Miguel Lopes, CPO at TrafficGuard chats about the latest adtech trends defining industry norms in this MarTech interview:

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Hi Miguel, tell us about your time in SaaS / MarTech and more about your role as TrafficGuard’s new CPO?

Most of my career has been spent on launching and expanding SaaS Products globally. When I started 20 years ago, cloud computing was considered a game-changer. Over the last two decades, I have tried to leverage the breakthroughs of these technologies to ensure that my products deliver value to our customer base.

In terms of MarTech, one of my most interesting roles was launching a MarTech platform that would help brands gain insights into their audience’s previous interactions with ads and notifications, enabling them to identify the best channel for reaching out with new promotions. The platform would also customise the entire user journey to maximise conversion rates.

Over the past few years, I have focused a significant amount of my attention on leveraging AI to enhance my products, either using LLMs or Deep Learning. As part of my role at TrafficGuard, I intend to continue this trend and work with the team to elevate their fraud detection capabilities to the next level.

What about today’s ad landscape is dominating the ad market?

I’d say AI and machine learning are really leading the advertising space right now. The global AI in marketing market is expected to reach around $217.33 billion by 2034 according to Precedence Research, firming the fact it will just keep dominating digital marketing.

The development of AI has also opened up a whole new realm of possibilities for digital brands. AI is continuously providing marketers with the tools to test and optimise impressions, increase personalisation, and target more efficiently. Companies can now analyse data at unprecedented scales and speeds, hugely helping with customer segmentation and tracking consumer behaviour. AI’s ability to recognise patterns to predict how marketing campaigns will perform is also saving advertisers from hours of analysing data manually.

Marketing strategies are now being optimised in real-time with data-driven insights. The evolution of AI has not only enhanced customer experiences but also significantly improved marketers’ ROI by enabling more accurate and effective outreach strategies.

However, with the increase in AI tools, it’s not just the ‘good guys’ who are making the most of it. We have seen a huge increase of AI bots in ad fraud, becoming more sophisticated at every turn. We know how to stay one step ahead, but as they become more intelligent, businesses are failing to pick up on the nuances that make bots so sneaky.

Can you talk about some of the latest AdTech trends that have piqued your interest and why?

I was very interested in AI-Driven Media Buying & Creative, AI is becoming central to campaign delivery and ad creative. Tools for automating media buys, like Meta Advantage+, Google Performance Max, and generative AI for creative scaling are reshaping how ads are executed.

These platforms utilise machine learning to drive conversions by optimising bids and placements in real time. One of the main selling points for a platform like Performance Max is the ability to advertise across all of Google’s channels with a single campaign, cutting out set up and management times. They can also analyse audience information to determine which ad would work best for which users.

We have found that AI algorithms do come with their own drawbacks, as they take control out of the hands of marketers. The algorithms can be opaque, leaving marketers in the dark about where their data is coming from, and where their budget is being spent.

Some marketers are beholden to the decisions of algorithms they do not fully understand or control which creates a challenge as they try to align their marketing efforts with the best interests of their clients. They also face the risk of breaching data compliance acts unknowingly.

These new AdTechs have the potential to produce some great work, but we do need to keep an eye on progression. It’s really important that marketers take the steps to distinguish what data they can and can’t collect.

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When it comes to ad fraud, what do you feel modern digital advertisers and marketers need to focus on more to ensure better brand and user protection?

I would discuss the importance of analysing data to determine the efficiency of their campaigns and identify any discrepancies. Use them to identify where they are being targeted with fraud and what can be done to prevent it.

Data is key! We begin every interaction with our prospects by collecting data and then clearly showing them exactly where they are being targeted by fraud.  While being able to see how you lost money to fraudsters is essential, it’s even more important to have a system in place that will automatically prevent it from happening in future campaigns. Sometimes it is not their main problem, hence the importance of being able to understand what is going on with the campaigns leveraging clear data points. 

How is AI enabling user and brand protection more seamlessly in the context of ad fraud today?

When it comes to using AI for fraud prevention, it is simple: you need to fight fire with fire. Fraudsters are leveraging AI-powered bots that behave almost like a real person; they don’t just click, they interact and make it look nearly genuine. The only way to battle that advanced level of simulated interaction is to leverage the same technology to detect these slight nuances and stop them in their tracks. Another powerful aspect of AI is its ability to learn independently. Meaning, it will evolve, keeping up with the fraudsters without the need to constantly change thresholds or other parameters to keep the prevention rates high, and saving a noticeable portion of the brand’s marketing budget from being wasted by fraudsters.

What thoughts do you have surrounding the future of AI and AdTech and its growing relation?

As I mentioned above, AI is already being used for creative purposes and for automating how it is published based on previous user interactions and other data points to maximise impressions and conversions.

We are also seeing how AI is being leveraged by fraudsters and sometimes dishonest parties trying to maximise their gain by generating invalid traffic in a way that makes it look like there are real users interacting with the ads. Using the same technology for prevention is key to balance the odds for the brands and ensure that their marketing budgets are truly maximised.

So if we take a 10,000 feet overview, AI is already embedded in most aspects of AdTech, the next phase I believe it will be the real time generation of ultra-personalised ads. Instead of brands manually generating ads for an audience, AI will automatically generate ads for individuals using real-time contextual data. This will personalise ad content and delivery on an individual basis, maximising the conversion chances. These will be hyper engaging and can vary from images to videos or even agentic engagements.

Five thoughts you’d leave everyone in AdTech/MarTech with before we wrap up?

1. It has been interesting to see the evolution of the ecosystem on where brands can spend their marketing dollars. Digital spaces such as Google, Meta and TikTok already account for a large part of it. The alternative is using the Retail Media Networks such as Walmart, Target, Amazon and even Instacart and Door Dash which leverage their user data to allow brands to build their audiences based on past purchases. I believe the next emerging space will be the LLM providers such as ChatGPT, Perplexity, Grok, Claude and others.
2. Following on from my previous point. We are seeing a paradigm shift in how people use search engines, one study predicts Google Search will be overtaken by LLM search by 2028. This will also naturally lead to brands diverting a significant part of their advertising budget in traditional search channels to be partially replaced by advertising in LLM search channels over time. Perplexity has actually started a closed trial with a few brands testing ads mixed into their prompt responses.
3. AI is taking centre stage in all these changes, from content generation to how and when to publish the ads to maximise exposure and conversions. We are not that far from seeing completely automated campaigns where brands just enter a few bullet points on what they are promoting and what they want their customers to see. The AI engines then runs the campaign end-to-end and self-optimises it based on performance metrics.
4. AI proliferation for advertising also means proliferation for fraud. Advertising in LLM engines (once available) and automated AI powered campaigns (once available) will have a high premium for CPCs and CPMs. If you can automate something via AI to advertise your brand, someone else can also automate it to generate invalid traffic and exploit your campaigns. Given brands will pay a hefty premium, it could become quite costly very quickly. We are already seeing this happening in the traditional search engine campaigns, social and affiliate channels.
5. Now more than ever having visibility on your campaign data and working with a partner that can drive insights from it is key. It not only shows the budget you are wasting on invalid traffic but also helps find performance metrics and how to optimise your campaigns to achieve your goals. Brands are trying to leverage more channels for increased exposure and sometimes those channels cause more harm than good, the only way to truly see that is to have a single pane of glass which offers full visibility and transparency when building your audience and following their journey from seeing the ad to landing on your website.

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