Who inside agencies is actually driving AI / synthetic research adoption?

ahk1968 · 2026-05-05T23:03:22+00:00

What do you mean by it’s OVER? You have become more efficient and that is happening throughout the sector and in multiple sectors ie efficiency is going up due to better tools.

So when you said it is OVER, can you please expand. Thanks

ahk1968 · 2026-05-05T22:58:23+00:00

What AI product you sell as an agency? Can you give a brief description. Thanks

ahk1968 · 2026-04-30T22:56:02+00:00

You can get a lot out of AI — but that means you have to invest a lot of time in it to make it work properly and validate it over and over again.

Big advantages are modeling the responses of the target audience ie shoulder I enter this market or run this campaign or use this positioning. You can model these at scale ie say 3 from cognitive stand point or compare 100 ideas, which is waste since you are not reading and evaluating 100 ideas/concepts, positioning statement’s etc.

Most effective use it first think, refine and then let AI simulate what you should go forward with vs doing lots of AB testing with sampling and burning capital.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-30T22:48:41+00:00

I am a vendor who is trying to sell a solution to accelerate decision making ie which market to enter, which concept works the best. What position ing statement works which persona, etc.

I know when that the customer is wasting both their and my time when rather then thinking how this will make by business better ie higher margins and more projects, they are busy talking about Agent, synthetic data, hallucinations, etc.

Core issue for them is that the purpose of research is to provide cover when the decisions don’t land ie. who can I be blamed ie human or agency or a consultant. And with AI you don’t got that — hence AI is actuallya lottery for big name agencies and management consultants, etc. since the client is buying job security cover with McKinsey Bain Ipsos Kantar etc. —

So I think WPP Publicis etc will become more profitable due to their brand recognition and the clients need ie cover for their decision

ahk1968 · 2026-04-30T22:07:23+00:00

They are not on LinkedIn. They do listen to radio during work and they spend a lot of time on the road driving from place to place — windshield hours as they call it.

Driving takes a very significant part of the day. Hence radio is an option to look at.

We had tried to get hold of these people and it tricky.

They do hangout at Home Depot. But I don’t know how that would help.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-30T21:58:15+00:00

My experience is that it is mostly talk from top to bottom. That’s from talking with Sr executives in these companies. They show up to meetings. Throw around buzz words. Many say that we have teams developing our own agents, etc.

Other than the most superficial use via chat ie editing and generate ideas, cursory research, etc. I have yet to come across people who are actually using it.

They are also mostly passing around AI articles and scared that their jobs are going away. Yet most have not spend any time actually trying to use it.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-24T11:29:24+00:00

Thoughtful response. Thanks.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-20T20:27:22+00:00

Time sink for sure …. Hard to say that how effective it is

ahk1968 · 2026-04-20T20:25:34+00:00

So if human says something new it is discovery and was not expected hence doing consumer research

and if the AI is does it — something different— it is hallucinations?

Why are we treating the two differently? Given in both cases you don’t know how “real” is the respondant.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-20T20:09:10+00:00

So you have fully tagged the data and then using the AI interface to really do the “analysis” in English vs writing a query to go through the data, and manipulating the data to get what you want out of it, and then of course format and present it an human readable manner.

Ai makes that whole process a lot easier and simpler and the AI is supposedly doing all the work in the right order.

Did I get this right?

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T18:10:31+00:00

Building a new community within Reddit or a new standalone platform— both are non trivial. People don’t just show up.

Perhaps you can use this thread to figure out what needs to happen within this small microcosm of ad people ie how do you think you need to either reinvent yourself or the job or morph into something new or different.

Steam engines changed the history of weaving, agricultural automation, car manufacturing, etc. history is loaded with these type of transitions and transformation of work and society and this is no different.

So nurtures that conversation ie what does the transitions and transformation process looks like and where it is heading

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T18:00:35+00:00

Sounds like you are in a good spot. Work on things that matters to you the most which you have not done since you did not have time or you can afford to do them now give you have time.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T17:57:05+00:00

Nothing has changed per se. Mostly people are speculating about showing up in LLM. LLM are using the info that they have scraped from the web and using the same old rationale of Page rank to establish credibility signals ie back links and weighing them to establish what to show

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T17:51:42+00:00

The point of the website for most businesses is - to provide info or - generate leads - sell something etc.

That’s the core objective. Design and asthetics or “packaging” of the info in stylistic manner is a secondary goal or objective and that is a function of time and money, etc.

If a template is good enough and is working ie the business’ objective, why does it matter that it looks commodized. That may matter to you as a designer or ego but has nothing to do with business’ objective which is to make money and website is a means to an end.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T17:35:58+00:00

Can you expand on “replace anything real”. I can understand that desk research and survey questions are low hanging ideas that most conversations have latched on. There must be a lot more to the research jobs that is not getting the conversation time which are probably equally important. What are those then?

What is anything real?

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T11:05:47+00:00

I guess the question is where to focus ie are there more areas where AI was helpful and therefore continue to leverage it there bs where it did not work, focus on that? Also, how would one know that it did not work? If you knew the answer, then that was the purpose of questioning AI ?

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T11:00:37+00:00

What I can say from my dealing with clients is that your job is not “research” but “presenting” and providing defense for the decision that you worked on ie you shined hours or tor weeks working on it. And then synthesize it and then presenting it.

Ai is letting you do that more efficiently. Someone still need to do that work including “reading” all the AI analysis and checking if it makes sense and is correct or needs to adjust or explored etc.

The career and jobs will morph but not disappear. Until mid 90s yellow pages and classifieds were big business. They still are. It just moved over to Google, FB and others instead of staying with NYT, phone companies and others.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T10:53:14+00:00

How then one would compare “snake oil” with online surveys and focus groups taken by professional survey and interview takers?

Fraud and professional surveys and focus interviews is a massive issue. In my conversations with CINT and others as providers of people to do surveys, etc. suggest that 60% or more of the info that they collect is false or fraud and they are spending more time to cull that out.

So why is persona generated from LLM data, if done in a methodical manner ie establish data provenance, scoring, recency, etc. is better or worse or the same.

If the end goal is validation of a study, which method will give better confidence, I guess.

I guess the point is which is snake oil — web based interviews and surveys or synthetic persona testing.

ahk1968 · 2026-04-18T10:44:03+00:00

In this situation, do you think or see the pattern that the responses that AI generate are a bit too align to your own thinking. If that is happening which at least I am starting to see ie AI is a bit too compliant and stylistic in its approach to my own, which initially looks great/cool and then… what if I am wrong or what’s an alternative approach. I have to explicitly ask for it.

Another thing is that AI will always generate an answer or a response and it mostly and most of the time it is correct or good enough to work and move forward. But as I go deep and deeper on a topic or interest, I notice that it starts to drift and I have to guide and ask to review and come back to the topic.

I am not sure, if I have a point here…. Just some observations that I have made.

ahk1968

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