Brought to You By ... Generative AI

I’ve always been attracted to ads.

I paid rapt attention to TV commercials, memorized radio jingles and lingered over print ads in newspapers and magazines.

The best ones impressed me with their style, cleverness, brevity and charm.

A fleeting idea designed to persuade.

Ads shaped my appreciation of pop culture almost as much as the shows themselves.

So you can imagine how I felt watching Mad Men.

But that excitement didn’t translate to online ads.

Seeming endless pre-roll videos you can’t skip, but desperately want to. Pop-ups that disrupt the story you’re reading if you scroll the wrong way. Ads airline companies make you sit through when you just want to watch an in-flight movie or show.

So why don’t they work?

After all, they’re supposed to be targeted and relevant to your interests and needs. At least, that’s the story publishers tell brands.

Because the copy's often too literal and lacks creativity and pizzazz.

Sure, digital ads may surprise you. But it’s not in a positive way.

They demand your attention like a buzzing hornet you wish would go away.

The Shape of Advertising 3.0

And now, we’re about to usher in advertising 3.0, brought to you by the folks who make generative AI.

How will that change marketing copy and design?

If current chatbot output is any indication, the dullness quotient we’re used to ignoring could be turned up even more.

Or maybe personalized AI ads will catch our attention with their weirdness and visual sheen.

What about AI calls to action? Will they be subtle and passive aggressive? Or will they become like a stubborn know it all who refuses to give up on an idea once they have it in their head?

As chatbots evolve into AI agents that are by your side at every turn, they’ll swallow up more of your data, know exactly how you’re feeling at a given moment in time and which buttons to push to make you react the way they want.?

Perhaps they'll pretend to be your digital BFF, as they compliment and cajole you into credit card submission.

And if they don’t disclose who they represent or that a message was sponsored, we won’t know what hit us and we’ll continue to come back for more.

Louis Rosenberg wrote about AI ad manipulation and its dangers in a recent Future of Marketing Institute newsletter.

Will Copywriters and Designers Even Have a Chance?

As a writer, that question is on my mind a lot.

Only time will tell whether AI will do the heavy lifting or if a human-led AI collaboration will be the way. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic.

That is, if we can open our minds to conceptual thinking that is well beyond what we currently conceive.

Perhaps even use AI as a tool to get us to push our own boundaries. ?

Imagine if you lived in late Victorian England and had a successful poster and printing business. One day, you happened to see a 20 second kinetoscope. Would you have been able to dream up a world where video was a powerful mode of communication? And posters, while still useful, didn’t have the impact they once had??

That’s the scale of imagination marketing needs today.?

If I can paraphrase Star Trek, we need to boldly go where no ad has gone before.

How do you do that?

Here are three strategies to get you started:

1. Think of ads as interactive conversations. A dialog between your customer and brand. How can you predict the flow of the conversation and make it feel natural and relevant but not big-brother creepy? ?How can you help shape the interaction so it’s fair and the house—er, brand —doesn’t always win. Perhaps PR and two-way symmetrical communications—a back and forth conversation where both parties push and pull—could be a good theory to build on.
2. Reimagine the sizzle factor. Marshall McLuhan said, ‘the medium is the message’, and we need to reinvent both. How could augmented reality treat your customers to a novel and memorable experience every time they shop? Could natural landscapes or the distant horizon become a new screen, or will that anger too many people who want brands to leave nature alone? Will home robots offer discounts if you let them project ads on your walls? This is your opportunity to venture beyond existing styles and formats and redefine persuasion. And maybe, it’s an opportunity to brainstorm with a bot.
3. Brush up on your ethics. Or you could risk eroding trust if your ads cross the line. That means being open about when and what you’re selling. Letting people know. Maybe chatbots should be branded or wear an identifiable uniform, like a salesclerk. In fact, retail clerks could be a good model to follow. Because customers understand their motives and keep their guards up, knowing ta clerk's role is help and sell.

Sponsored Chat and Adbots … Coming Soon

Like social media, the tech companies that developed generative AI tools need a business model and that usually involves some form of paid media.

So when can you expect to see the first wave of AI chatbot ads?

The short answer is … very soon.

Search engine Perplexity.ai announced they’re going to let brands sponsor ‘follow up questions’ in consumer chats. And they’ll start to compensate publishers whose content shows up in results.

Will branded answers take precedence over organic ones? Will brand mentions appear quietly in chats without attribution? Could AI images feature subtle or not so subtle product placement? There are many ways this could go.

Advertising on chatbots is what I talk about in this week’s Digital Marketing Trends video.

Check it out and let me know what you think.

Follow Me on LinkedIn

Well, that's the end of the pitch known as issue #106.

I'm writing from Carpinteria, California, where I'm busy recording two new LinkedIn Learning courses. (More on that soon.)

Thank you to all of you who follow me and subscribe, read, comment and share this newsletter! It's great having all of you along for the ride.

This newsletter comes out every two weeks. But between issues, I share shorter daily posts with my take on digital marketing and the latest on generative AI. It's another way to stay on top of the trends.

And while you're at it, follow the Future of Marketing Institute, too. Every day we post content and perspectives on where we may be heading and what the shift might mean.

Let me know if you have questions about any of the videos in Digital Marketing Trends, or my other LinkedIn Learning courses. You can also visit my website and send a message or a question.

How do you feel about AI ads? What will it take for you to tune into them? Or tune out. Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

And now it's time to return to your regularly scheduled life. See you in a couple of weeks!

Note: All the content in this post was written by a human—me and not Martin-bot. The secret agent image was generated by ChatGPT.