Don’t Give Away the Advantage: Bring AI to Your Data
by on 27th Aug 2025 in News
Freddie Turner, managing director, Chalice AI EMEA, looks at the power of bringing your own AI layer in your business…
In 2025, advertisers don’t just need AI - they need AI that comes to them. Too many "AI-powered" solutions still require brands to send valuable data into platform-controlled systems that promise performance but offer little transparency or control. The real opportunity is to deploy your own AI layer, one that sits inside your business, works with your data where it lives, and gets more value out of the platforms you already use.
With your own AI layer, the insights stay yours. The edge stays yours.
Moving beyond static, backward-looking models to predict cost and value in milliseconds, at bid time. Custom AI models can be trained on each advertiser’s own outcomes – real, first-party signals that matter to their bottom line. The result? Campaigns that are more personalised, more performant, more respectful of consumer privacy, and more aligned with what brands want to achieve.
This shift is critical in a privacy-first world. Regulators are tightening rules, browsers are moving away from third-party cookies, and consumers are increasingly aware of how their data is being used. Custom AI models built on advertiser data can be fully transparent by design: your data is yours, and it's only ever used to train your models – no one else’s. That means your business retains control, and your data becomes a strategic advantage, not a shared commodity. For advertisers with rich first-party signals, this approach unlocks significant performance gains while ensuring compliance and consumer trust.
One of the biggest challenges brands face today is the lack of visibility in off the-shelf or platform-embedded AI systems. When multiple advertisers are unknowingly training the same underlying model, no one gains a competitive edge, and businesses with strong data assets are essentially giving that advantage away. Our focus is on delivering exclusive, custom AI layers that reflect each advertiser’s goals, are informed only by their data, and deliver performance as unique as their brand strategy.
Because media buying today is fragmented across platforms, devices, and formats, this kind of unified intelligence layer is no longer a nice-to-have - it’s a necessity. Without it, spend gets scattered, signals get lost, and performance becomes inconsistent. It’s critical that this intelligence shouldn’t sit in a black box. Prompt-based UIs built into the environments advertisers already use allow them to interrogate the model directly, pull insights instantly, and steer decisions in real time. That accessibility transforms the AI layer from hidden infrastructure into an everyday business advantage.
Still, with great AI comes great responsibility. As generative AI becomes more common in advertising, marketers need to keep ethics front and centre. That means respecting privacy, obtaining consent, and ensuring outputs reflect brand values, not bias or misinformation. At Chalice, we believe ethical AI starts with human oversight and systems built for accountability.
Ultimately, AI shouldn’t be a mysterious force advertisers plug into and hope for the best. It should be something they understand, direct, and refine – something that evolves with their business.
The future of advertising isn’t about outsourcing predictions. It’s about directing them. And if you ask me, that’s where real performance begins.
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