AI has become quite the buzzword over the past few years. This rapidly advancing technology category includes large language models (LLMs) that mimic conversations and write code, image generators, data analyzers, and countless other applications used in numerous fields.
AI is advancing particularly quickly in digital advertising, necessitating brands and agencies to keep up with technological advancements, market changes, and AI advertising trends to stay ahead of the curve.
How Is AI Disrupting Advertising?
Advertisers have been taking advantage of AI and machine learning for many years. Since the early days of modern computers in the 1950s and 1960s, marketers have been using computers to formulate the right messages to reach the right audiences. Machine learning, algorithms, and a vast array of software are all tools that marketers have been using to:
- Understand their audience better
- Increase their efficiency
- Optimize their strategies
- Predict customer behaviors
- Create computer-generated content
- Streamline their marketing operations
- Generate a better return on investment in their marketing efforts
These are just a few of the benefits of using AI in advertising. In a sense, AI is disrupting the industry by forcing advertisers to either get on board and start using it or get left in the dust.
Is AI the Future of Advertising?
As in many other industries, AI is revolutionizing the advertising world. Advertisers can connect more closely with their target audience thanks to giant leaps in computational power and machine learning. The unprecedented access advertisers have is helping them reach their target audience with relevant messaging and optimized ads in real time, leading to higher conversion rates, customer engagement, and brand loyalty.
Advertisers are using AI technology to:
- Develop data-driven advertising strategies
- Optimize their ads in real time
- Automate the content creation process
- Generate better product recommendations
- Create finely targeted advertising campaigns
- Enhance their customer segmentation
- Predict consumer behaviors
- Implement dynamic pricing strategies
- Generate CGI influencers and voice assistants
- Analyze sentiment and tailor their messaging accordingly
Brands use AI in many more ways in their advertising strategies and workflows, and new methods and tools are constantly developed. In marketing, AI automation can facilitate efficiency and predictability. Automated tasks can be set up to run autonomously once the initial parameters are set, but even automation needs someone to set up and start the task. AI will not entirely replace human marketers, but the future of advertising will certainly include the wide-scale use of numerous types of AI technologies.
Top 12 AI Advertising Trends to Look Out for in the Upcoming Years
The following advertising trends will be on the rise in the future of marketing. Learn how to make use of the tools below to stay ahead in the advertising world.
1. Programmatic Creative Tools Based on Data Inputs
Programmatic creative tools can create automated ad content based on various inputs. AI can automatically generate data inputs after you plug your website’s URL into the tool’s interface. The inputs can include the copywriting direction, a product description, and the tone and style of your ads.
You can review and edit the inputs and select the type of ad you want to create, such as a Facebook image or a Google search ad. These tools will then automatically generate different variations for headlines, body copy, and calls to action (CTAs).
Just like other ads enhanced with AI, these ads can be quick, automated, and optimized on the fly for maximum performance. AI advertising platforms can facilitate this.
2. Hyper-Personalized Ads
Traditional market segmentation can be broad, targeting large demographics to reach a certain population with generalized messaging. This kind of targeting is archaic and wasteful, akin to throwing everything at a wall to see what sticks. Now, with AI tools, you can reach your target audience at a much more granular level to communicate a personalized message or offer a product that your customers would know and love.
The benefits of ad personalization include:
- Higher click-through rates
- Increased conversion rates
- Customer engagement
- Brand loyalty
These benefits can be derived from ad personalization, provided that your data is accurate and you’re using high-quality technology to process and analyze that data. Of course, be sure to comply with the privacy laws of any jurisdiction where you’re showing your ads and collecting or sharing customers’ data.
3. Predictive Analytics for Customer Behaviors and Ad Outcomes
Tracking consumer behaviors has long been used to predict ad outcomes. Machine learning algorithms can use historical data to forecast customers’ actions to drive more effective ad campaigns. This lets advertisers tailor their messaging to match the interests of their target audience at just the right time, as the ads are optimized using AI in real time.
