At Advertising Week New York 2025, we brought together a powerhouse panel to explore the seismic shift happening in local advertising — driven by data, AI, and the demand for precision at scale.
The session, “Unlock the Future of Local Advertising: Next-Gen AI-Driven Audience Intelligence,” featured insights from:
- Steve Silvestri, Head of Data Strategy and Innovation, Locality
- Ethan Settel, VP of Sales & Accounts, Newton Research
- Lauren Anselmo, Group Director of Paid Media, Moroch
- Moderated by Seema Patel, Strategic Advisor, Marigold Partnerships
Tackling Fragmentation with Centralized Intelligence
Panelists addressed the ongoing challenges of fragmentation, data silos, and legacy systems that hinder local campaign efficiency. The conversation emphasized the need for unified platforms that simplify and automate workflows and modular architecture.
“Data comes from so many different places these days: from POS systems, from loyalty programs, from mobile apps, from vendor data sets. And all of these things rarely align.” Lauren Anselmo, Group Director of Paid Media at Moroch, explained. “When datasets don’t align, stitching this data together is statistically harder for a local campaign than it is at a national level.”
Locality’s new Audience Engine, developed in collaboration with Newton, Lovelytics, and Databricks, was spotlighted as a solution redefining how local campaigns are planned, activated, and measured. This AI-powered identity and activation platform consolidates first- and third-party data, delivering real-time optimization and precise local targeting.
“Audience Engine isn’t a product, it’s really a strategic shift. It’s purpose-built for local challenges,” said Steve Silvestri, Head of Data Strategy and Innovation at Locality.
“There’s an overwhelming amount of disparate, unique data and we understand there’s no team of 50 data scientists—those people, those resources, are just not readily available for the local markets.
Audience Engine empowers local advertisers to sort through the noise, address every individual DMA or targetable set of media, and find the precise, actionable insight or next step with scaleable, cross-platform efficiency and accuracy.”
AI at the Core of Local Strategy
From dynamic segmentation to campaign optimization, the panel explored how AI is no longer optional, it’s essential. The Audience Engine uses automation and historical viewership insights to convert disconnected data into actionable, cross-platform strategies.
“When you take AI tools that can make sense out of disparate targeted data points from different local channels, understand the nuances of media and analyses, and put those in the hands of teams who understand the nuance of what clients and advertisers need in these markets, you unlock this amazing capability to start making sense of the noise, finding that signal, and iterating a much greater scale, and doing analyses that have historically been reserved for the top 1- 2% of advertisers, ” explains Ethan Settel, VP of Sales & Accounts at Newton Research.
“Now, you can now scale massively across individual markets in a way that has not been possible before, and that drives real campaign outcomes.”
Real Results, Real Local Impact
Lauren Anselmo shared agency-side insights on how innovations like the Audience Engine are transforming outcomes for local clients, enabling smarter segmentation, faster execution, and unified measurement.
‘’I honestly can’t wait to use it in our campaigns it is truly an innovation that I haven’t seen before,” Anselmo said. “It’s a brainchild of Locality’s Innovation Council and we’re so fortunate to be a part of it. We’re able to sit in rooms with people like Steve and Ethan, and other brands in agencies that have the same challenges. It allows us to keep pushing the industry forward.”
The future of local advertising isn’t just about more data – it’s about better data, smarter tools, and AI that adapts to the complexities of local markets.
