Why AI will make the physical world matter more, not less

AI isn’t getting great PR right now. Depending on the headline you read, there’s a 10% chance it’ll wipe out humanity, invent a bioweapon, hack a government, or spend its spare time chatting with other AI systems in a plot to bring us down. But, and this is important to note, this is also the same technology that insists there are two Rs in “strawberry”, so we probably shouldn’t panic just yet.

I work in out-of-home, so I have a stake in what follows. But the more interesting story here isn’t about my industry – it’s about what happens to the physical world when AI starts making more of our decisions for us. Where we are seeing quite a lot of impact is in how it has changed the way we navigate information, evaluate options and make decisions about where to go, what to buy, which route to take or what to do next. That has significant implications for brands, because the path from curiosity to decision is starting to look very different.

Much of advertising has been built around a simple journey: see something, search for more information, then decide. This has been particularly relevant to out-of-home. A billboard or digital screen captures attention, sparks an idea and increasingly prompts us to reach for our phones. People behave differently when they’re out of home. Their search and social behavior becomes far more action-oriented – closer to doing something than idly browsing.

From Search to Ask

AI is changing that journey. Rather than researching and comparing options ourselves, we can ask an AI assistant to do it for us: Where should I eat? What’s the quickest way home? Where can I buy this? What should I do this evening?

The journey is shifting: where we once saw something, searched, and decided, we now see something, ask, and act.

This shift is already measurable. In our own consumer research, 74% of people say they are using or considering AI for navigation, local information, travel updates, product recommendations and purchase decisions while out of home. For media planners the implication is not simply that AI is changing search, but that it could increase the importance of context.

Why the Physical World Wins

There is an assumption that AI will make the physical world less important as more decisions move through digital channels. In reality, the opposite may be true. The better AI becomes at helping people navigate choices, the more valuable real-world context becomes, because the quality of those recommendations depends on understanding someone’s environment, intent and situation in the moment.

For example, someone sees an ad for a restaurant while walking toward the station. Today, they might search for it, check reviews, browse the menu and work out whether it’s convenient. In an AI-led journey, they might simply ask: “Is that restaurant any good? I’ve got an hour before my train and I’d like somewhere nearby.” The answer is shaped not just by what the restaurant says about itself, but by location, timing, journey information and the individual’s preferences in that moment.

That makes the physical environment an increasingly interesting source of context. The fact that someone has encountered a particular message, in a particular place, at a particular moment may become relevant to what happens next.

This has potentially significant implications for OOH. The industry has spent years making digital out-of-home more dynamic, responsive and closely connected to data, allowing creative to reflect things such as time, location, weather, events and audience behavior. AI could take that principle further by connecting the physical environment more closely to the systems that people increasingly use to navigate the world.

The Trust Advantage

Additionally, there is the issue of trust. As consumers are exposed to growing volumes of AI-generated content and “AI slop” across digital channels, authentic and tangible brand experiences become more valuable. This is where physical, real-world media has an advantage. Its presence, authenticity and inherent credibility offer a powerful counterbalance to an online environment that can often feel synthetic or uncertain.

But the opportunity may be less about making an OOH screen behave like another digital channel and more about thinking about the role it plays within a much wider ecosystem. A screen outside a station isn’t simply reaching commuters; it sits within a particular journey, at a particular location, at a particular time. A screen near a shopping center is part of a completely different set of decisions and behaviors. As AI becomes better at interpreting context, those distinctions could become increasingly important.

In an AI-driven world, real-world context becomes a crucial input. Few things sit closer to the moment a decision is made than the physical environment around us – which is precisely where out-of-home lives.

That doesn’t mean every OOH campaign suddenly needs to be designed for machines. Many of the things that make OOH powerful – creativity, surprise, cultural relevance and the ability to shape how a place actually feels – have little to do with technology. But it does suggest that media planning could increasingly involve thinking about the relationship between what people see in the physical world and the information systems they use to decide what to do next.

This is an interesting moment for the marketing industry. We are moving toward a world in which AI is increasingly helping people to navigate not just information, but the physical world around them. If that happens, the environment in which a decision is made becomes more important, rather than less.

Adam Cherry - Digital Development Director

This article first appeared in The Subthread - https://www.thesubthread.com/why-ai-will-make-the-physical-world-matter-more-not-less/