Meet the Billion-Dollar Startup Using AI to Disrupt Media and Advertising

David Jones, Founder and CEO of The Brandtech Group, sits down with Assistant Managing Editor Steven Bertoni to discuss how their platform, Pencil, is leading the generative AI revolution with over 1 million AI-generated ads.
0:00 Introduction
0:40 Major Tech Platforms And AI Development
2:30 AI For Advertising: Brandtech Group Has Hit A Gold Mine
7:58 How Did Brandtech Succeed To Produce Great Ads
12:44 How Will We Look At AI In The Near Future?
16:52 ChatGPT: Where Does It Stand To Help Businesses?
20:03 David Jones On Investing In Technology And Creativity
22:48 How To Know If Content Will Generate Revenue
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[@andybaldman]

So this guy is basically building an AI-powered spam machine. Just what I need.

[@thebluefortproject]

Yeah pretty much, and it's not that hard to create one for yourself. Prepare for social media 2.0, where 99% of content will be just AI spam videos trying to sell you stuff. There'll probably be some sort of moderation by the platforms themselves

[@ExperimentalDisposition]

The whole interview could have stopped at the host’s question “Is that good for the world?”

[@BenCaesar]

The only question that matters rn 👌🏾

[@hitesh6245]

Well they will probably learn the hard way... Once they get to a point where internet is dominated by plain crappy content and that's the same garbage they start feeding to ai, the results won't even be good enough and a lot of clients will just start rejecting this type of content. It's karma in play quite literally and figuratively.

[@Greg_Chase]

When the highly qualified interviewer (Steve Bertoni) asked several questions, Mr. Jones was too evasive for comfort. ONE EXAMPLE: time <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1069">17:49</a>, Mr. Jones volunteered "We created the world's first AI chatbot for an influencer in 2015" and when Mr. Bertoni asked "What was the chatbot like?" The response was evasion, Mr. Jones never answered the question. And there was a pattern of that with other questions posed by the interviewer. It sort of undermines someone who evades simple questions, particularly when they themselves offered up information that, when pressed on it, behave evasively. I don't trust the guy. He does not come off well. The fact is, you CAN be in the sales/marketing profession and be forthright and reliable. 100% can be. .

[@rahmi.digital]

This!

[@theresakain7837]

Very intelligent! People are watching to spy on them . ❤

[@SeekoGT]

I also noticed this. This feels similar to a lot of crypto scams in the way people always promise to be "the next bitcoin", when in reality, they just want to use the biggest buzzwords to pump and dump their scheme onto bag holders.

[@LilBigDude28]

This is going to be MK Ultra 2.0. Buckle up...

[@axlemeister1670]

NDA maybe?

[@cdes68]

That's pure leeching.

[@threlonmusketeers9371]

As soon as I heard the first words, I knew you were talking about a scammer. Thanks for the freee alpha!

[@BenCaesar]

The problem with ads isn’t the tech, it’s the people approving them.

[@J...JustTheLetter]

💀

[@J...JustTheLetter]

These AI ads are only good (for now) in a very specific type of digital ad.. Feed based, "Product catalog" type ads. Dynamically changing the creative around the product photos instead of a white background. Ai cannot (yet) effectively create quality standard awareness or consideration, brand focused "story-telling" type ads. This is the bottom of funnel, last step, "buy-now" type ads you see after all of that. Which is great. But don't get it twisted with the type of ads most of us viewers are thinking of.

[@handfuloflight]

Yup.

[@julesxjoules]

Yeah i just checked their platform he talked about and i can tell that we are a few years away from ai producing the actual ads that we are thinking( story telling ads)

[@noviloba]

How are people going to buy from companies if they don't have jobs? How do you pay for AI services if AI takes your work?

[@jpark91]

There’s needs to be another Great Recession to reshape capitalism and how these companies are thinking. They’re too focused on making money and forgetting the people who give them money in the first place.

[@DueceSpice]

98% OF AI IS PROPAGANDA..JOBS ARE BEING CUT AND ITS NOT BECAUSE OF AI..

[@Tonyklover]

@@jpark91 I'd prefer it if we reshaped how we think about life period, because we now have a tool and some adjacent ones coming via the progress in robotics and biotech that could really make it practical for us to make things better for everyone. Reshaping how capitalism functions would be the realistic and slightly optimistic version of events that I hope comes to pass though.

[@Tayo39]

buy ??? lol what part of "all services & goods for free" dont yall understand ?

[@chestnutters9504]

@@Tayo39that’s going to take serious pressure to be legislated. Pressure that isn’t in the system yet

[@rafaelpayumo9066]

Basically removing the whole marketing team in spam of 1 AI advertising.

[@dexterrity]

how long are the prompting skills going to remain relevant when they themselves are a natural language task suited to LLMs? For example, if a bad prompt is detected, simply get the model to ask the right questions to help the user build a "good prompt". Edited cos typos

[@dexterrity]

and yes to anyone reading, you can steal this idea and build a business from it if you wish. I'm not the only person who's thought of this, not by a long shot.

[@jms6599]

Thanks forbes, for creating content for social media, so young people can consume you…if tradicional media did al least once a week videos specifically for SM thet would get an awesome reward from it in terms of money and brand

[@yourfutureancestor]

I never thought I would miss old TV and magazine ads, but people like him made me do it. This is terrible for both the consumers and companies. If every piece of content we see is an ad, we will not buy it anymore, people get overwhelmed with choice and tired of getting spammed. We desperately need an ad-free space on the internet again.

[@SeekoGT]

What’s stopping the advertising platforms from implementing this themselves and cutting them out? The endgame would have to be to become an advertising platform themselves, right?

[@Greg_Chase]

You're right. Look at what simple websites did to the old-time legacy TV channels - particularly the news. A simple website can 'disintermediate' a large TV broadcast. It has already happened. There are many websites with news feeds and the "cutting the cord" issue with TV is well known. Here's where it's headed. Everyone will have their own AI system creating content for them/about them and their business, and collecting information for them. Your personal AI system will be set up by you: 1) "here is what I want published online over the next 7 days: this stuff for my personal life, and this stuff (ads, offers, etc) for my business" [THIS IS YOUR AI-GENERATED OUTPUT] 2) "here is what I want collected over the next day/week (list of things you need info on, summarized in a 'Cliff Notes' style) [THIS IS YOUR AI-GATHERED/COLLECTED/GENERATED INPUT to your life] Many large businesses can be neutralized, just like the TV broadcast stations have been/are being neutralized (disintermediated) It seems unlikely that marketing agencies can escape this. Can anyone create a website today in under 1 hour? Yes, if the person teaches themselves how to do it, and the free tools to use. AI will enable a full menu of options for anyone to do anything online: buy, sell, advertise, create interesting content. if the person teaches themselves how to do it, and the free tools to use. .

[@juanchojack]

I’m sure that is part of their long term play, good call out

[@chazhovnanian6897]

This is likel the path going forward. There's no unique algorithm or service that this company is providing other than aggregation, however, for smaller businesses/brands that can't afford to create it in-house, the app will serve fine. It's like AWS: if you're a large corporation, you have your own servers, but if you're not, they've got you by the balls

[@handfuloflight]

This is what will happen, because they won't be able to compete with the performance data that the ad networks have

[@raredreamfootage]

Democratization is the general trend. We went from a centralized ice making to home freezers. The same will be true with AI services and is a simultaneous separate race. The innovation though will first come from the centralized cloud computing like what this guy is doing because AI is best in the cloud for now. But as the hardware manufactures race to meet the needs of edge AI, then what this guy is doing will move to the edge. Then when this happens, centralization will normalize back to just data again.

[@Glance852]

Good question asked about future prospects for university graduates

[@yvesisalive]

This interviewer was not the best person to pull information out of him regarding machine learning in media.

[@logananderson9834]

Anyone use Pencil before? For the company that seems to be on the forefront they seems to not use the platform themselves. Their Facebook has the most recent post from 2021 and I would love to know how they have actually been implementing the new cutting edge Ai. I’m willing to bet they have used the same one since 2020

[@logananderson9834]

I would actually really love to try it out because this sounds amazing but I’m skeptical.

[@thebluefortproject]

@@logananderson9834 How would you use it? I'm building something similar for my own content!

[@Glance852]

AI can be just all talks cause it’s AI. It automatically generated.

