Advertisers don’t need another prediction about AI. They need clearer answers about what works and how to use it to optimize their workflows.

What began as experimentation is now expectation. Today, AI influences creative production, media planning, measurement, and the decisions consumers make across all of them. Yet the fundamental work of marketing hasn’t changed.

When content can be generated at unprecedented speed and scale, output is no longer the advantage. Instead, meaningful connection is the scarce resource. That is the conversation at the center of ADVANCE.

On September 29, leaders across the industry will gather in New York City to examine what’s changing and what those changes require from marketers in 2027 and beyond.

The Ultimate Test of Distinction: A Conversation with Timbaland

For our keynote this year, we’re thrilled to bring to the Main Stage a true icon of creative distinction. Timbaland, 4x Grammy Award-Winning Producer and Member of the Songwriters Hall of Fame, will headline our closing session alongside Smartly CEO Laura Desmond.

Over a legendary 30-year career, Timbaland has watched music technology become exponentially more powerful and accessible. He came up making tracks with hardware samplers; a decade later, he was using Pro Tools to craft hits like “SexyBack”; and today, he’s a strategic advisor and power user of Suno, the generative music platform. He’s also the founder of the digital music marketplace Beatclub. Yet across every shift in technology, a Timbaland track has remained instantly recognizable and unmistakably his.

His journey offers a unique and useful lens for marketers navigating their own technological shift. When powerful tools are accessible to everyone, what makes creative work truly stand out? Timbaland and Laura will explore how to balance machine speed with human creativity, the importance of collaboration, and what it means to build a distinct creative point of view in an era of infinite output.

When Content Becomes Abundant, Distinction Becomes Strategy

Generative AI has changed the economics of creative production. Teams can create more variations than ever before.

But more content doesn’t necessarily create more attention. Just like greater efficiency doesn’t automatically make a brand more memorable.

As AI raises the creative baseline for everyone, the obvious risk is that everything begins to look and sound the same. Distinctiveness increasingly depends on the qualities that cannot be generated through volume alone: judgment, taste, coherence, cultural understanding, and a clear point of view. (AKA, your judgement as a human instead of just a machine!)

That makes the perspectives of Tim Castree, Chief Marketing Officer at DoorDash; Amy Weisenbach, Chief Marketing Officer at The New York Times; and Jenny Storms, Chief Marketing Officer at NBCUniversal, especially timely. Each leads marketing in a category where attention must be earned continuously, and where brand relevance has to contribute to sustainable growth.

Their presence at ADVANCE brings several urgent questions into focus: How can brands increase creative speed without losing their identity? How should marketers balance immediate performance with long-term brand value? And what does it take to build creative systems that scale quality rather than simply multiplying output?

The opportunity is to combine machine speed with human judgment and to build feedback loops that connect creative decisions more directly to audience response and business impact.

Discovery Has Broken Out of the Funnel

The traditional customer journey once offered marketers a useful sequence: awareness, consideration, conversion. Today’s consumers no longer behave so neatly.

Discovery now moves through search, social, streaming, and private channels. A community conversation can influence consideration, Meanwhile, a search can begin with a question and end with a purchase. Consumers don’t experience these moments as separate channels, even when marketing organizations still manage them that way.

Bill Ready, Chief Executive Officer at Pinterest; Sean Downey, President, Americas & Global Partners at Google; Judy Toland, VP of Global Audience Marketing at Meta; and Jen Wong, COO at Reddit, bring perspectives from platforms that shape distinct, but increasingly connected, forms of discovery and participation:

• Pinterest sits at the intersection of inspiration and action. 
• Google helps shape how people seek information and express intent. 
• Meta connects brands with audiences, creators, and communities at global scale. 
• Reddit demonstrates the growing influence of interest-led participation and authentic conversation.

Together, these perspectives point toward a broader change in marketing architecture. Advantage doesn’t come from adding another isolated channel strategy. Instead, marketers must understand how signals move across platforms and connect creative, media, data, and decision-making around the way people actually behave.

Who Leads in the Age of Intelligence?

That same need for connection is reshaping the relationship between brands, agencies, and technology. As AI compresses execution and raises the baseline for everyone, the question is no longer who has the best tools. It’s who can combine technology with strategic thinking, creative intelligence, and trusted client relationships to create an advantage that is both differentiated and measurable.

At ADVANCE, Ndidi Oteh, Global CEO of Accenture Song; Lauren Wetzel, CEO of WPP; Bob Lord, President of Horizon Media; Andrea Bendzick, CEO of WPromote; and Laura Desmond, CEO of Smartly, will explore how the role of a brand’s strategic partner is evolving from execution partner to strategic orchestrator.

That evolution depends on partnership, not displacement. Agencies bring deep client context, creative judgment, and the trust required to turn a recommendation into action. Technology platforms provide the connected infrastructure and intelligence that help teams coordinate and execute at greater speed and scale. Neither creates the same value alone.

As automation makes parts of execution easier to commoditize, the opportunity is to give agencies more room to lead: connecting disciplines, strengthening client counsel, improving outcomes, and turning insight into coordinated action. Modernization should make an agency more indispensable, not easier to replace.

In the age of intelligence, the strongest partnerships will make every connection count between people and platforms, creativity and performance, and insight and measurable growth.

The Most Important Questions Are Connected

No single discipline can answer the questions facing advertising now. AI cannot be separated from governance and performance cannot be separated from the human response that makes growth possible. That’s why the range of perspectives at ADVANCE matters.

Timbaland, Bill Ready, Tim Castree, Amy Weisenbach, Judy Toland, Jen Wong, Steven Wolfe Pereira, Sean Downey, Lauren Wetzel, Jenny Storms, and Laura Desmond each approach the industry from a different vantage point. Together, they create a fuller view of the forces reshaping marketing and of what leaders need to connect next.

ADVANCE brings those conversations into one room: on the mainstage, in the breakouts, and in the candid exchanges between marketers confronting the same questions inside their own organizations.

Because moving advertising forward demands connected thinking, human judgment, and relationships that count.

Join us September 29 at Spring Studios in New York City. Explore the agenda and register for ADVANCE.

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