There can be no doubt that we’re living through the early days of a new age. An age defined by a force that has gone from fringe academic pursuit to everyday cultural obsession in less than 24 months. I’m talking, of course, about the only thing anyone seems to be talking about these days: AI.

We all know by now that this isn’t the terrifying kind with glowing red eyes from the movies of our childhood. This is the kind that’s real, that’s right in front of us. The kind that can write and reason and plan. The kind that’s already embedded in our workflows, and—let’s be honest—our homes and families.

But while the rest of the world is just waking up to this new age, we at Ometria have been building for it since day one. But before we talk about that, in order to understand what this new age of AI means for us as marketers, we need to first understand where we have been. Allow me to take you on a journey of technology, of intelligence, of humanity, and of marketing.

A brief history of the general purpose technology

Throughout history, there have been technologies that didn’t just change industries—but changed everything. Economies. Societies. How we live, how we work, how we think.

We call these General Purpose Technologies—GPTs. 
Language, writing, fire, and agriculture were each a general purpose technology which, once discovered, went on to proliferate across all of humanity and change our world. Their widespread adoption was inevitable from the moment they were discovered, though the exact ways they would impact our lives couldn’t be predicted.

Take fire, for example. To our modern minds, something as ancient as fire might not seem like a technology at all. Fire has existed since time began, but for the majority of that time, our homo erectus predecessors did not have access to it as a technology. Until one day, they did.

Suddenly, fire could be a source of light, a source of warmth, and protection from predators. Our ancestors could cook food with it, which meant nutrients and energy could be released faster, which in turn created major evolutionary changes in their physiology. Rather than spending all their time chewing, they were now free to hunt, build, and learn. 

Though it may seem insignificant now, fire was, in fact, one of the most transformational general purpose technologies ever discovered by humanity.

For a slightly more contemporary example, let’s consider the engine. Throughout the existence of life, getting from A to B has required the use of our legs (or those of a horse or donkey, for some lucky people). 

Then, two hundred years ago a number of different people all came up with the idea for an engine. A technology that, if placed in the right machine, could transform our ability to get across the planet and beyond. 

However, the introduction of the engine to the mainstream was far from smooth. In the eighteenth century, inventors attempted (unsuccessfully) to build steam-powered cars. Carl Benz patented his Motorwagen in 1886, yet seven years later he had sold less than a hundred of them. Twenty years after that, there were only thirty five thousand cars on the road. 

But whilst adoption was slow, the momentum was unstoppable. Slowly but surely, infrastructure was created, petrol stations and motorways were built, cities were optimized for traffic flow. Today, two billion engines in two billion cars make convenient mobility a daily reality for much of the world.

Marketing in the age of AI

Let’s hit the fast forward button, and as we do that, let's turn our attention to technology’s impact on marketing. 

Invented in the fifteenth century, the printing press made it possible for one person to reach thousands of people, then millions. Electricity led to mass production and to refrigeration. This gave rise to radio and television, bringing with it the ability to deliver emotional, immersive, mass communication at scale. 

Then, of course, there was the internet, and with it hyper-targeting, real-time engagement, always-on commerce. This transformed marketing from an act of broadcasting to one of personalizing. It made unique customer experiences possible, and it brought us to where we are today. Each one of these developments didn't just change how we market, but fundamentally redefined the role of the marketer.

And now, here we are right at the beginning of a brand new era powered by a brand new general purpose technology: Artificial Intelligence.

Just like fire, electricity and the internet before it, AI is not confined to a single industry or function. It is horizontal, and it will change everything. In fact, it already has. Recent data shows that 88% of marketers rely on AI in their current jobs. And it’s not just automating tasks; it's shifting the very structure of how we function, and as part of that, the very structure of marketing itself. By the end of this year, every forward-thinking business, and every forward-thinking individual, will be using AI. 

This shift is not optional: It’s irreversible, and it’s exponential. Now, I know “exponential” has been thrown around in tech a lot over the past decade. But this time is different. The “before” and the “after” is striking. The curve has bent, it’s pointing straight up. And we’re on it.

The question for each of us is, are we trying to catch up, or are we there at the forefront? At Ometria, we made a choice a decade ago to build ahead of the market, and that choice is now paying off.

Built for an AI-powered future

For over a decade, Ometria has been the leading customer data platform for enterprise retail brands including Sephora, Boden, Foot Locker, and two hundred more around the world. As a CDP (Customer Data Platform), we are the central infrastructure that connects hundreds of datasets to create detailed omnichannel identities for more than one billion people. 

We help marketers understand what their customers are browsing, buying, returning, what they're interested in, when they're going to buy again, what channels they’re most likely to engage with, and how you should communicate with them. 

When we built our CDP in 2013, no one knew what a CDP was. It wasn't a category, there was no one else doing it, and retailers were still trying to make the most of legacy ESPs. But we saw the AI era coming, and we knew that for marketers to be able to truly benefit from it, they would need more than just AI: They would need two very specific things.

Remember our engine example? The engine was the general purpose technology, but it wasn’t that alone that changed everything: It was the car. An engine running on its own achieves nothing—but put that engine in a car and fuel it up, it changes everything.

Now, cast your mind back to 2018, when OpenAI released GPT-1 and GPT-2. Chances are, you never used these early iterations. Flash forward to January 2023, and ChatGPT had already surpassed 100 million users within just a few months, making it the fastest-growing application in history. So, what made ChatGPT such a runaway success, while GPT-1 and GPT-2 never really took off?

