AI in Marketing and Advertising – What You Need to Know

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With news and information about how AI (Artificial Intelligence) will transform everything to everyone spreading through social media, OpenAI‘s ChatGPT was made available to the public for free in late November of 2022 and rapidly jumped onto the global arena. Its perceived importance has increased at a rate equal to that of AI’s bandwidth itself. 

WHAT IS AI?

AI in short is the creation of computer systems that can carry out tasks that traditionally require human intelligence. Consider capabilities like speech recognition, decision-making, and experience-based learning. Machine learning methods can be used to train AI systems to discover patterns in data sets, predict the future based on that data, and even enhance performance. The ultimate goal is to develop “intelligent” machines that can execute activities at least as well as people, if not better, in order to boost production and efficiency across a variety of different industries. 

THE AI LANDSCAPE IN RIGHT NOW IN EARLY 2023

It would be an understatement to describe it as the wild west. Every minute, it seems, a brand-new SaaS product is claiming to change (INSERT INDUSTRY HERE) with its cutting-edge AI infrastructure. However, the ethics of AI have been called into question recently, to the point where copyright infringement lawsuits are being filed against AI firms like Stability AI Ltd, Midjourney, Inc., and DevianArt on the grounds that their AI systems were trained using source code that was protected by copyright without authorization. 

WHY IS THIS IMPORTANT?

Even the most seasoned marketer may be tempted by the mere thought of AI-generated content to simply copy it from one place to another and call it a day. For a blog you recently uploaded on your website, it’s important to think about whether or not that content is subject to things like plagiarism. Aside from the obvious problems with this, plagiarism can also harm rather than help your rank, as said by the comments Google has made about their views on websites that employ AI to generate content and how this may affect how well your site ranks.

WHAT DOES GOOGLE THINK ABOUT AI-GENERATED CONTENT

That is a valid question, one that gets murkier and murkier as time passes. Google first took a strong stance against websites that only contained artificial intelligence (AI)-generated content, claiming that such content violates their community guidelines and lowers your website’s search ranking. But they quickly came out on February 8, 2023 to reassure By reassuring the audience that they believe in the power of AI and how AI-generated content fits in with their, “long-standing approach to display helpful material to the people on Search,” Google made an effort to clarify their position. Google essentially claims that regardless of how material is created, they will keep pushing “high-quality” content. 

 

Googled supported this promise with the argument that since they didn’t outlaw human-generated content when it first began to spread in unusual mass on the internet ten years ago, they shouldn’t do the same with AI-generated content. Google cites the characteristics of “E-E-A-T,” which stands for expertise, experience, authority, and trustworthiness, constitutes “high-quality” content. Unfortunately, this is at best ambiguous, and courts are already questioning the knowledge, experience, authority, and reliability of AI within lawsuit arguments on both sides of the aisle.  Google advises content producers who are thinking about AI-generation to learn more about creating reliable and useful people-first content using E-E-A-T. 

AI CAN BE AN AMAZING PRODUCTIVITY TOOL

I’ve spent a lot of time understanding ChatGPT’s features. Recently, I had to use Meta targeting to build out a fitness advertising program that involved geofencing 200+ addresses – address that I had in spreadsheet form. But I needed a text document with the address formatting of “street, city, state, zip code” to bulk-upload these addresses in Meta’s Ad Manager. I asked ChatGPT to reformat for me, and after a short time, it produced a text document that I could copy and paste into Ad Manager to save me countless hours of work. In order to upload captions into my SMM workspace, I’ve also used it to convert text documents into a spreadsheet format, which has also saved me many hours of effort. It’s helped me create a custom Excel spreadsheet that would allow me to take a group of spends and calculate budget shifts based on sales-to-goal assigned to each campaign. And those are only a few uses for ChatGPT on my part.   

AI can be a fantastic tool for think tanks as well. I’ve asked it for different personas on various customer demographics, and it can be extremely helpful, however I have seen it go a little too far on subjective content, so use care and your best judgment. 

CONCLUSION

It’s still too early to draw any firm conclusions about the direction AI will go at this stage. I believe that a large portion of it will be determined by consumer perception, the desire for regulation, and how that will impact AI’s future development. Don’t fall into the trap of using or blindly trusting AI-generated content in the meantime. Take into account these advantages and disadvantages as you assess how AI will affect your productivity and workflow: 

Pros 

Cons 

Efficiency: AI can generate content at a faster pace than humans. 

Lack of Authenticity: AI-generated content may lack the human touch and authenticity that consumers look for when engaging with brands. 

Cost-effective: AI-generated content can save businesses money in the long run by reducing the need for human labor. 

Ethics and Biases: AI algorithms can perpetuate biases and stereotypes if not trained or programmed properly, potentially leading to discriminatory or offensive content. 

Personalization: AI can help businesses personalize content to specific audiences, which can improve engagement and conversion rates. 

Intellectual Property: Ownership and control of the data used to generate AI-generated content, as well as the content itself, can be complex and raise legal concerns. 

Accuracy: AI can analyze vast amounts of data and produce accurate content that resonates with consumers. 

Quality: While AI can create content quickly and efficiently, it may not always produce high-quality content that resonates with consumers. 

Data analysis: AI can analyze consumer data to identify trends, preferences, and behavior patterns, which can inform marketing strategies. 

Customer privacy: The use of AI in marketing and advertising raises concerns about data privacy and how consumer data is collected, stored, and used. 

Scalability: AI-generated content can be scaled to reach larger audiences and across different channels. 

Brand reputation: Businesses need to ensure that the use of AI in their marketing campaigns aligns with their brand values and does not harm their reputation or cause backlash from consumers.