AI can sort through and analyze patterns in the data, including online activity, purchase history, and ad engagement, to identify buyer personas and predict future customer behaviors. Predicting such behaviors can help advertisers allocate their ad dollars more strategically by targeting consumers more likely to convert with the right message.
Tools such as those in AUDIENCEX’s own AI suite, AUDIENCEX Intelligence (AXi), offer predictive analytics to enable more informed decision-making as well as custom audience modeling to build segments that are more likely to convert.
4. Boosting ROAS With Real-Time Optimization
Software can use AI to optimize ads in real time. This means the ads can dynamically change to deliver a more personal message. Such ads are more likely to lead to clicks, resulting in a better return on ad spend (ROAS).
AI can modify an ad’s content and bidding parameters by using algorithms that look at buyer behaviors, historical ad performance, and general market trends. This way, every ad reaches the correct buyer persona at the ideal time and location, which can increase your conversion and engagement rates, resulting in a better ROAS.
Within our AXi suite, the AXi Optimizer solution leverages custom bidding algorithms at launch as well as an optimization engine that enables campaigns to adapt to performance in real time throughout their lifecycle, finding the right user at the right time on the right channel to drive results.
5. Sentiment Analysis to Adapt Ad Messaging
Tracking and analyzing consumer sentiment is a powerful way to find out exactly how your target audience’s members feel and get into their minds to find out what they want in your product or service. Brands can use social media to find out what their customers are saying about them.
AI tools can scrape the web in places such as YouTube’s comments section, Reddit, and other forums to get an overall feel of the general sentiment about any given topic, including a brand’s public perception, its competitors, and the popularity of certain products, apps, and services.
Keep the public sentiment in mind and adapt your ads accordingly for a higher chance of success. This can help improve your click-through rates and generate more conversions with messages that resonate with your audience.
6. Email Marketing Ad Campaigns Enhanced by Predictive AI
Tools like the aforementioned LLMs, like OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, can write in a believable, conversational tone to produce text, including content for email marketing campaigns. The tone of an email can match whatever would be best for your brand’s style to connect with subscribers.
Beyond doing the writing, AI can enhance your email marketing campaigns with:
- Predictive lead scoring: Figuring out who is most likely to convert and prioritizing those leads for follow-up emails
- Optimal send times: Calculating the optimal time to send an email to each recipient based on open and click-through rates
- Product recommendations: Sorting through past purchase history and ad interactions to suggest relevant products
- Automated email campaigns: Using predictive analytics to trigger emails based on a user’s behavior at the correctly calculated time with the most relevant content
These tools are most effective, of course, when used under supervision of human experts who can modify the prompts to optimize results and provide editing to ensure alignment with brand tone as well as best practices.
7. AI-Enhanced Video Marketing Ads
While AI is useful for formulating plans, analyzing data, and optimizing campaigns, it can also be used in ads. Video production is one area that has seen tremendous growth in generative AI tools, including Midjourney and Stable Diffusion. Even short videos can be made using text-based prompts.
Fully generated images and videos are not the only goal. AI can be used to modify and augment existing images and videos. This can include generating realistic video backgrounds, enhancing quality, upscaling to 4K resolution, or automating the editing process. AI-enhanced videos can also include a virtual CGI spokesperson or AI-generated influencer.
8. Cross-Channel Attribution Handled by AI Models
Cross-channel attribution is about finding the best channels for your ads and seeing where they’re performing best. It tracks conversions across different channels, such as websites, social media platforms, and apps. This helps brands discover which marketing channels are worth investing in for better-performing ads and higher conversion rates.
AI models can sift through the data to optimize your marketing budget. AI can automate this process by analyzing data across different touchpoints in real time. Sophisticated technology can help identify correlations and patterns that human analysts and marketers may have missed.
9. Ad Localization Based on AI Inputs
AI can automatically tailor your messaging to local markets. The content is adapted based on your audience’s location, language, and culture—to fit each location’s general preferences.
Each locale will have its own purchasing trends, buyer behaviors, or social norms, all of which can affect the perception of your ads. AI algorithms can use datasets to optimize your ads based on real-time feedback. The ads can be dynamically adjusted based on the local market trends and the shifting preferences of your local audience, all done in real time using AI-generated inputs.
