Carrie Riby

Caroline (Carrie) Hunt Riby is a professor of practice in the advertising department at the S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications, where she draws on more than four decades of industry experience to prepare students for a field in rapid transition.

Her current research, conducted in partnership with Ipsos Creative Excellence, examines how AI-generated advertising performs against human-created work. This study, "AI Ads Are Good Enough, and That's the Problem,"  uses a matched-pair methodology comparing three experiences that effective advertising typically delivers: creative experiences, empathy and fitting in, and the strength of a creative idea. The findings have direct implications for how brands, agencies and educators approach creative effectiveness in the AI era.

Riby is also the author of "The Art of Advertising Strategy," published by Cognella. The textbook brings her practitioner perspective into the curriculum, focusing on the strategic judgment that remains irreplaceable as AI takes on more execution-level work.

Her industry career spans leadership roles at Saatchi & Saatchi, MullenLowe Advertising, Roberts Communications and Butler/Till, with clients including Kodak, Bausch + Lomb, Xerox, State Farm and Excellus BlueCross BlueShield. She has been recognized by Ad Age and B@B Magazine and has spoken at American Association of Advertising Agencies conferences. Currently she is a judge for the Jay Chiat Awards, which globally recognizes strategic excellence in marketing, media and advertising.

At Newhouse, she teaches advertising strategy, media planning, international advertising (London campus) and ad campaigns. She is a fellow in the 2026 Newhouse Emerging Technologies Faculty Fellowship program, which recognizes faculty seeking to incorporate emerging technologies into the curriculum and empower students to use tools such as generative artificial intelligence in productive but responsible ways.

She has also built a cross-cultural curriculum through partnerships including a COIL (Collaborative Online International Learning) collaboration with Université Paris Cité. She holds a B.A. in advertising communications from Simmons College and studied with the Newhouse London Programme.