Traditional research can be slow, expensive and hard to scale but agencies are increasingly testing AI-generated personas to supplement things like media planning and concept testing.
In theory, the pitch makes sense: Synthetic audiences can model real consumer behavior, pressure-test ideas and uncover insights without the long wait times that come with human focus groups. In reality, it’s a harder sell.
Synthetic audiences are only as good as the data they’re built on. Even if a project needed to launch right away, a fully synthetic data set would only take the project 80% over the line, leaving the remaining 20% to be vetted by real humans, said Andrea Berki-Nnuji, senior vp of data analytics at Crowley Webb, an advertising, PR, and digital marketing agency that has worked with clients like Evergreen Health, Niagara University and M&T Bank.
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