[@Official_Kosha]

Yep I use it

[@Official_Kosha]

Yep I use it

[@Hadi007t]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="966">16:06</a> i want to see this AD

[@justmouche]

🔥🔥pay attention

[@vitaliylahno]

David Jones might be onto something with this generative AI revolution-now we can look forward to a world where ads know us better than our own mothers. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="0">00:00</a> - Meet David Jones, eco-warrior on a city bike! <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="38">00:38</a> - Generative AI: the biggest thing since sliced bread, says every tech CEO. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="65">01:05</a> - Nvidia and Microsoft in a trillion-dollar tango, all thanks to AI. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="122">02:02</a> - Brand Tech's $4 billion valuation - so, how does it all work? <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="157">02:37</a> - Pencil: the Swiss Army knife for advertising. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="299">04:59</a> - 10x faster, twice as effective, half the cost - AI ads' triple threat. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="415">06:55</a> - Generative AI's evolution: from seven-fingered images to art masterpieces. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="476">07:56</a> - Future forecasting: AI's role in your job - it'll change everything. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="584">09:44</a> - Hyper-personalization: goodbye annoying ads, hello tailored content. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="695">11:35</a> - Social media was the big disruptor; AI's impact is a close second. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="886">14:46</a> - Humans and AI: a creative partnership with some risks. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="970">16:10</a> - AI-generated TV commercials: ranked #1 in the UK. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1032">17:12</a> - Early adopter secrets: David’s been in the AI game since 2015. <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1363">22:43</a> - Generative AI: the great horizontal revolution - it’s everywhere! <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1473">24:33</a> - Keeping up with AI: play with tools, stay curious, don't burn out.

[@sltho]

Yea I don’t want to meet another ai guy

[@t7eenehkofta868]

advertising people are full of BS

[@amonifinau4048]

Thank you!

[@WilhelmPendragon]

It’s Forbes

[@leadgenjay]

Great insights

[@krisprollspirate]

Reading the comments is more interesting than the "Advertising guy speech". 🍿

[@kristofszabo9800]

ok...

[@wholeness]

Wow 4 billion for that 😂 nothing remarkable

[@handfuloflight]

he said so himself lmao

[@noviloba]

AI: I can write prompts better than humans too...

[@voiceofreason5893]

Fantastic job of interviewing.

[@vp5335]

So you are telling me I need to pay you as well as the social media as well 😂

[@dongea-fx]

Good

[@TheMrbeirao]

spent some time testing the tool. have to say unfortunately not impressed at all..

[@AbdiAbdella-zd2td]

Fantastic job of interviwing

[@sanvirbipulpersad4603]

He is building another Canva

[@DerDudelino]

Canva has very little AI though - it requires a lot of skill to actually get a good ad out of it. Once they fire up on all AI cylinders, Canva will be their biggest competitor :D

[@moroccobama]

He’s trying sooooooo hard to be a hand-talking guy

[@chikanojuarez816]

👏🎧👏

[@SeagramPearce]

The way the question around "what is this going to do to people who USED to do this work?" was so blatantly avoided. Illustrators, photographers, translators, etc. You only think this has no downside when you're at the top of the food chain and make enough money to retire and let the rest of the world burn.

[@SalsaColombiaUS]

This is the best ad to use their product

[@sanvirbipulpersad4603]

Brilliant guy!

[@GoDuffdaddy]

Bollox. Cheaper. Faster. Better. Pick two.

[@Mari_Selalu_Berbuat_Kebaikan]

Nam myoho renge kyo can help make your life better 🙏 Chant Nam Myoho Renge Kyo everyday and see your life change positively

[@Oth_meech]

So I just watched 26 minutes of two guys talking about AI who don’t know anything about building AI 😂😂😂

[@thebluefortproject]

yeah, 95% of people talking about AI know nothing about it. Just clows trying to impress you and take your money

[@ahbe9232]

@@thebluefortproject taking VCs/investors money lmao that's why they broadcasted on Forbes channel & not on a general news media. Just grab people's money making them believe it's the next facebook

[@salihawouda2992]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1307">21:47</a> The METAVERSE is a great tool for exploring the immersive realm and possibilities of AR,VR and other social platforms 😉

[@samsonsoturian6013]

