A SCOTTISH paid media agency that is growing its business around artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning has established its own digital training academy to meet the skills shortfall of talent in Scotland and future-proof the company.

Laura Davidson, who co-founded Glasgow-based Tag Digital with her husband, Craig, 12 years ago, told the Go Radio Business Show with Hunter & Haughey: “It is hard to get the digital talent in Scotland [and the UK] that we need at the pace we are growing so we built a digital training academy to take on school leavers and college leavers, then put them through a year’s training – they don’t have to have any experience when they come to us.”

Tag Digital, which achieved revenues for its last financial year of £8.5 million, is on track to achieve £18.5m in its next financial year and has ambitions to hit £100m in five years, currently employs about 42 people and supports more than 2,000 events per year in over 50 countries by providing paid media services and digital advertising.

Events include “ones you have never heard of like the Advanced Manufacturing show in Brussels and ones everyone knows like the TED Talks”. Ms Davidson noted: “We are focused on events which is niche but a pretty big niche. Our job is to make sure the right people attend these events by seeing advertisements then buying tickets.”

About 80% of the firm’s turnover is outwith the UK and Tag Digital has established offices in Manila in the Philippines, Dubai and North America. “We do a lot of business in the Middle East – this is a key growth area for us,” said Ms Davidson, who added that setting up the Manila office had enabled the business to operate a 24/7 model.

“Outsourcing is a government-backed initiative in Manila,” she added, explaining that the Philippines is geared up to support other countries. “Their work is absolutely amazing,” she continued, “and we have created a sense of belonging with the team coming over here and us going over there.

“Paid media is one of the fastest-growing areas of digital marketing so we need to have that global mindset as the business grows and make strategic decisions about where we need to be.”

Discussing the controversial area of AI and machine learning, she admitted that advancements in technology meant that some jobs may be displaced or change, but the benefits included the removal of “tasks that you don’t enjoy to you more time to do other things”.

Scottish agency declares 'no need to be fearful'

At Tag Digital, for example, the business has automated it invoicing function and is exploring generative AI to “create copy that is compelling and written in the right tone of voice”. Ms Davidson accepted that there was an element of fear surrounding AI and dispelled concerns from Lord Willie Haughey that the technology was in danger of “creating a monster”.

“The pace it is going at and the people who are distancing themselves from AI is definitely something to take note of,” she said. “It feels like the early days of the internet when it was completely the wild west – there is no legislation and people don’t understand how it works.”

She added: “We are in a real ‘figuring out’ phase but it is coming one way or another. The tech companies are not going to stop developing.”

Eventually, there will be over 100 million new jobs created as a direct result of advancements in AI, Ms Davidson told Lord Haughey and Sir Tom Hunter. She pointed to the role of “prompt engineer”, explaining: “At the moment, AI can’t think for itself so you need to have the business leaders, the strategists and planners – this means you have to prompt the AI correctly to be able to get the results you want.”

She credited Tag Digital’s chief technology officer Alex Velinov for spearheading the company’s AI work and said that businesses should use the technology to enable people to be more effective in their jobs. “Our goal is to bring all our slow back-end processes like admin, the stuff that nobody likes doing – get the machines to take care of that and let our team focus on delivering amazing customer service,” said Ms Davidson.

“We have never been scared of the automation side of it and I think that is what’s happening now – there’s panic around it take and jobs but I think we should look at the opportunities it presents. It is about businesses upskilling their teams.”