TLDR: The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) released its ‘AI in Advertising Use Case Map’ on September 3, 2025, offering a structured guide for marketing professionals to understand and apply artificial intelligence across the advertising campaign lifecycle. The framework categorizes 84 AI use cases into six key areas, distinguishing between established and emerging technologies to demystify AI, prioritize focus areas, and foster a shared industry language. This initiative addresses the urgent need for clarity as organizations navigate AI opportunities, risks, and investments in the rapidly evolving advertising landscape.
New York, NY – September 28, 2025 – The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) has introduced a groundbreaking ‘AI in Advertising Use Case Map,’ officially released on September 3, 2025. This comprehensive framework is designed to equip marketing professionals with a structured understanding of artificial intelligence applications throughout the entire advertising campaign lifecycle. The map categorizes 84 distinct AI use cases into six primary areas: Audience Insights, Media Strategy & Planning, Creative & Personalization, Media Buying & Activation, Owned & Earned Media, and Measurement & Analytics. Each use case is further distinguished by maturity indicators, clearly marking whether it represents an established implementation or an emerging technology still requiring further development.
According to the IAB, the initiative directly addresses the industry’s urgent need for a structured understanding as organizations evaluate AI opportunities, risks, and investments. The core objectives behind the map are to ‘demystify AI in advertising, help members prioritize focus areas, and provide shared language for evaluating opportunities, risks, and investments.’
Caroline Giegerich, Vice President of AI and Marketing Innovation at the IAB, highlighted the interactive tool’s design, which resembles a periodic table. This format helps marketers identify patterns and trends by combining various AI tasks within the advertising ecosystem. Giegerich advises marketers to begin by pinpointing specific problems within their organizations, a targeted approach that can demonstrate AI’s return on investment and yield faster, more effective results.
Within the framework, the ‘Audience Insights’ category alone encompasses 12 AI applications, ranging from real-time sentiment analysis to the generation of synthetic data for modeling. This includes mature applications like customer value and engagement modeling, alongside emerging capabilities such as AI-powered customer identity mapping across platforms. Cross-sell and upsell recommendation engines are noted as mature implementations, while lookalike and behavioral cohort prediction technologies showcase advanced analytical potential.
‘Media Strategy & Planning’ features 11 use cases, covering areas like audience targeting and budgeting. The map also details applications in ‘Measurement and Analytics,’ such as performance forecasting and AI-driven attribution, and ‘Media Buying and Activation,’ which includes autonomous pacing, spend optimization, and rules-based media agents. Emerging technologies are visually indicated with a ‘crystal ball’ icon.
The relevance of this framework is underscored by recent research from IAB Europe, which reported on September 18, 2025, that 85% of companies are already deploying AI-based tools for marketing purposes. Targeting and content generation are leading adoption patterns, with 64% and 61% of European respondents, respectively, implementing these functions. The IAB Tech Lab’s ‘AI in Advertising Primer’ further addresses terminology confusion and incomplete understanding, emphasizing the importance of standardized frameworks for evaluating AI technologies against brand and business requirements.
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This comprehensive guide is expected to serve as a vital resource for benchmarking current AI adoption, identifying relevant capabilities for experimentation, and informing strategic planning, education, product development, and policy decisions across the advertising industry.
