The Creative Edge in 2024 & Beyond - Leveraging AI in Marketing
Automated Creative founder Tom Ollerton recently appeared as a guest on the Winning with AI podcast to discuss the intersection of data, creativity and AI in marketing.
Given AC’s mission to stop wasted ad spend through creative optimisation, Tom offered key insights into AI trends in 2024.
Here are 3 key takeaways from the conversation with Josh Harris.
1. Data is key to effective creative
Tom noted, "historically, advertising has never had a feedback loop." By optimising over 6 billion impressions, Automated Creative has proven that brands can achieve up to a 17% increase in the effectiveness of their media spend. This unlocks creative value and improves internal processes at the same time.
While everyone is busy using technology, machine learning, and AI to do things quicker and cheaper, at AC, we’ve been asking the question of how we can make advertising better. And it starts with understanding why creative performs well - by harnessing the power of AI to iterate and analyse huge sets of data, tested with end consumers.
2. AI generated content will become a new net zero
Interviewing Asahi Europe & International’s CMO, Grant McKenzie, on the Shiny New Object Podcast, Tom came across one of his new favourite quotes: “If you’re not better than AI, then I don’t need you.” In a world where increasingly everyone can produce lots of content quickly with AI, we run the risk of everyone’s ads eventually looking the same. “The opportunity is to ask what we can do differently that we couldn’t do before.” Automating the “basic” stuff and allowing truly creative people to focus on the next big thing will be key for success in marketing.
3. “Set & forget” ads are a thing of the past
Brands can no longer afford to just send one static ad into the market and hope it works. However, a staggering 30% of marketers don’t engage in live creative optimisation, as we’ve found when researching for a recent report. What’s more, about 20% of brands don’t even have access to a visual representation of how their campaigns are performing. So, a lot of creative is going out from marketing departments, but not a lot of information is coming back. However, the future trend Tom is predicting is that the industry will realise how much it’s missing out on and will turn to using data and live optimisation, or risk getting left behind by those who do.
From 2024 onwards, we expect that AI-powered marketing will enable brands to extract so much more from their creative, realising how they can make their ads better, more personalised, more interactive, and more attuned to what their audience is looking for (as opposed to just faster and cheaper).
And there’s more we can expect from the evolution of advertising and AI - from fully immersive experiences to capitalising on contexts and using AI to improve workplace interactions.
Find out more details by listening to the full podcast here.
And you can read about the full power of AI in advertising or check out whether there’s a “dark side” to AI over on our blog.