{"id":28025,"date":"2026-05-05T14:06:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:06:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/28025\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T14:06:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:06:14","slug":"using-agentic-ai-to-connect-across-the-funnel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/28025\/","title":{"rendered":"Using Agentic AI to Connect Across the Funnel"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post was created in partnership with Mutinex<\/p>\n

Key takeaways Marketers are still testing how and where AI is most useful. The right data can help marketers get the most out of AI tools. AI tools can change the role of marketers, but strategy and creative work will always need a human touch. <\/p>\n

AI has moved from abstract promise to daily marketing work, but brands are still sorting out where it creates business value and where it adds another layer of noise.<\/p>\n

During an ADWEEK House Possible Group Chat co-hosted with Mutinex, leaders from top adtech and consumer brands explored how teams are using AI for measurement, workflow speed, creative production, and brand building\u2014without handing over the parts of marketing that require taste, emotion, and judgment.<\/p>\n

\"\"PubMatic\u2019s Kyle DozemanMaking AI useful starts with the foundation<\/p>\n

The conversation opened with a discussion on how teams are trying to make AI useful across the business. Vinny Rinaldi, VP, consumer connections at The Hershey Company, shared that Hershey is applying AI across areas from supply chain to marketing\u2014but only after putting the right data foundation in place.<\/p>\n

\u201cYour data infrastructure is the most important part of implementing AI,\u201d Rinaldi said.<\/p>\n

Mike Finnerty, U.S. president at Mutinex, added that brands often run into trouble when they try to layer AI on top of weak systems. \u201cIt always starts with data, right? And the adage of \u2018crap in\u2014crap out\u2019 is true no matter what model you\u2019re putting on top of it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Angela Vargo, VP, marketing, communications, and brand experience at Breeze Airways, said airlines have no shortage of data, but volume alone does not solve the problem. Breeze has customer accounts, operational information, customer service inputs, and NPS data, which makes the work complex before AI enters the picture. \u201cIt really is overwhelming when you\u2019re looking at the sheer volume of it,\u201d Vargo said.<\/p>\n

\"\"(L-R) Breeze\u2019s Angela Vargo, Mutinex\u2019s Mike Finnerty, ADWEEK\u2019s Jenny RooneyAI changes the work people can do<\/p>\n

Panelists then turned to how AI changes the role of marketing teams. Finnerty explained the framing matters. Teams respond differently when AI is positioned as a way to grow faster rather than reduce costs.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis isn\u2019t about taking out costs explicitly. It\u2019s about freeing up people to do more, to be more predictive, to be more strategic, you can always grow more,\u201d Finnerty said.<\/p>\n

Kyle Dozeman, chief revenue officer, Americas at PubMatic, said the reaction to AI changes once people see how much routine work it can take off their plate. They like that they can \u201cget to the things that can actually make the brand different\u2014like the taste and the judgment and the creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rinaldi shared how Hershey revamped its media mix model with Mutinex, cutting down the time spent on data preparation and increasing how often the team can run models.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just revamped our entire media mix model, and we went from basically six months of data cleansing work to 24 hours,\u201d Rinaldi said. \u201cAnd then we\u2019re going to go from three models a year to 12.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Vargo, the value of using AI lies in freeing younger team members from day-to-day tasks so they can think more strategically. \u201cI want these young people who work on my team to really look around corners and identify things that they couldn\u2019t otherwise have done before,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"The Hershey Company\u2019s Vinny RinaldiHuman judgment still sets the guardrails<\/p>\n

As the discussion moved into what should stay human, panelists focused on responsibility and oversight. Finnerty compared AI tools to driver assist technology: useful, but not a replacement for accountability.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re producing outputs using these tools, ultimately you\u2019re responsible for those outputs, and you should know intimately what good looks like, and you should be able to set the guard rails and give the context and everything else to get that right output,\u201d Finnerty said.<\/p>\n

As the conversation shifted from accountability to what human judgment uniquely contributes, Dozeman pointed to how quickly AI-driven experiences lose their appeal without a strong sense of taste and cultural fluency, giving the example of the now-discontinued app Sora.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe first hour you\u2019re on Sora, it was mind-blowing\u2014but a couple weeks later, no one\u2019s opening it. You can feel when there isn\u2019t that sense of taste and culture\u2014it just doesn\u2019t stick. That\u2019s the part we need to preserve,\u201d Dozeman said.<\/p>\n

The session concluded with a rapid-fire question about what should never be automated in marketing. Dozeman pointed to taste and judgment. Vargo pointed to strategy and the human brain. Rinaldi named creativity and brought the conversation back to emotion.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a brand, we sell emotion. It\u2019s comfort, it\u2019s your happiness. How do you not lose that?\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Featured Conversation Leaders<\/p>\n

Kyle Dozeman, Chief Revenue Officer, Americas, PubMatic<\/a> Mike Finnerty, U.S. President, Mutinex<\/a> Vinny Rinaldi, VP, Consumer Connections, The Hershey Company<\/a> Jenny Rooney, Chief Brand and Community Officer, ADWEEK<\/a> Angela Vargo, VP, Marketing, Communications, and Brand Experience, Breeze Airways<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This post was created in partnership with Mutinex Key takeaways Marketers are still testing how and where AI…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":28026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[16795,16796,179,7493,25,16794],"class_list":["post-28025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-agentic-ai","tag-adops-branded-content","tag-adweek-house","tag-agentic-ai","tag-agentic-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-possible"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ai\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}