The Dutch state of AI in Advertising
DPG Media - Mediavaert
Van der Madeweg 40, Amsterdam
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AI is everywhere. Anyone who follows the VIA event calendar will have noticed. Of the roughly 70 events we organise each year, AI features as a central theme in 65 of them. And since we know you can't be at all of them, we're bringing the full picture together in one place on 15 April: The Dutch State of AI in Advertising at DPG Media.
AI is reshaping every part of the industry. How brands measure emotion. How consumers discover and decide. How creative gets made, how media gets planned, how data gets read. We're past the point of asking whether AI matters; the question now is what it's actually doing to the way we work, and where it's taking us next.
This event brings together several VIA taskforces, including Craft and Consumer Insights, for a full overview of the field: where we've come from, where we are now, and what's coming.
Who should be there?
Anyone working with AI who wants to understand how the industry as a whole is changing, not just their own corner of it. That means marketers, strategists, creatives, data analysts, media experts, tech leads, planners, legal experts, and plenty of others who don't fit neatly into any of those boxes.
Programma
14.10 - 14.30: Keynote 1: Web 4.0: How AI Platforms Work - Sean Betts, Chief AI & Innovation Officer (Omnicom Mediagroep)
AI platforms have crossed from “tool” to “primary discovery channel”, and they’re already changing how people search, research and buy, with measurable shifts in traffic and conversion.
This session unpacks what’s actually happening under the hood: how models use training data, when they trigger live search, how they crawl websites, and why they cite very different sources across ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, Claude and Perplexity.
You’ll see why AI “search” behaves differently to human search (longer prompts, multi-turn journeys, different ranking choices, deeper crawling), and what that means for brand visibility and consideration sets.
We’ll finish with practical, current best practice to improve how AI platforms read and prioritise your content, including accessibility and pre-JavaScript rendering, semantic URLs, answer-first and comparative content, freshness signals, plus the very uneven influence of YouTube and Reddit by platform.
14.30 - 15.00 Keynote 2:
Part 1: Setting the Scene - about the State of art of AI on Creative Advertising - Caio Franchi (Executive Creative Lead, Google Northern Europe)
Part 2: Case: Sharing the KPN xMas campaign journey leveraging GenAI - Dave Frauenfelder (Vice-President of Brand, KPN) & Joris Tol (Executive Creative Director, Dentsu Creative)
15.00 - 15.30 BREAK
15.30 - 16.00 Keynote 3: Building the Agentic Stack - Anthony Katsur, CEO of IAB Tech Lab
This session unpacks the IAB Tech Lab’s Agentic Roadmap – including AAMP and ARTF - outlining how open, interoperable standards are being extended with modern, high-performance protocols to enable secure, autonomous buying and selling without rewriting the industry’s foundational languages. Hear what “agentic-ready” really means in practice and how shared standards can turn experimentation into durable, scalable intelligence.
16.05 - 16.35: Breakouts
- AI is not the point - Olaf van Gerwen (Founder & Global Creative Director, Chuck Studios)
The quality of an image influences how we appreciate it. Research shows that our perception of the creative process unconsciously shapes what we feel. Olaf shares practical examples from the field and passionately advocates for a conversation that returns to what truly matters: the work itself. - Where Insight Becomes Presight - Nina Spälti (Research Director, DVJ Insights) & Stefan Bliekendaal (Global Director Research & Excellence, DVJ Insights)
We explore how AI is transforming consumer insight in two powerful ways.
First, we show how AI enables large-scale meta-analyses, revealing concrete creative rules around uniqueness and consistency. Second, we dive into AI-driven pre-testing, demonstrate how cognitive demand modeling predicts how much information people can process in advertising: and explain why that matters. - TBA - Annemieke Mol (head of Content, Yune) en Eefje Gubbens (Director of Partnerships & Growth, Matter)
This break-out is in Dutch.
16.40 - 17.10 Panel: The future of AI in Advertising
Moderator: Adeline Boelen (Head of Data Tech & Innovation, OMD)
- Lee Boonstra (AI/Software Engineer, Google)
- Martijn Eindhoven (Director GenAI & Innovation, DPG Media)
- Dorine van Mullem (COO, Talpa Media)
- Anne van de Wijdeven (Lead Content Creative, DEPT
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17.10 - 17.20: Closing word: Dorine van Mullem and Tim Geenen
17.20 - 18.30: Drinks
No-show fee
We charge a no-show fee of €50 for absences without prior cancellation. If you are unexpectedly unable to attend, please cancel your ticket or send an email to [email protected]. You can cancel free of charge up to 24 hours before the start of the event. By participating in this event, you agree to our Terms and conditions.