How AI Is Shaping the Future of Finance

The 5 ways AI is changing how publishers handle money

There are human-centric elements in finance that AI will never be able to replace—soft skills such as leadership, intuition, and EQ—but that doesn’t mean that finance leaders should delay integrating AI into their operations. Leveraging AI opens up the possibility of making work more strategic and efficient in the long term.  

Finance as a practice has been slower to adopt AI than some of its functional counterparts. Why? The very thing that makes a finance leader successful: caution. “Finance people tend to be inherently conservative,” Myles Corson, the Global and Americas Strategy and Markets Leader for Ernst & Young, told The Wall Street Journal. “Managing risk is going to be at the core of the finance role.” Risk extends to how AI is incorporated into a business. 

As experts working with hundreds of media companies, we are starting to see Finance teams adopt AI in distinct, circumscribed ways. Here are the top five ways finance leaders are using AI to improve media businesses. 

1. Predictive pricing and analytics 

At most media companies, the CFO is responsible for the quality and accuracy of the business’s operational financial data. In addition to using AI to facilitate better, faster reporting, Finance teams are using AI to identify inventory and pricing trends and patterns in advertiser purchase behavior. They’re also overlaying consumer data to improve targeting and campaign results. In return, they’re gaining more dynamic, optimized pricing, better media mixes, and insights into cross-sell and upsell opportunities. 

“Predictive analytics is being used … to identify potential risks, optimize strategies and investment decisions, and improve customer targeting,” Murtaza Hussain notes in Forbes. By leveraging large amounts of data with AI-powered systems, finance teams can make better decisions more quickly, driving overall performance. 

2. Boosting efficiency 

CFOs are under tremendous pressure to cut costs and drive efficiency. AI offers a key to achieving both with its ability to automate routine tasks, more efficiently leverage resources, and free up time for top talent to be more productive. 

CFOs are leveraging AI to quickly generate performance reports, assess the value of assets like traffic and impressions, and map media plans from agency templates to the OMS. New levels of automation can minimize errors, ensure compliance, reduce hiring needs, and boost overall operational efficiency. By quickly identifying specific patterns in data, as well as yielding insights and predictions, CFOs can confidently anticipate and proactively manage finances, whether that means making strategic cuts or pursuing new opportunities for growth. 

3. Closing performance gaps 

Companies across industries are using AI to save money by automating tasks, identifying and eliminating repetitive functions, and recognizing new opportunities and market trends. 

“Increasingly, organizations combine AI with performance data to generate and refine KPIs, both with and without human intervention,” wrote digital media expert Michael Schrage in the MIT Sloan Management Review. 

With AI, leaders can finally rank the importance of their KPIs and identify acceptable ranges and triggers for each. As a result, most businesses see better performance—some by as much as a 30-point improvement — in as little as six months. 

4. Better governance

AI can play a crucial role in ensuring compliance with financial regulations and improving governance practices. By automating compliance monitoring and reporting, Finance teams are able to reduce the risk of errors and potential liabilities of non-compliance. 

Most media companies have their data spread out across multiple systems—making reporting an often frustrating and time-consuming process for CFOs. Hunting down the correct spreadsheet and manually managing them leaves room for human error. But with AI gathering and synthesizing data from across the business ecosystem, governance becomes easy, and the organization remains compliant. 

5. Future-proofing the business 

Creating a culture that embraces AI means creating opportunities for the next generation of finance leaders to familiarize themselves and innovate with the technology. “The work landscape of the next generation will continue to change, requiring skill sets different than those required today,” writes David Karandish, CEO of Capacity, in Forbes. “The responsibility of educating the first generation of AI-first workers lies within both the creators of the technology and the organizations that are implementing it.” 

CFOs are using AI to accelerate digital transformation in the workplace, empower their teams,  and create future-proofed environments. In a recent Deloitte North American CFO Signals Survey, finance executives said that “accelerated business digitization,” including AI, “was one of the top strategic shifts … their companies were making in response to the turbulent economic environment.” Even as the pressure to cut costs grew in 2020, savvy CFOs understood that AI can save money and improve competitiveness in the long term. 

Paving the way forward 

“AI’s ‘early adopter’ phase is ending,” according to the third edition of Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise. Whether your company is prepared for it or not, AI will continue shaking up the publishing status quo. The only choice is whether to begin implementing AI and reaping its benefits now or continue to delay, potentially squandering near-term opportunities. 

The organizational, operational, and cultural significance of integrating AI into finance operations is hard to overstate. AI is revolutionizing everything from how KPIs are identified and used to mobilize progress, to reporting, culture, and, ultimately, your company’s bottom line. It’s empowering finance teams while catalyzing financial growth. 

Find out how you can adopt AI into finance operations today with Boostr. Gain visibility, automation, and competitive advantage. Let’s talk.