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The Future of Advertising is Here: How AI is Reshaping the Industry

From personalized experiences to predictive analysis and better contextual ads, discover the transformative power of AI for the future of advertising.
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The Future of Advertising is Here: How AI is Reshaping the Industry

From personalized experiences to predictive analysis and better contextual ads, discover the transformative power of AI for the future of advertising.

It’s no secret that artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the advertising industry—reshaping the way marketers work and driving unprecedented growth. Its ability to mimic human thinking, recognize patterns and make predictions has made it an integral part of our daily lives and business operations.

According to Next MSC, with the global AI market size projected to grow twentyfold by 2030, it's crystal clear that AI's impact on the world is immense. That's up to nearly two trillion U.S. dollars in growth!

In the business world, McKinsey reports that 50% of companies have already implemented AI, particularly in service operations, product development, and marketing.

At Adriel, we understand how AI can help marketers save time and money. We are actively working on introducing new cool AI tools into our marketing dashboard that will help you automate your entire ad operations process and make better decisions. Sign up to our newsletter (scroll to the bottom) to stay in the know!

In this article, we tap into:

  • How far AI has come throughout the years
  • 5 use cases of AI tools in digital marketing
  • Case studies of companies that have successfully used AI for advertising

A new era: how artificial intelligence is shaping the future of advertising

AI in advertising has a rich history, beginning with Alan Turing's exploration of intelligent machines in 1950. Let’s discuss brief highlights that bring us to today’s AI capabilities in advertising.

→ A Brief History 

A high-level concept of the history of AI - created by MidJourney AI - Adriel
A high-level concept of the history of AI - created by MidJourney AI

➡️ 1998: Columbia University introduced the concept of clustering consumer behaviors, leading to personalized recommendations by companies like Amazon, Spotify, Netflix, and Facebook.

➡️ 2013: People started using AI in generating computer-generated articles that summarized sports games, thanks to Yahoo's Wordsmith Platform. 

➡️ 2014: Programmatic ad buying gained popularity, automating manual tasks and making advertising more efficient.

➡️ 2015: Google's RankBrain improved search results by interpreting user intent, benefiting both consumers and advertisers. The rise of virtual assistant devices in 2016 offered new advertising opportunities, while AI-powered chatbots automated customer support.

➡️ Today: AI continues to transform advertising with advanced targeting, personalization, and automation capabilities. As the world gets even more digitized, the adoption of AI technology in advertising is only going to grow, allowing marketers to do more with less.

How AI is Upending the Digital Advertising Ecosystem

To drive results and save resources, marketers are using AI to carefully target niche demographics, generate ad creatives, and optimize ad campaigns based on accurate insights. They’re also using contextual advertising and behavioral targeting powered by AI and data science to get the right ads in front of the right people.

In Deloitte’s State of AI in the Enterprise, 3rd Edition, 26% of the people surveyed and 45% of AI adopters agree that AI has enabled them to gain a significant advantage over their competitors.

So, it’s no surprise industry behemoths are making significant investments in AI in advertising. Meta, for example, which was all about the metaverse in 2022 seems to have shifted to AI less than a year later.

Meanwhile, others are actively building entire adverts with AI. Check out this incredible Coca-Cola ad:

This LinkedIn post garnered 1000+ likes and 100 comments, with one user commenting:

“This use of AI is a validation by the biggest brand in the world that AI has the power to quintessentially lower the economics of advertising and distribute creativity more evenly making the world a more flat and level playing field. Creativity existed, but economics needed the solution and here it is!”

Kamran Iqbal, Founder-Curator at Global Shapers Hub

But perhaps the most inspiring AI ad in 2023 was Orange’s FIFA Women’s World Cup ad. Beautifully executed, this ad shines a spotlight on sexism in soccer and urges that women’s soccer can be just as exciting, and talented, as men’s. 

The ad starts off by splicing together exciting moments from French men’s national soccer team, but shocks everyone with this:

“Only les Bleus can give us these emotions,” words on the screen read, referring to the nickname for the French men’s national team. “But that’s not them you’ve just seen.”

