Last week, Google conducted their annual Google Marketing Live (GML) and it was full of AI, AI, and more AI. If anything has taken 2024 by the storm, it’s AI. In addition to all the ways AI will impact digital marketing and online advertising on Google, we’ve seen significant growth in speech-to-speech, audio, and vision capabilities from OpenAI’s Spring Demo — enough to kill and overshadow some AI start-ups (talk about a fast-paced industry growth cycle). Just yesterday, Elon Musk announced that his new AI venture raised $6 billion in funding. Also, mind you, all these AI-related news from above are from the month of May alone. Almost every industry is being impacted with the argument of copyright and AI being the most entertaining battle to watch as AI shows its strengths in entertainment, music, writing —” and now voice. It’s not hard to see how exponential the growth within the AI is. The advancements we’re seeing now make Microsoft’s Sydney err-love triangle (?) so laughable and bygone as if the mistake didn’t happen just a year ago.
(Side note: for anyone looking to learn more about using AI within your professions, the Futurepedia community does a great job at wrangling the best tools.)
If you don’t know already from my first book, It’s About Time, I’m kinda fixated on time and anything that can shorten a task for me is gold. I’ve been using AI for about two years within my profession as digital marketing and advertising has been one of the most heavily impacted industries. HERE IS MY PROBLEM WITH AI.
Yes, I know and acknowledge how fast it’s learning and growing and that there’s a chance I won’t be upset about this by the end of the year. But, it’s also needless to say that it’s not perfect at this moment — so why are social advertising companies cough cough *meta* favoriting AI-driven placement ads and moving them up the funnel at the advertiser’s cost of branding control? AI is not a replacement, it is a tool. Together, humans and AI, make a great team. We should not have to give up creative control to AI in order to see higher conversions when the tool is not yet familiar with individual brand guidelines or rules. But despite the tool not fully being there at this very moment, advertisers are being forced to relinquish this creative control in order to keep up with the fast-paced online advertising cycle. Sure, manual ads without AI are still around, but the cost for performance is much, much pricier. I also would like to say that this might not affect all industries using social ads, but, I happen to work at a place that values brand identity and voice. I also know that there’s a handful of brands that operate the same way - in fact, the most memorable ones are in the same boat. We’re talking about years that go into the protection and strengthening of brand identity and voice and all of sudden I have to forfeit that in order for my ad to be favored by an algorithm. AND IT’S NOT FULLY DEVELOPED YET.
Take my job for example. We deal with a lot of brand partnerships and collaborations - some with very high brand integrity and some so niche that only the direct community/audience would understand. But because only that audience understands that niche, they will also know if someone that is speaking to them is belonging to the same community or if they’re a poser. AI doesn’t know this though. It also doesn’t know that if a poser is trying to sell them as if they belong, it can completely miss the mark and make the collaboration fall flat. It’s the same thing as when your dad picks up your slang, uses it wrong, and makes you never want to say “cap” ever again. It’s uncool!!! But if you sell cool, you’re unable to use AI, and for that, you get penalized with higher advertising costs. I don’t know how many times AI has been pushing “FUCK THE NORM” to be the subject line of my ad selling beanies????
Again, I am in no shape against AI and it might actually work for some companies, but based on GML 2024, online & social advertising is doubling down on AI. All I ask is to give us more outlets to be able to work with AI without having to give up brand identity. Who would have thought that creative control was of importance in this day of age? 🙄😒
All that said, I found this AI-ad on Twitter to be hilarious and a case of obvious-AI working in the advertiser’s favor.
