Today U of Digital is pleased to announce the launch of the AI Literacy Alliance. The official press release is here, but I wanted to give a bit more explanation as to why our industry needs this initiative at this critical moment in time.
AI reminds me of when programmatic advertising was starting to take hold in the early 2010s.
Back then, conversations that should have been about outcomes and strategy kept getting pulled back to a simpler question: what does programmatic even mean?
If you worked in adtech or digital media buying during that era, you probably remember the experience: sales calls that started with a 15-minute explanation of real-time bidding or ad exchanges before you could even talk about the product. It wasn’t unusual to spend half a meeting explaining the mechanics of automated buying just to establish a baseline understanding.
Hundreds of adtech vendors and agencies, all independently publishing explainers, running “programmatic 101” slideware decks, and repeating the same customer education conversations on thousands and thousands of calls. It was an enormous duplication of effort that lasted for years.
It reduced sellers to pushing features, not value. And it left buyers and advertisers with a patchwork of knowledge. To this day, the adtech and programmatic ecosystem are still making up for all the confusion.
I see this playing out with AI. But you want to know the curveball? AI is moving way faster than programmatic ever did.
The pace of AI innovation across planning, media activation, creative, and analytics is impressive (and bewildering), but the industry’s shared understanding of AI hasn’t had a chance to catch up yet.
Marketers are eager to explore what AI can do. But without a strong foundation of knowledge, it can be difficult to know where to start, how to evaluate new tools, or how to apply AI meaningfully inside marketing organizations.
That’s why U of Digital is launching the AI Literacy Alliance.
This new initiative brings together the companies building AI for marketing to create a shared foundation of understanding — helping marketers keep pace as AI capabilities rapidly advance. Instead of every vendor independently trying to educate the market, the Alliance helps scale that effort across the ecosystem while giving marketers practical ways to build AI skills.
At launch, we’re proud to partner with fourteen companies helping shape the future of AI-powered marketing:
The AI Literacy Alliance focuses on three key initiatives:
- Scalable AI Education for Marketers — Alliance partners receive U of Digital AI training credits they can extend to customers, helping marketing teams build practical AI skills while adopting new technologies.
- Industry Research & Benchmarking — Partners will participate in the upcoming AI Literacy Benchmark Survey, measuring how AI knowledge and confidence are evolving across marketing and advertising.
- Curriculum Collaboration — Alliance members contribute insights that help shape the AI education curricula used by thousands of marketing professionals worldwide.
What Our Launch Partners Are Saying
“Data is the backbone of every AI breakthrough. Helping marketers build literacy around data and AI ensures innovation becomes part of every marketing decision.”
— Florian Delval, Product Marketing Principal, Marketing and Advertising, Snowflake
“AI is woven through programmatic media planning, activation, and measurement. For marketers and agencies to get the most out of intelligent DSPs, they need a shared foundation of AI literacy — it’s how our entire ecosystem will level up together.”
— Alia Lamborghini, SVP, Global Revenue, Yahoo DSP
“AI search is changing how brands are discovered. Marketers who understand how these systems actually work will be better positioned to influence the conversation.”
— Brian Stempeck, CEO and Co-founder, Evertune
“Agents are redefining what it means to be a marketer. As new products emerge and existing tools become more autonomous, AI literacy becomes the most important skill — knowing how to direct these tools and evaluate what they produce.”
— Alec Haase, General Manager, AI Products, Hightouch
The opportunity here is bigger than simply understanding a new technology.
When marketers build real AI literacy, they can move beyond experimentation toward meaningful transformation — rethinking workflows, accelerating creativity, and unlocking entirely new ways to reach and serve customers.
And when the industry shares a common foundation of understanding, innovation happens faster. New ideas spread more quickly. And companies building the future of marketing can focus less on explaining the basics and more on pushing the boundaries of what’s possible.
That’s the goal of the AI Literacy Alliance.
👉 Learn more at uof.digital/ai/alliance/
Technology vendors can apply to become Alliance partners, and agencies and advertisers can explore training credits and discounts available through participating companies.