The truth is, GPT-2 and earlier models were just an engine. They were powerful under the hood, but inaccessible to most people, requiring an API and technical skill to use. In other words, you had to build your own car just to take a drive; and who wants to do that? ChatGPT changed everything. It was the first fully packaged consumer product built on top of a language model. It was the car of the AI age, and anyone with an internet connection could just get in and drive. 

The second missing thing that made ChatGPT so powerful? The data—or to continue our motoring metaphor, the fuel. GPT-1 and GPT-2 were trained on relatively limited datasets, but later models had the entirety of the data accessible on the internet and more to learn from, which meant the model gave answers which were transformationally better. 

In summary, we knew that to leverage AI effectively, marketers would need all three of these elements. First: The engine, or the AI. Second, the fuel, or the data—and every last drop of it: Customer data, order data, behavioural data, channel interaction data, and everything in between. AI that is trained on or that operates with only a subset of that data, for example in an ESP or other point solution, would be just as ineffective as GPT-2 was. 

Finally, they’d need the marketing equivalent of the car. The purpose-built product that gives them the ability to fully utilize AI. To use it to understand the customer, to launch campaigns, to optimize their experiences, to work out what will have the biggest impact on their strategy and then to implement it.

That’s why when we built Ometria, we built it to be AI-first from the start, and we built it as a unified end-to-end CDXP—a full Customer Data and Experience Platform. Not two systems duct-taped together or a platform where AI would be an add-on, but one tightly integrated product designed for a single purpose: To be the car that would transform the next generation of marketing. 

AI without a CDXP foundation is like taking an engine, pouring petrol on it, and hoping it'll somehow get you to your destination.

But AI within Ometria is the perfect collaboration between AI and human marketers, where AI does not replace the marketer, but upgrade them. Because amidst all this technological acceleration, we cannot lose sight of the most critical piece—the human, us, you.

The agentic revolution

It may only have been two years since AI hit the mainstream, but a new generation is already coming to the fore: Agentic AI. This technology is creating a brand new paradigm where AI has the potential not just to empower us, but to take over—to do, by itself, everything we do.

Agentic AI has the capability to sift through vast customer data, identify crucial insights, quickly evaluate campaign results, and pinpoint exactly what worked and what didn’t. It can dynamically optimize campaigns, tweak creative, adjust segments, refine timings. It can handle execution and maximize impact. It can do the job of a marketer. 

Let’s be clear, a human is entirely optional in this new paradigm.Taking input, or even explaining what it’s doing, is not mandatory for an agent. But it can be a choice. And at Ometria we have purposefully made that choice because we believe in the irreplaceable value of human creativity, empathy, and intuition. We believe that the role of AI agents isn't to replace the marketer, but empower them. 

No one becomes a marketer to spend hours buried in data or manually adjusting campaign parameters. People come to marketing to create compelling narratives, to deliver truly personalized experiences that customers remember and love. That original dream, one which reality has thus far fallen short of, is about to come true. Our AI agents will prepare everything you need, tee up critical decisions, and provide the information and recommendations marketers need to act decisively and effectively. 

This is an evolution of the marketing role, where marketers become the conductor and the visionary, orchestrating exceptional customer journeys and making strategic decisions with clarity and confidence. It’s not just more efficient, but more fulfilling, freeing up space for creativity and strategic thinking. 

This is the future we're committed to at Ometria—a future where human creativity meets artificial intelligence, empowering marketers to achieve their full potential, to do their best, most inspired, work.

The next generation of Architect

Two years ago, we launched Architect, our flagship AI product, tied into all components of the Ometria CDP, empowering marketers in making the most impactful strategic decisions. And now, it’s taking a bold leap forward. 

Unlike generic AI solutions trained on broad data, Architect was uniquely designed from the ground up for retail. It’s fuelled by over 30 billion retail customer interactions, and as a CDP it plugs directly into your full dataset. Under the hood are dozens of proprietary algorithms, each meticulously refined and perfected through real-world application and integrated with cutting edge GPT technology. 

Today, we’re proud to announce the latest evolution of Architect: our Deep Insights Agent. Allow me to demonstrate what it can do with a real use case. 

Let’s say we ask it a question many retail marketers either ask, or are asked, on a regular basis: “Architect, can you analyze our sales data for the last quarter, review our core segments, tell me the best performing one, and pinpoint the specific category driving this?”

With Architect, this kind of complex analysis doesn’t take a team of analysts or days of number-crunching. Because it’s built into your CDP, Architect already has access to all your data—and it knows what to do with it.

In seconds, it can tell you that, for example, your Casual Fashion segment is leading performance, driven by Minimalist Sneakers, and even surface a specific standout product.

But it doesn’t stop there. Using Vision AI, it can run semantic image analysis to extract style attributes, going beyond the pre-defined ones in the product catalogue to uncover patterns you may not have noticed. Then, with a simple prompt, you can surface other products that share that same stylistic DNA.

So now, you haven’t just found what’s working—you understand why it’s working, and you’ve identified more products that align with that success. 

Now, it’s time to activate that insight. You could just send an email with these products to that same segment; or you could go one step further with Architect to maximize the likelihood that a customer buys. All you need to do is ask: “Architect, get me a new audience with the highest propensity to purchase these products, and make me a segment so I can create a campaign aimed at them”.

And just like that, you’ve gone from insight to action in minutes—not days. That’s the power of embedded AI inside your CDP: actionable intelligence, not just information.