AI is making advertising faster, smarter, and more powerful than ever. Krystal Olivieri is building the tools that make sure advertisers use it responsibly.
When she joined Xaxis as Manager of Global Partnerships in 2015, Krystal never imagined she would one day become Global Chief Innovation Officer for the entire GroupM network. But thanks to her obsession with data, ethics, and transparency, Krystal now finds herself at the forefront of GroupM’s efforts to make advertising work better for people.
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Like a lot of people, it’s really important to me that I’m able to make the world a better place through my work,” says Krystal, “This can be hard to do at a lot of companies, but GroupM gives you the freedom and the resources to go where your passion takes you.”
“For me, leading a team that is working every day to make the entire advertising ecosystem safer and better for people while also creating tools and products that make our own lives easier is pretty sweet.”
For every major challenge at the intersection of advertising and society, Krystal’s team is working on a solution. In 2021 the Global Innovation Team developed a Data Ethics Compass to help advertisers make more responsible decisions about how they use consumers’ personal information, bringing to life GroupM’s data ethics philosophy: “Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should.” The team’s Carbon Calculator platform allows brands to assess the environmental impact of their media plans based on the channels, formats, and devices they choose. And a new tool currently in development will alert advertisers to potential ethical and societal implications of their AI applications before they decide whether to deploy them.
“We like to build tools that help operationalize and optimize the decision-making process in order to scale innovation responsibly,” says Krystal. “When it comes to AI, we are working on tools to make sure the technology is always used thoughtfully and inclusively—and in service of longer term benefits for both our planet and the marketing ecosystem.”
These may sound like lofty goals for a media executive. But at GroupM, Krystal has the power of the world’s most prominent advertisers, three of the world’s five largest media agencies, and $53 billion in annual media spend backing her up. With those kinds of resources at her disposal, high standards are essential.
“At GroupM, we sit at the center of everything—media, creative, technology, data, applied innovation,” she says. “We have the responsibility and the power to make sure our industry innovates ethically.”