You can watch the ad here:

We are finally so close to a more efficient ad industry powered by AI. The buzz is so exciting that digital marketing experts are making bold predictions:

A screenshot of a post on Twitter by Maxwell Finn - Adriel
Maxwell Finn on Twitter - digital marketing expert in Facebook and TikTok ads

Such a paradigm shift, we believe, will be driven by the top six benefits of AI advertising:

  • It creates more relevant ad experiences for your audience, strengthening relations with your brand
  • AI-driven audience segmentation ensures targeted content delivery, maximizing engagement and conversions
  • AI-optimized online ads increase conversion rates and maximize return on ad spend (ROAS)
  • AI-powered interactive experiences enhance customer satisfaction and engagement
  • AI-driven decision-making improves advertising effectiveness and enhances ROI
  • Measurement and analytics enable data-driven insights for optimizing campaign success and reducing waste

Now, let’s look at five main ways AI is impacting the industry. 

5 AI in Advertising Trends in 2024

AI is helping advertisers drive deeper connections, outperform competitors, maximize engagement, and achieve remarkable ROI. Also, vendors are incorporating AI features in ad tech, making it even more accessible to ad agencies and everyday users. Here’s how:

1. AI ad generation

A collection of ads created by AI - Adriel

If you’re on the creative team at an agency or a brand, you probably spend dozens of hours creating and testing different versions of messaging and ads on different channels.

AI can eliminate these creative bottlenecks. With AI, you can generate multiple versions of ad copy and even images with different backgrounds and styles in minutes.

However, most AI ad generation tools in the market are mere ChatGPT-wrappers, which results in awkward and low-quality digital ads. For these tools to be widely accepted by the advertising industry in 2024, the accuracy and aesthetics of ads generated must improve.

Recognizing this gap, we developed AdGen AI, leveraging advanced Generative AI models like BLIP2, Rembg, and ControlNet, and enriched it with data from millions of digital ads created by marketers. The result is more accurate, refined, and audience-targeted ads. Check out some examples here.

2. Programmatic creative

We’re all familiar with “programmatic advertising”: the automatic buying and selling of ad spaces. But what if you could also automate the design and deployment of the actual ads?

That’s what programmatic creative does. 

Instead of manually creating an ad for every potential audience and ad placement, programmatic creative tools produce multiple ad versions based on data inputs (your website URL, tone and voice guides, etc.). This means automatically adjusting ad copy, visuals, call-to-actions, and formats depending on the audience segment or ad platform. 

And once you're satisfied with the quality of ads, you can directly publish them on different advertising platforms in just one click. 

This means marketers can put the entire advertising process on auto-pilot, and just focus on strategic direction and decision-making.

3. Ad personalization

Since privacy regulations are phasing out third-party cookies, advertisers actively leverage alternative data sources and advanced algorithms to enhance ad personalization.

By analyzing user behavior, preferences, and contextual information, AI empowers advertisers to deliver highly tailored and relevant ads to their target audience.

“I’m really excited about the recent advancements in GPT technology and language and image creation models. They have so many applications that we haven’t even considered yet. The potential is huge.

A significant part of our clients’ work are those standard and repetitive tasks that need to be typed out, like creating ads. The fact that they can be automated and made easier is incredibly fascinating.”

Kevin Autin Martineau, Machine Learning Engineer at Adriel

4. Predictive analytics

AI-powered predictive analytics revolutionizes the ad space by forecasting trends in the advertising and marketing automation landscape, customer behavior, and ad campaign outcomes based on historical data combined with statistical modeling. 

This type of analysis empowers marketers to make more accurate and timely decisions, A/B test creatives and messaging, adjust ad spend, and optimize future campaigns based on the strategies that worked in the past. If you're a marketing agency, you should be able to do all this on your  agency dashboard. If you're a brand, this CMO dashboard supports these features.

