In An AI Boom, We Still Need the Power of Human Intelligence

New AI marketing developments
Marketers and advertisers can now use generative AI tools to help manage campaigns, and AI offerings and plug-ins have been exploding. Here are just a few of the new developments worth noting:

Meta Advantage – Uses machine learning to automate and optimize campaigns on Meta platforms. Advantage products learn about each individual account and adjust strategies and gather insights in real time. Services can optimize audience identification and segmenting, dial in targeting, creative selection and placement, select where ads are shown, can build an entire campaign automatically and more.

Performance Max – Automation is available through Google Ads, offering AI-powered targeting for Search Ads through their goal-based campaign type. The system helps identify new customers and opportunities across Google’s inventory including YouTube, Search and Gmail. Google notes that companies that use Google AI in general see 35% more conversions on average, and those that tap into Performance Max see 18% more conversions with a similar cost per action.

ChatGPT – The OpenAI project allows users to ask the chatbot-style program questions, and then it will develop answers based on information found on the internet. Some have already started using ChatGPT for content creation. eMarketer notes that the AI program can help with content creating in a few key aspects:

• Ideate – Help with brainstorming and come up with headline options, copy ideas, tone suggestions and more.
• Draft – Plug in parameters and let the AI complete a draft for you.
• Iterate – Ask for different variations of already completed content.
• Test – Use platforms such as AiAdvertising to predict performance before investing marketing spend.

Some firms are already using AI to generate content, with 82% of marketers surveyed saying that content created by AI software lives up to it’s human-generated counterparts.

Get insights – As Google and Meta have already discovered, AI can help glean valuable insights for marketers, reviewing important campaign information quickly and picking out little nuggets worth reviewing. This doesn’t mean that everything delivered by the AI will be actionable, but many data sets will have value.

Clean data – All marketers know, particularly when it comes to lead generation, that the data can get messy. Dirty data such as duplicates, typos, incomplete, inaccurate and other issues can drastically impact getting the best customer records and marketing results. There’s a lot to wade through to get clean data. AI can help, and there are already some Google Sheets extensions that utilize the new tech to swiftly review information. Instead of having a person wade through the data, it can save time and money to ask AI and automation to carry the brunt of this task.

Benefits of AI software in marketing
When it comes to benefits AI delivers. Marketers reported that AI saved them time, helped enhance the user experience, provided better insights, facilitated better personalization, improved data management and a host of other positive outcomes.

The importance of human intelligence
These are extremely exciting and helpful developments. However, each one needs to have a human behind the scenes.

While both Meta and Google campaign assistance and insights are beneficial, there needs to be someone overseeing the process and guiding strategy. It takes a human mind to understand each client’s customers, how to reach varying marketing goals and to know which data sets are significant and which do not provide actionable insights.

When it comes to content creation, AI can only take you so far. It’s critical to remember that there have been concerns about AI delivering inaccurate and false information, so a human will need to check and confirm accuracy of any AI content output. Plus, since AI pulls from already existing content, there is a real risk of plagiarism, which creates both tactical and ethical issues. It would be best to use any content as a base, and research and grow original content from what the AI delivered.

Additionally, AI lacks human experience and sensibility, which can infuse a campaign with creativity and a unique brand voice. Without the human lens, the copy is just copy, it might not speak to the audience on a deeper level. Only a human can take the suggested copy up a notch, connecting with other humans through storytelling, empathy and authenticity.

Harness AI with HI oversight
As AI has jumped to the forefront of marketing, it’s good to remember that there needs to be human oversight. Even with big names like Meta and Google providing AI-supported campaign planning and insights, applying strategy to marketing initiatives is best left to human marketers using machine learning data as the basis of decisions.

Particularly when it comes to content creation, human intelligence will be needed to imbue copy with the necessary voice and emotion to connect with other humans, as well as confirm that the information included is factual and original.

We’re thrilled to be able to use AI to quickly process and sift through data, and to have our human marketing team review the information generated to ensure that our customers’ strategy and message shines through.