities. My impression is the AI era advertising skeptics are zeroing in on what I’m describing as the compression of the top and bottom of the funnel (with the specific spin of AI chatbots evolving into agents that increasingly make decisions on customers’ behalf). I think the skeptics are missing something.

Net new (and very rich) intent data and enhanced analytical capabilities will make AI-enhanced ad engines much more predictive and powerful. In short, if AI agents are much more helpful than the Delta chatbots of today, they will earn a great deal more information about us, and they’ll have earned it through a better ability to analyze it and provide helpful recommendations. This will create a virtuous cycle of more information and more helpful feedback. I already see this in my use of ChatGPT as opposed to Google (let alone the Delta chatbot). I anticipate this information-rich conversation between humans and AI will be the norm, and we’ll tell machines far more about ourselves in the future than we do today. This will drive much more performant (and therefore valuable) advertising.

This jump in intent data will come from the expansion of the research or consideration phase fueled by more powerful AI agents. I love efficiency, but I also love talking to a very knowledgeable agent about personalized options to pursue my pleasures and hobbies (e.g. travel and sports spectatorship). Talking to a Delta chatbot is unpleasant; the consumer wants the experience to end as soon as possible. Talking to ChatGPT about luxury hotels or tennis tournaments is fun; it’s like surfing Zillow for real estate enthusiasts. We should consider the possibility that this will be a meaningful aspect of AI-driven customer journeys.

Given these evolving CX conventions, there will be a massive (I’d guess hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars) business to build around AI platform advertising. Much of that value will be captured by the next generation of walled gardens (e.g. OpenAI and Perplexity). But I see other opportunities:

1. Someone will need to create the third-party genAI advertising platform for the chatbots or agents of the future, which every brand will offer. In other words, who’s going to help Delta create a chatbot that doesn’t suck, and how will the attention that product generates — and the intent data it collects — be monetized other than through the sale of first-party products? 

2. Why wouldn’t a paradigm where consumers are having interactive and three-dimensional conversations with brands everywhere lead to a sponsored product listening business in the vein of contemporary commerce media? The next generation of commerce media solutions may essentially arise to respond to this leap forward in the customer journey. The sponsored product listings of the future will be chat-driven contextual ads, and every brand that interacts with consumers will have an opportunity to develop a commerce media-driven marketplace business.

3. In addition to the on-site opportunity (serving ads directly in the forum where consumers engage with agents, for example on Delta’s website), this massive leap forward in intent data collection and processing power will enable an off-site advertising opportunity. In other words, adtech will facilitate the omnichannel customer experiences that AI will train consumers to demand, shortening the path to purchase.

The customer journey of the future: AI-driven, omnichannel, research-dense, and intent-rich. Driven by ads — whether you’re talking to Delta’s future AI chatbot, ChatGPT, or seeing the ads the data from these interactions facilitates on third-party media and merchant sites everywhere.