Artificial intelligence (AI) has soared back into the spotlight. Although still only used by 15% of UK businesses, its rising real-world applications are sparking global attention; most obviously the lightning fast evolution of generative AI, in the form of smart bots such as ChatGPT and rival technology Bard, but also wider video and image creation tools capable of producing content so convincing, it appears real.
From a marketing standpoint, this technology has sparked debate around its impact on creative effectiveness and ability to function fully independently. While generative AI’s capabilities can be leveraged to boost campaign scale, ultimately, performance optimisation relies on effectiveness, not scalability; the need to deliver quality before quantity.
For the majority of businesses that are yet to build the technology into their operations, they must consider that while generative AI will support immediate resourcing and content generation needs, for long term marketing success, analytical AI must also be integrated into content flows for ultimate effectiveness.
Generative AI’s efficiency vs AI-powered effectiveness
Alejandro-e-Rodriguez Sanchez
Content creation is often a laborious process, where delivery on the original vision isn’t always guaranteed, particularly for images and videos. So, the speed of Generative AI can be incredibly useful for companies that lack the resources to produce high volumes of content for scaled campaigns.
In reality, however, generative AI requires significant human input to ensure its creative production is accurate and relevant for target audiences. While generative AI still lacks the nuance and understanding achieved by a human, the technology works efficiently as an accelerator or supporter of creative design, and can be cleverly leveraged as the foundation to build upon.
To capitalise on this base of volume-focused, content production though, marketers must still successfully capture audience attention and ensure advertising content drives meaningful impact for brands. This calls for carefully managed marketing planning, execution, and optimisation, and to maximise effectiveness, creative data is the key.
Unlocking creative effectiveness with creative data and a human touch
Richard Horvath
Understanding what campaign creative works for specific audience segments and platforms is crucial to enhance in-the-moment engagement. Amid the ongoing decline of third-party cookies, obtaining accurate insights around how and why individuals are engaging with ads has become increasingly difficult.
This is where analytical AI technologies can offer additional support, generating unique, first-party insights by reviewing specific nuances within campaign creative. Captured by assessing the impact of creative elements on an audience, creative data can then help marketers build a more complete picture of consumer preferences to inform their content decision making, all based on individual, anonymised first-party data.
Similarly to generative AI, on its own, this raw data isn’t enough, and human teams are required to maximise creative data’s potential. Providing context to overall performance data, these human decisions inform the AI, and help to uplevel strategic, actionable insights - moving them from banal machine insights like “red is better than blue” to truly strategic insights that offer a view into the mind of the consumer.
This AI and human collaboration strengthens the decision-making process allowing marketers to generate scaled, tailored and effective creative content with an extra layer of differentiation.
Generative AI is a starting point for marketing efficiency, and can be leveraged to fast-track the content creation process. But, it must be supported by real-time, AI-powered creative analytics tools, to identify key creative elements that drive marketing performance.
These tools create valuable time for human experts to further scrutinise the results of analysis and implement nuanced and contextual creative. It is this human collaboration with AI tools that provides the opportunity for differentiation in campaigns to achieve continued competitiveness and stand out creatives.
