AI Is Coming for Your Marketing Campaigns. What Can Go Wrong?

We’re not doctors, but we feel confident diagnosing most marketers with a chronic case of Shiny Squirrel Syndrome. The latest shiny squirrel they’re chasing: Artificial Intelligence (AI).

AI itself is not new in marketing. It’s been the force behind programmatic advertising for nearly 10 years, bidding on and placing digital ads, but now generative AI is taking things a few steps further, and moving fast. The market for AI in marketing is projected to reach more than $77 billion by 2030.

In a report from Salesforce, slightly more than half of marketers surveyed are already using or experimenting with generative AI. And those are the ones who know they’re using AI. Google and Microsoft are inserting ads into their own AI experiments without giving brands the choice to opt-out.

How AI Is Being Used in Marketing

AI can help marketers save time by quickly crunching data from numerous sources and making decisions that a human can spend hours poring over.

The possibilities for AI in marketing may be endless and everchanging, but here are some of the ways it’s being used today:

1. Creating campaigns

   You’ve probably heard of content creation tools like ChatGPT and Bard. You may have even read some blogs generated by these or similar tools (but not this one). Ads require words and design, and there are AI tools that can design and test ads. AI tools are also being added as an option to use in software like Adobe software, Canva, and HubSpot. From copy to concept to design and implementation, marketing campaigns of all kinds could potentially be created by AI.

2. Data-driven decision-making

   Marketers are drowning in data: there’s data about their customers, social media, campaign performance, ad placement, timing, and more. All this information can lead humans to analysis paralysis.

While one marketer is reviewing all this data, trying to connect the dots and make the right campaign decisions, their competitor is using AI to get a personalized message in front of the right decision-maker in real-time.

This in turn provides even more data and insights that can lead to more personalization and more effective campaigns with improved ROI.

3. Bots

   Love them or hate them, chatbots are here to stay. Many do little more than regurgitate information from the company website. If you use Microsoft’s Bing chatbot, you may have seen an ad pop up in the conversation. AI-powered chatbots have the potential to make more personalized recommendations and recognize when the customer needs to be referred to a human assistant.

4. Social listening and scheduling

   You say eavesdrop, AI says listening. Either way, AI tools can track brand mentions as well as trending topics. Marketers can use this information to tailor campaigns and messaging, and then schedule relevant posts and ads.

AI in Marketing and Ad Fraud: For Better or Worse?

We know that programmatic ad campaigns have fraud rates as high as 50%. And we know that ads placed through programmatic platforms may end up next to misinformation or on made-for-advertising sites (MFAs), which are not desirable and can put a brand’s reputation at risk.

So, does more AI mean we should expect more ad fraud? That remains to be seen, but we may expect to see different types of ad fraud.

If AI can be used to create better-designed, more personalized ads, what’s to stop it from creating fraudulent ads? We’ve already seen click-bait ads with a celebrity photo and a shocking (fake) headline about their personal life or their next career move. Most recently, a deepfake video of Joy Reid supposedly touting diet gummies on CNN appeared on Facebook. Something similar could happen to any brand; a video of a CEO or an audio clip from a real ad could be altered to create an ad for the competition or make a false claim. AI makes it a lot easier to create these fake messages and harm your brand’s reputation.

If you’re using AI to create legitimate ad campaigns, can you be assured that a remarkably similar ad won’t be created for a competitor or used to generate false clicks or leads?

Other Issues With AI in Marketing

While AI can leverage various data points to create more personalized ad campaigns, the use of that data raises privacy and data security concerns. There is also the ethical risk that these personalized ads can be too persuasive and manipulative.

If too many advertisers rely on AI to create their ads, is there a risk that all brands will start to look alike, making it more difficult to differentiate and build customer loyalty? Are there copyright issues to consider?

An AI in Marketing Reality Check

We’ve looked at some of the things that AI can do to boost marketing efforts, as well as some of the concerns marketers should consider before diving into the deep end of the AI pool.

Remember that same Salesforce survey that revealed more than half of marketers are at least experimenting with generative AI? It also revealed that more than one-third of marketers don’t know how to effectively use it; even more don’t know how to safely use it. That means few marketers may be using new AI tools anytime soon, or it could result in unskilled marketers setting themselves and their campaigns up for failure.

Many marketers are already using AI in programmatic ad buys, keyword research, automating email campaigns, and chatbots. If AI is working well for you in these areas, you may be ready to take the next step. If they’re not working well, consider getting these areas in order before you take on a new challenge.

If you’re a marketer chomping at the bit to further incorporate AI into your marketing efforts, consider what you may be losing in the rush to reduce costs, automate tasks, and streamline processes. It’s always tempting to chase the shiny squirrel but don’t let it blind you to the importance of the humans involved. Yes, AI can finally help you harness all that data, but AI can’t find the story in the data and give it context. At least not yet.

Using AI to Fight Ad Fraud in Marketing Campaigns

AI has certainly contributed to ad fraud in the form of malicious bots that generate invalid traffic and fake clicks, as well as increase ad spend. But is AI an effective tool to also fight the bad traffic it creates? Not quite yet.

We have built a solution that leverages machine learning to identify invalid traffic, detect ad fraud, and help our clients identify and stop it in real-time.

We combine machine learning with decades of human expertise to create a solution that is 99.999% effective when marking a visitor as fraud. We talk to our clients to get feedback and gauge satisfaction. We offer ongoing training and reviews, and our clients have access to unlimited human support.

While no other solution today can compete with Anura’s accuracy, utilizing AI in the future is not out of the question. The pace at which AI is advancing is impressive and there is always the opportunity for the advancement of Anura’s solution in order to keep up with the marketplace.

For now, the fight with bad traffic continues and Anura is here to stop ad fraud to improve your marketing efforts. Let us show you how the latter is done with a free 15-day free trial.