Scam

[@tikkivolta2854]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="0">00:00</a> Introduction and Guest Welcome <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="38">00:38</a> The Explosion of Generative AI <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="122">02:02</a> Overview of Brand Tech and Pencil Platform <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="241">04:01</a> Creating and Testing Ads with Pencil <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="331">05:31</a> Example Campaigns and Social Media Focus <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="360">06:00</a> Evolution of Advertising and Digital Media <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="445">07:25</a> Rapid Progress in AI Capabilities <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="504">08:24</a> Impact on Brands, Creatives, and Consumers <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="609">10:09</a> Future of Media and Hyper-Personalization <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="664">11:04</a> Challenges in News Media and Potential Changes <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="751">12:31</a> The Neutral Impact of Generative AI on Media <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="781">13:01</a> Skills for Future Content Creators <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="863">14:23</a> The Role of Prompting in AI <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="915">15:15</a> Predictions and Human Involvement in AI <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="970">16:10</a> Effective AI-Generated TV Commercials <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1032">17:12</a> Early Adoption of AI in Advertising <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1147">19:07</a> Investing in AI and Learning from Early Adoptions <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1205">20:05</a> Evaluating New Technologies <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1337">22:17</a> AI's Impact on Various Industries <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1419">23:39</a> Generative AI as a Horizontal Technology <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1473">24:33</a> Staying Current in the Fast-Moving AI World <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="1550">25:50</a> Conclusion and Final Thoughts

[@HimanshuSharma-oy9ss]

That interviewer is a true professional.Well thought out, straightforward and insightful questions.

[@sutats]

AI, it's the way of the future, for now.

[@tkzsfen]

Put AI in the name of any product and charge money. This is the new get rich quick scheme.

[@AbdiAbdella-zd2td]

Dolar award yutub

[@AbdiAbdella-zd2td]

Dolar award

[@ashleyblanchard8993]

also who wears their oura on the thumb ?!!

[@mariamathews5312]

More AI nonsense. No one wants to see any advertising at all

[@DJjussi1]

I met this guy once, he’s a really nice dude

[@EcomCarl]

David insights into generative AI's role in advertising are eye-opening! As the industry evolves, those who master prompt engineering and understand AI-driven analytics will likely lead the next wave of innovative content creators 🚀.

[@formxshape]

the result will be templated AI nonsense.

[@JJ-tn2kl]

To me I see AI like not organic thought. I kinda just want real raw people input. I'm scared the two will mesh together quickly and we won't have a choice. My searches, views, and tools available should allow me to turn off AI easily. Plus the jobs lost, our minds will not need to work that hard, something else can do it for us. I am not saying AI is bad, I'm saying my view sees one side for now. It doesn't look good to me. But I don't know everything, I know that.

[@DreamAgainNetwork]

🫡💎📈

[@ashleyblanchard8993]

this guy looks like he belongs in the woods not office and certainly not advertising

[@SeekoGT]

<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="542">9:02</a> Is that good for the world?! Well maybe not! 💀

[@AC-id5ow]

He’s good at persuasive talking. Not necessarily successful with it. Lots of on trend buzzwords and phrases. Very little substance. Could easily be replaced with AI 😂

[@thebluefortproject]

true lol

[@mulalomasindi6839]

Is the anyone in 20 , who which to start billion dollar startups with me

[@Ma-pz5kl]

con artist

[@neanda]

he seems like a scammer, keeps evading questions and talking around the points being raised, it's like he's trying to only stick to a script. way too many buzzwords and obvious anecdotes to seem agreeable. no substance, and his wig is slipping back

[@trylenecarr8854]

Thank you, Jehovah, God for your creation.👦🏿🧘🤸

[@yomajo]

Just another scammer, stealing from VCs

[@LagoLhn]

This interviewer is nauseating. Just stop.

[@alexeykulikov2739]

Do you trust this guy? Is he a father?

[@PeterOriolo]

Charlatán

[@virbhansaini4395]

I wouldn’t invest in his business

[@laxmankafle1650]

Social JI Does That ALL & Upgrading EveryDAY, i am a solo entrepreneur , if i can get funding , i can solve it better with my 12 years + Media & Marketing Advertising - Creator Economy ./

[@wholeness]

Wow 4 billion for that 😂 nothing remarkable

[@ahbe9232]

taking VCs/investors money lmao that's why they broadcasted on Forbes channel & not on a general news media. Just grab people's money making them believe it's the next facebook