10. Voice Assistants and the New Shopping Experience
Artificial voice technology has come a long way, providing human-sounding voices that can speak directly to consumers and converse with them. Google Assistant, Siri, and Alexa are some examples of popular AI voice assistants. With these voice assistants, a user speaks a trigger word or phrase, like “Hey Google” or “Hey Siri,” after which a robotic voice will be activated. This voice can then speak to the user and receive commands, such as a request to open an e-commerce app to shop.
Integrating an AI voice assistant gives customers a hands-free way to interact with your brand and make informed purchases. Adding a voice assistant to your arsenal of AI advertising tools can also be a way to deliver a more engaging customer experience.
11. Next-Gen Ads With AI Neuromarketing Insights
Neuromarketing refers to the study of the human mind to help make data-driven advertising decisions based on brainwave activity, skin response, eye tracking, and more. Neurological and physiological insights can help marketers deliver highly relevant ads that better capture the audience’s attention and evoke the desired response.
High-tech hardware and software can image the human brain and use biometric sensors to provide insights into the mind of the typical consumer, including getting a look at the consumer’s subconscious needs and desires, and reactions to stimuli. AI can use this data to help drive decisions on what types of ads are most likely to convert your target audience.
12. Enhanced Understanding of Customer Segments With AI
One of AI’s current strengths is its ability to analyze vast amounts of data. Based on that data, AI can solve problems and recommend solutions. That includes strategizing based on an analysis of customer segments. AI models can “understand” customer segments by looking at data and finding the best marketing strategy for any given segment through pattern recognition and predictive analytics.
AI can analyze customer segments based on:
- Customer preferences
- Customer insights and feedback
- Demographic information
- Psychographic data such as attitudes and interests
- Engagement levels
- Device and technology information
- Behavioral data such as purchase history
The AXi suite provides solutions that rapidly analyze your existing consumer data, while leveraging log-level and historical data as well as fully opted-in, privacy-safe datasets to garner behavioral insights and assist in personalization as well as custom audience modeling.
What Are the Newest and Most Robust AI Tools for Marketers?
Enhancing your digital marketing with AI is getting easier – and more necessary – as new products are released to the public for marketers to use. The list of AI applications that marketers can take advantage of continues to grow.
Some examples include:
- ChatGPT Plus or Enterprise with GPT 4: For text and images
- Jasper: AI writing tool
- Grammarly: An AI-based proofreader
- Surfer SEO: For keyword suggestions
- Sora: An OpenAI tool that generates videos from text prompts
- MurfAI: For voiceovers and voice assistants
New products will continue to be released to the public at a rapid pace as companies work tirelessly to develop the latest and greatest AI tools. Marketers have a steady supply of high-tech tools to use for digital advertising with AI, campaign optimization, personalization, and more. In fact, it can become difficult to navigate the many options in market, which is where a dedicated partner can provide much-needed guidance and support.
Stay Ahead of the Curve on AI With AUDIENCEX
The possibilities for AI’s marketing applications continue to expand as more tools hit the market. As it continues to develop at a breakneck pace, it has become vital for marketers to dedicate the time and resources necessary to stay up to speed – or risk being outpaced by their competition.
Working with a full-service, AI-powered and tech-focused advertising partner like AUDIENCEX can help take that burden off of internal teams at brands and agencies alike. Our dedicated experts work diligently to not only stay on top of AI advancement and new tools but how to successfully integrate them into your omnichannel marketing strategies. With access to our own suite of performance solutions in AXi, as well as expertise in a vast array of additional AI-based tools, we can ensure that this technology is applied strategically and effectively to deliver on the specific objectives of any campaign.
Reach out today if you’d like to speak with a member of our team about how our solutions can help you stay ahead of the curve in your market. With deep industry expertise and experience spanning a wide range of verticals, our teams leverage emergent AI technology, privacy-safe data access, omnichannel media, and tech-enabled creative to deliver holistic strategies that drive tangible results across the entire advertising landscape.