Ep. 133 How Fluency Is Automating AdOps Without Replacing Human Creativity with Eric Mayhew

Eric Mayhew, Chief Innovation Officer and Co-Founder of Fluency, shares how his experience in automotive advertising inspired the creation of Fluency and its mission to eliminate repetitive AdOps work through automation. Eric dives into the difference between automation and AI, the future of agentic systems, and why human creativity still matters most in advertising. From scaling ad operations to building compliant AI workflows, this conversation explores where marketing technology is headed next. Takeaways • Automation should eliminate repetitive tasks so teams can focus on strategy and creativity. • AI and automation are complementary, but they are not the same thing. • Human oversight remains critical for compliance, governance, and brand safety. • AI is powerful, but context quality determines the reliability of outputs. • Personalization in advertising may finally become practical with AI and automation. • Agencies want customizable workflows, not one-size-fits-all automation. • Fluency focuses on deterministic workflows that execute advertiser strategies at scale. • Agentic systems will combine rule-based automation with probabilistic AI decision-making. Chapters 00:00 Introduction to Eric Mayhew and Fluency 01:20 How Dealer.com Inspired the Creation of Fluency 04:07 The Real Problem with Manual AdOps Workflows 05:45 Fluency’s Approach to Automation and AdOps Efficiency 07:45 Why AdOps Professionals Should Embrace Automation 10:41 The Difference Between Automation and AI 15:21 AI Risks, Hallucinations, and Governance Challenges 19:21 Where Humans Still Outperform AI 22:54 How Fluency Onboards and Automates Campaign Workflows 27:02 The Future of Agentic AI and Advertising Personalization Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices