Inside AUDIENCEX: Brittany Wray on AI, Agility & Growth

1. How do you anticipate that economic pressures will influence your organization's strategy for evaluating and adopting performance marketing technologies?

In today’s environment, budget scrutiny is the rule, not the exception. Economic pressures have and continue to force us to look past shiny nice-to-have technologies and zero in on tech that delivers measurable results.

At AUDIENCEX, we’re evaluating third-party tools and simultaneously investing in building our own technology to fuel AXi, our integrated performance platform. This includes innovative predictive audience-building, customized algorithmic campaign decisioning, agentic AI tools, and analytics all working together to drive down CPAs and improve efficiency. Every product we develop - and every process we adopt - is measured against its ability to generate transparent, data-backed results and flexible scalability so we can adapt quickly on behalf of our clients to changing market realities.

If a tool can’t justify itself with transparent, data-backed results or direct time savings, it’s not moving forward, or we’re reinventing it ourselves. We’re also pushing for flexible, scalable solutions so we can dial investment up or down as market realities shift. 

2. What is the importance of having full control and transparency over omnichannel advertising, and how does AI optimization within such a platform align with your marketing objectives?

Full control and transparency across channels is imperative; without it, you create blind spots. Our objective is to maximize every dollar, so having line-of-sight into performance at the most granular level is non-negotiable. Our AXi Optimizer tool supercharges this approach. When we layer in AI, we’re able to not just react, but proactively allocate budget, test creative, and target audience segments in real time. That agility is the difference between hitting goals and missing them especially in a market that doesn’t sit still for long.

3. How would a guaranteed CPA model, which transfers risk from the brand to the agency, impact your organization's financial planning, budget allocation in scaling digital marketing efforts?  

A guaranteed CPA model definitely shifts the risk from the brand or agency partner to AUDIENCEX, but it’s not a shot in the dark. With our recently launched PriceFix - which sets a new standard for performance marketers - we leverage custom modeling based on historical and real-time data to set CPA guarantees grounded in reality. When done right, it’s actually a smarter, data-backed way to take on risk. For us, this lowers the perceived risk on both sides: the brand gets cost certainty, and we get to put our data confidence into action. That said, we also recognize that not all campaigns will fit a guaranteed model, so we’d approach this as one tool in our broader allocation strategy, ensuring it complements rather than limits our overall flexibility.

4. How do you envision intelligent automation reshaping the responsibilities of your marketing teams, and what challenges does this present for talent development?

Intelligent automation is an area that we are prioritizing as a company, with a major product launch scheduled for Cannes Lions around our new AXi Simulator product. Powered by synthetic personas modeled on real-world psychographic, behavioral, and cultural data, Simulator enables unlimited, risk-free testing across messaging, creative, and targeting variables before campaigns ever launch. By simulating real-world market dynamics with unmatched predictive accuracy and compressing validation cycles from weeks to just days, it allows us to uncover edge case risks, optimize cultural alignment, and fine-tune campaigns at scale.

While Simulator focuses on scenario planning, our other tools, such as Optimizer for in-flight adjustments, and Explorer for real-time analytics, ensure that our teams spend less time on manual tasks and more on strategy, creative thinking, and data interpretation. This shift requires us to hire and develop talent who can both leverage advanced tech and see the big picture. We’re investing in upskilling and encouraging hands-on experimentation so that our team evolves alongside our technology, not behind it.

5. How important is predictive insight into audience behavior before campaign investment, especially when aiming to identify potential cultural mismatches or message fatigue? 

Predictive insights are critical, especially now given the previously mentioned economic pressures. Before spending a dollar, brands want confidence that their message will resonate, not backfire or land flat. Once again AXi Simulator gives us that competitive edge: spotting potential cultural misses, audience saturation, or even timing issues before they cost us. It’s about shifting from reactive course-correction to proactive planning, saving budget and reputation in the process, and ultimately delivering significant performance gains for our brand and agency clients.

6. How does your organization plan to invest in and integrate AI and predictive technologies to ensure that marketing decision-making is data-informed and minimizes reliance on traditional, less agile processes? 

I recently heard a great perspective on this in The AI Breakdown podcast: companies shouldn’t build their whole strategy around AI just for the sake of it. Instead, the smarter move is to develop an AI strategy that actually supports and enhances what you’re already good at.

That’s exactly how we approach it. We start with a real business challenge or marketing objective, and then determine if AI or predictive analytics is the right tool to address it. Our investment in the AXi platform including custom algorithms, predictive modeling, and tools like Simulator and PriceFix is focused on giving teams real-time, actionable data and automating manual processes. Looking ahead, we plan to aggressively scale our investment in this critical growth pillar, accelerating our evolution from a services-led model to a fully integrated, technology-first performance platform. By embedding predictive simulation, autonomous optimization, and real-time intelligence deeper into every layer of our offering, we enable our clients to unlock durable competitive advantages and maintain precision marketing control in an increasingly volatile and algorithm-driven marketplace.

We’ll continue to integrate these technologies directly into our workflows so decisions are always data-informed and agile. Ultimately, it’s about moving away from legacy processes and making every decision faster, smarter, and more accountable. But we’re also realistic: it’s not just about installing new tools, it’s about building data readiness and making sure our people are trained and comfortable with these new capabilities. Like the podcast said, digital maturity with AI is a strategic journey, not a quick fix. For us, it’s about making smarter, more informed decisions, not just doing AI for the headline. 

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