Programmatic advertising enters the AI-driven era

As Chinese enterprises accelerate their global expansion, global marketing company MiQ has recently unveiled the industry's first AI-powered platform.

"Chinese companies going global are now thriving across various sectors, with increasingly diverse product offerings and growing capabilities in local operations abroad," said Brian Zhang, general manager of MiQ Greater China.

Zhang added that, in addition to currently popular categories such as automobiles, mobile apps, lifestyle products, and short-form dramas, industries that traditionally had limited international presence, such as finance, are also actively exploring overseas markets.

The enthusiasm of Chinese businesses expanding overseas has further fueled MiQ's growth. Despite a wave of layoffs across the global advertising industry, MiQ's China team has grown from a handful of people to nearly 40 professionals, the executive said.

"Our China unit currently focuses on six core sectors for digital marketing: 3C electronics, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands, e-commerce, gaming and e-sports, smart home, and the automotive industry," Zhang said.

However, Chinese enterprises often face challenges in overseas marketing, including increasing customer acquisition costs, fragmented information across different advertising platforms, and low marketing efficiency, he added.

To target fragmented data and navigate complex media landscapes, the company has launched an AI-driven marketing platform to help Chinese players in overseas markets.

The new platform, named MiQ Sigma, integrates data from more than 300 sources, capturing over 700 trillion behavioral signals from 1.7 billion consumers worldwide across TV viewership, web browsing, and in-store purchases.

"Traditional programmatic advertising struggles to respond quickly to today's dynamic market conditions, and MiQ Sigma is designed to break down these data silos and boost transaction efficiency," said Zhang.

Zhang noted that the new marketing platform is built on MiQ's 15 years of transaction data and incorporates three leading language models — Claude, Gemini, and ChatGPT — to support AI functionalities across the entire marketing workflow from insights to execution.

"Because the platform draws from vast and neutral data sources, it can provide brands with more comprehensive, objective, and balanced marketing recommendations," Zhang added.

The MiQ Sigma platform currently supports four major markets — including the United States and Canada — and is set to expand into Japan, Brazil, and beyond, he said. According to the company, more than 10,000 ad transactions are conducted on the platform globally each day.