– AI in advertising. Last year, at the Cannes Lions advertising festival, Google exec Vidhya Srinivasan remembers a lot of talk about the possibilities of AI in advertising. “People were experimenting with it and thinking about what’s possible,” she recalls. One year later, in the South of France last week, possibility had fully become reality. “It’s actually transforming every aspect of advertising today,” she says.
Srinivasan is the person responsible for making much of that transformation happen. At Google, she is VP/GM for both advertising and commerce. She oversees Google Shopping and advertising products across Google Search, maps, YouTube, and more—a vast portfolio of fast-changing products with more than $66.9 billion in revenues in Q1 alone.
Srinivasan added commerce to her portfolio at the beginning of this year, a remit she took on as consumers demand hyper-personalization while shopping, and as advertisers seek it as they target shoppers.
AI in advertising and commerce can mean wildly different things. It’s a vast portfolio of ad tech products and rapidly AI-generated, targeted advertising. “We’ve always wanted to serve the right ad to the right person at the right time…Now you can come up with a perfect creative at the moment for the person, because the AI is able to generate things on the fly,” she says. “It’s changing the game on what is possible in any given moment.”
It’s also an entirely new shopping experience—a consumer can describe a garment they might want, see an AI-generated version, and then shop for similar products that already exist. “Customer journeys are completely unpredictable,” Srinivasan says. “Users now want a far more relevant, immersive experience in everything they do.”
Adweek last year described Srinivasan as having the “toughest job in advertising.” She’s at the center of a lot of trends: fast-changing activity on Google Search, as more consumers go straight to ChatGPT or other chatbots rather than Google something; advertising anxieties about the future of creative and the industry; and the vast workforce changes that are happening in both sectors.
Srnivasan says that her past experience at Amazon Web Services helped prepare her for the challenge. Starting at AWS in 2012, she was tasked with bringing the first cloud data warehouse to market. “The charter was, I should be able to start a data warehouse in the time it takes to get a coffee or buy a book,” she remembers. It seemed impossible at the time. “People were very skeptical that cloud was a real thing when I started there and now, of course, you look back and you’re like, ‘Of course that had to happen.'”
But she doesn’t minimize the anxieties in the advertising world right now. “Bringing people along, not just internally—bringing our customers along—there’s a lot of responsibility associated with all of that,” she says. “I take that quite seriously.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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ALSO IN THE HEADLINES
- Farm fresh. Actor Jennifer Garner’s baby food company Once Upon a Farm confidentially filed to go public, with an offering reportedly valuing the company at $1 billion. Garner joined as a cofounder in 2017 and grows some of the produce used in Once Upon a Farm’s organic products on her family’s farm in Oklahoma. Reuters
- Resignation calls. Prime Minister of Thailand Paetongtarn Shinawatra is being called to resign after a recording of her conversation with Cambodia’s former prime minister was shared, in which Paetongtarn says, “[I]f he wants something, he can say it and we will arrange it for him,” amid the countries’ ongoing border dispute. She has since apologized, calling her comments a negotiation move. New York Times
- Money moves. X is planning to enable users to make investments or trades on the platform, shared the social media company’s CEO Linda Yaccarino. “You’ll be able to come to X and be able to transact your whole financial life,” she said. Financial Times
- Best foot forward. Adidas has introduced its first cleat designed for female athletes, with some help from soccer players Trinity Rodman and Mia Fishel. As women’s feet are built differently than men’s, lead designer Mahsa Aryan prioritized insights from female players when designing the shoe. Teen Vogue
MOVERS AND SHAKERS
CQ fluency, which provides translation and accessibility services, appointed Tameeka Smith as CEO; she succeeds founder Elisabete Miranda, who will move into the role of founder and board member. Most recently, Smith served as CEO of UnitedHealthcare Community Plan of Virginia.
Diamond jewelery brand De Beers London named Emmanuelle Nodale CEO, succeeding Céline Assimon. Most recently, Nodale was general manager of Europe at Pomellato.
ComEd, a unit of energy company Exelon, appointed Melissa Washington as SVP of governmental, regulatory, and external affairs. She is currently SVP of customer operations and strategic initiatives.
ON MY RADAR
Melinda French Gates opens up about marriage, tech, and Trump Bloomberg
Rose Marcario is doubling down on her values Fast Company
The new old sound of adult anxiety Atlantic
PARTING WORDS
“We’re little women, doing big things.”
— Singer Dolly Parton on her friendship and collaboration with Sabrina Carpenter
