Chief Enterprise Officer, Shutterstock
Search every verified Aimee Egan interview, podcast appearance, and on-the-record quote — each transcript cross-checked by AI and human review to confirm speaker identity. Aimee Egan, Chief Enterprise Officer at Shutterstock, discussed the role of AI and data in marketing at the Possible conference in May 2025. She stated that AI will play a "massive role" in making content more relevant and improving process efficiency. Egan described a "tension" marketers face in navigating the intersection of rapid technological change, regulatory challenges, and market demand for authenticity. She identified "agentic AI" as a technology likely to have a major impact on creative strategy, but noted that adoption lags behind availability and that how it changes operations is "up to us." Egan also said that Shutterstock uses data from its marketplace and API platforms to inform performance marketing. In a September 2024 video for DNAngels.org, Egan described a case in which she helped an adopted client identify his biological parents using DNA analysis and non-identifying information. She explained that ethnicity data was used to split DNA matches into two groups, allowing her to identify the client's birth father, who was a first-generation Italian American and the first in his family to attend college. Egan noted that the client was motivated to take a DNA test after a conversation with his daughter about family history and medical information.
“We are always looking for new ways to make content more relevant, more relevant in geographic markets, more relevant to new groups, um to testing. We're constantly using data to understand performance.”
“I think that's one area for sure that AI is going to play a massive role. I think the other area is really in the efficiency in process.”
“I think it exists in the intersection between the onslaught and blow up of the amount of technology available... and the intersection of that with regulatory and capability based challenges as well as sort of a market demand for authenticity, connection, like real kind of that reality in the world of AI.”
“Data is something that I think all of us as marketers and performance leaders are constantly really looking for sources to understand what's working, what isn't, what's the impact of what we're doing, what's the ROI.”
“From a Shutterstock standpoint, we're able to actually share information about quality of assets because that can be generative and kind of more traditional content assets. We're able to share, okay, which ones are being used most? Which ones are having that impact?”
“We have so many daily users between our marketplace platforms, our API platform. So we have this insight and knowledge that is really gold for performance marketing.”
“I think the technology that will have the biggest impact is agentic AI in the marketing space. But I think none of us really know today exactly what that's going to look like and how that's going to happen and exactly when it's going to happen.”
“There's a big difference between the technology being available and adoption of that technology in how we operate day-to-day.”
“We have a co-creation opportunity and I think responsibility in that where that is going to change how we operate but how it changes it is up to us.”
“The only reason why our client decided to do a DNA test and identify his birth parents is because of his daughter. They had a conversation about where he comes from, medical issues, and family history, which motivated him to find out more about his biological family.”
“We were able to identify both his biological mother and father's line and give him the cool history that they were descended from Irish and Italian immigrants who owned a grocery store, with the birth father being the first college-educated in the family.”
“Using ethnicity to our advantage, we split DNA matches into two groups: one primarily European like Norwegian, English, and Irish, and the other primarily Italian, which helped us identify which side was mom's and which was dad's.”
“The birth father took over his father's grocery store in the 1920s and 1930s, making it a third-generation family business by the time our client visited it with his daughter after learning about his biological family.”
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