At the Slovenian Marketing Conference (SMK), held in Portorož on 28 and 29 May, artificial intelligence and its impact on the future of marketing emerged as the central themes. In the event’s closing discussion, Simon Cetin, partner and founder of iPROM and co-founder of Retoba Lab, and Haris Begić, CEO of Golden Tree, explored the opportunities and challenges of the AI era. The discussion was moderated by Primož Hvala.

At the SKOJ public relations conference, held on Friday, 22 May, in Portorož, Simon Cetin, founder and partner at iPROM and founder of Retoba Lab, encouraged communication professionals to adopt a more confident, thoughtful and creative approach to using artificial intelligence.

For decades, marketing has focused on visibility. It bought seconds of attention, reach, impressions and clicks with one goal: to make a brand the user’s first choice. Today, however, artificial intelligence increasingly stands between brands and users, generating answers from data, context and evidence. And those answers are becoming the new shelf.

At the iPROM Brunch Academy event, experts in marketing, communications and market research presented how first-party data, artificial intelligence, conversational interfaces and advanced campaign measurement are becoming the foundation of modern, more relevant and efficient marketing.

At the Marketing Summit Ljubljana, organized by Instore Slovenia and held on April 2, Miloš Suša, Director of iPROM, and Andraž Zorko, Partner and Co-founder of Valicon, explained why understanding digital advertising effectiveness requires moving beyond click-based metrics and focusing on the actual impact ads have on users.

“Sometimes a moment comes along that quietly shows the story has changed – not because of a spectacular exhibition or a major announcement, but because reality has silently taken a step forward,” writes Simon Cetin, partner in PROM and founder of Retoba lab, in his column for Marketing magazine.

At this year’s MIXX Awards Europe 2025, iPROM and its partners received three silver awards for projects carried out in collaboration with Fraport Slovenija, SPAR Slovenija, and Kotányi Slovenija, as well as the Retoba laboratory. The awarded projects – Ljubljana Airport FLY 2.0, SPAR Tailormade and Kotányi AI Chef – showcase advanced applications of first-party data, artificial intelligence methods and technologically independent advertising solutions.

This year, the largest Slovenian conference on technological trends and breakthrough ideas, Game Changer, opened a discussion on a range of contemporary topics. Among them was the future of the digital environment, where advanced technologies are reshaping how companies collect, manage, and use data. One of the speakers who contributed insights to the professional debate was Tomaž Tomšič, Head of iPROM Labs, who presented how advanced data ecosystems and first-party data help build safer and more reliable AI solutions.

At this year’s Digital Communication Awards ceremony in Berlin, the Kotányi AI Chef project won the gold award in the AI Communications & Content Creation category, while the Ljubljana Airport FLY project secured third place in the AI Strategy & Analytics category. The Kotányi AI Chef project was developed in collaboration between Kotányi Slovenia and Retoba laboratory, while Ljubljana Airport FLY is the result of a partnership between Fraport Slovenia and iPROM.

iPROM achieved a double success at the WEBSI Digital Champions of Slovenia 2025 competition together with its partners. The project Ljubljana Airport FLY, developed in cooperation with Fraport Slovenia, won first place in the category Best Use of Data, while the project SPAR Tailormade, created in collaboration with SPAR Slovenia, secured third place in the category Retail.