Brands Mastercard and MGM Resorts International, the Ad Council and advertising technology company XR Extreme Reach (XR) gathered for a CES panel discussion on how real-time AI metrics can help increase representation in ads, thus boosting greater marketing ROI and audience trust. It was moderated by The Female Quotient Chief Executive Shelley Zalis, whose company collaborated with XR to unveil, in October, the Representation Index (RX) to measure inclusivity in global advertising. XR’s SVP of Enterprise Solutions Kristin Wnuk was also there to describe her company’s work in the space.

Zalis encouraged panelists to describe their companies’ “intentional acts for change” regarding representation. Mastercard SVP of Global Media Jay Altschuler said that “creating a shared framework for the industry is critical.” “We saw that in the world of brand safety and sustainability,” he said.

His company has built The True Name Card, working with the LGBTQ+ community to allow transgender and non-binary people to easily change their credit cards from their legal name to their chosen name. “Taking the friction out of payments is good for business and also good for humanity,” he noted.

Ad Council SVP, Media Strategy & Engagement Ashley Menschner described the evolution her team went through in creating the Love Has No Labels campaign. “It was a campaign for selective quality believers, who we thought were probably older, conservative and white,” she said. “The research showed some of them were over-indexed in multi-cultural spaces and moderate politically, so we had to shift how we developed the content.”

MGM Resorts Head of Sports & Sponsorship Strategy Alisha Pope pointed out that assumptions are “rooted in similarity biases and stereotypes.” “In the future, advertisers will drive revenue for businesses they are running by challenging those assumptions,” she said, noting Beyonce’s impact on country music.

Will these AI metrics replace people? “It’s not AI that’s going to replace you but the colleague who knows how to leverage AI,” explained Altschuler. “We all need to get the. most out of this technology that gives us superpowers.”

Currently, he added, use cases seem to be around productivity. He described Mastercard’s Small Business AI chatbot. “Although there was still a lot of bias in it, we were able to leverage it to empower small businesses, especially in under-represented communities.”

He reported that the differentiator between success and failure was mentorship. The company built its own LLM, which was trained at Howard University and with influencers, and is now using it to connect these Mastercard users to mentors.

Menschner reported that when the Ad Council developed a campaign to educate people about the COVID vaccine, they relied heavily on “the experts, the people behind the scene,” including descendants of the Tuskegee syphilis study and their own research on the vaccine. “If you see yourself reflected, it has a much bigger impact,” she said.

Wnuk agreed. “Let’s go back to focusing on the creative,” she suggested. “Advertising that resonates with folks is going to be relevant for a long time to come.”