This year, there has been a lot of talk about how AI is going to revolutionize advertising, but implementations have been primarily focused on leveraging GPTs for media planning and ad creation. While this is a great first step, it’s merely scratching the surface — AI has the ability to power much more heady use cases, including lookalike audiences, optimizing ad spend against conversions and more. This new frontier is what local CTV ad company Madhive has been focused on. 

Madhive recently launched an experimental AI-powered campaign with performance marketing agency LifebrandsD2C, which wanted to help a client in the finance-sector optimize CTV ad spend against full-funnel KPIs.

Using Madhive’s Lookalike+ feature, currently in development, LifebrandsD2C leveraged AI-driven behavioral analysis to go beyond traditional lookalike modeling by incorporating a broader range of data including search behavior, social media activity and online interactions to identify high-intent audiences. 

This approach allowed Madhive and LifebrandsD2C to identify new prospects with a high likelihood of conversion, ensuring that CTV ads reached the most relevant audiences while minimizing wasted spend. 

Notably, Lookalike+ outperformed human-generated targeting, with a 2.1x increase in homepage visits, a 1.6x increase in form completions and a 32% decrease in cost per acquisition (CPA). 

Aaron Brown, Chief Scientist at Madhive, noted “This is an in-market example of how AI can be overlaid on first-party data to help brands find new, high-converting audiences and optimize CTV ad spend against full-funnel outcomes.”

The results significantly influenced the client’s decision to increase investment in top-of-funnel CTV prospecting, reinforcing the effectiveness of AI-driven solutions in maximizing return on advertising spend.

“We were able to set up the campaign quickly, and the support we received from Madhive was invaluable,” said Rick Griswold, VP of Data Analytics at LifebrandsD2C. “The performance of Lookalike+ exceeded our expectations and played a key role in driving our client’s results.”