“The misconception in my mind is that you can ignore [generative AI],” Vincent Yates, chief data scientist of consulting firm Credera, said at Advertising Week New York 2023.
Generative AI use is growing rapidly, and even those ignoring it may be using it in the workplace before they realize. Of the 100.1 million people in the US who will use generative AI next year, 64.7% will use it at work, according to our forecast.
Marketers must adapt to generative AI use. “2025 is the year that you need to be ready to deploy your generative AI skills as part of your job,” said Jay Pattisall, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester. During that time, focus on upskilling.
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Create a vision. Marketing teams will feel most comfortable using AI if companies have a clear understanding of how generative AI will help them, especially as anxieties run high about the tech replacing jobs.
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Create a playbook. That doesn’t just mean recording all prompts, though marketers should be doing that too, said Pattisall. Creating clear delineation of what constitutes effective, ethical generative AI use is also necessary.
Look to the companies that are already putting generative AI to work.
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Personalize: Instacart uses natural language processing in its Ask Instacart search. A user can type in something like “weeklong meal plan for a family of four on a $200 budget” and be given a personalized shopping list. The future for this—personalized storefronts based on your shopping experience and what you bought—presents a huge ad opportunity for targeting the right consumers with the right products, said Tim Castelli, vice president of global advertising sales at Instacart.
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Localize: Generative AI can localize campaigns sent from global teams, customizing features like sports teams, weather, and names of places in seconds, said Yates.
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Organize: eBay Ads allows sellers to sift through thousands of their listings using natural language chat functionality, said Alex Kazim, vice president and general manager of global advertising at eBay. Rather than manually selecting among their listings for something like white sneakers to promote via ads, a lister can use generative AI to tell the system to find all white sneakers and create a campaign.
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