At Adriel, we are actively working on an AI-based data analysis tool that will analyze all the marketing data and creatives on your marketing dashboard and provide insights that human marketers might have missed. 

“Marketers and agencies are always busy day, night, and weekends. AI can automate much of the manual work, freeing up time and energy for more creative pursuits.

Our aim with Adriel’s AI features and tools is not to replace marketers, but rather to help them gain more time and energy so that they do the real human marketer's job that cannot really be replaced by AI. ”

Sophie Eom, CEO and Co-Founder of Adriel

5. Ad campaign optimization

AI is your best friend in optimizing your ad campaigns for higher ROAS due to its ability to analyze massive volumes of data in seconds and automatically reallocate budgets based on pre-set commands.

This proactive approach means you won’t have to waste another dollar on flopping campaigns while getting the most out of your highest performing ones. 

For example, Adriel’s Marketing Mix Optimizer (soon to be launched!) will put all your cross-platform campaigns into a pool and optimize them against your KPI of choice within a defined budget.

Real-World Examples of AI Use in the Digital Marketing and Advertising Industry

Companies around the world are winning with AI and machine learning technology in their marketing and advertising efforts. Here are some of them:

1. McDonald’s

McDonald's mobile app showing “discover your deal” - Adriel
McDonald's

McDonald's partnered with IBM Watson Advertising to generate excitement and awareness for their limited-time McCafe specialty coffee offerings. The goal was to increase engagement, drive in-store purchases, and measure foot traffic.

They utilized high-impact branded backgrounds and native photos in The Weather Channel mobile app to capture users' attention seamlessly. Leveraging IBM Watson Advertising's first-party data, McDonald's targeted millennials who frequent QSR breakfast-style diners, with a specific focus on women aged 18-49.

The results were impressive, with the ads garnering approximately 5 million impressions. They achieved a cost per visit that was 168% more efficient than category benchmarks, while their mobile branded backgrounds achieved a click-through rate of 0.71%--25% higher than the benchmark.

2. Amazon

Amazon frequently bought together and what customers buy for smart watches - Adriel
Amazon leverages big data to curate “Frequently bought together”

Amazon leveraged the power of big data to revolutionize personalized recommendations and pricing optimization.

By analyzing data from 200 million customer accounts and hosting over 1 billion GB of data on 1.4 million servers, Amazon implemented data-driven strategies to curate a tailored shopping experience.

Their recommendation algorithms incorporated factors like purchase history, browsing behavior, and social media mentions to offer customers personalized product suggestions, leading to additional revenue and increased customer satisfaction.

Amazon also used dynamic pricing to stay competitive in the market. They constantly monitored data from various sources, such as customer activity, competitor pricing, and order history to adjust product prices every 10 minutes. 

This dynamic pricing strategy allowed them to attract buyers with the perception of offering the best prices overall, ensuring profitability while maintaining customer loyalty. 

3. SBT

SBT, a Brazilian broadcaster, successfully utilized artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to enhance its social media performance.

Facing the challenge of decentralized content posting across various platforms, SBT implemented AI-powered marketing automation technology. This allowed the team to align their social media output, automate workflows, and optimize their content strategy for improved reach, visibility, and engagement.

With AI-driven recommendations and real-time trend data, SBT determined the best time to share content, leveraging audience insights and Facebook's dynamic algorithm.

The continuous analysis and computation of share performance enabled SBT to identify optimal posting times and adjust them based on the latest data. As a result, SBT observed significant improvements, including increased daily clicks, organic impressions, and page views from platforms like Facebook and Twitter.

Successfully ride the wave of AI-powered digital advertising with Adriel

Adriel's adops lifecycle - Adriel
Adriel's adops lifecycle

There is no doubt that artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the advertising market. But we believe that these AI tools are to help people, not replace them. At Adriel, we’re working on crafting AI solutions at every stage of your ad operations lifecycle so you can free up your time and make data-driven decisions. Sign up to our newsletter so you’ll be the first to know when they launch!

Book a demo and experience powerful data visualization and insights like never before.

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