At the start of this year we saw big tech entrench AI into their platforms and agencies took a collective deep breath. Google’s Gemini integrated into search ads and powered functions like audience expansion for brands looking to build out their first party data lakes. Google execs at January’s IAB conference assured us all that AI was just an enabler.
At this stage AI was mostly seen in ad-tech but it wasn’t just the global platforms that were deploying it. Innovators like Mutinex were receiving funding to expand out of Australia to take on the world with AI driven marketing mix modelling.
In March, Ad Age announced ChatGPT’s new brand integration had brought commerce to AI and the industry realised AI wasn’t just about saving money, it was about making it too. But then, Sora came to be and the hysteria reached new levels with creative appraisals of AI generated films like this. The creators said “As great as Sora is at generating things that appear real – what excites us is its ability to make things that are totally surreal.”
By April, Linkedin was still cluttered with long lists of AI models for various use cases. Curating AI tools for marketers, like this, dominated feeds and fed our overwhelming sense of dread at the task of keeping up.
Researcher Janelle Ward led a discussion over so-called “synthetic” research and identified opinions split three ways on how AI was impacting the field. Those who are willing to test it like any other tool. Some who reject it outright — pointing to the technology’s relative immaturity. And those who simply point out that user research can’t be done without, well… users.
Generated by Springboards.ai (asylum spark)
AI desk research tool Waldo beefed up its customer base, promising to make us experts in seconds. It’s designed to help agencies plough through the insights gathering stage of a pitch, look at brand sentiment and define strategy. Synthesising research remains to my mind at least, one of the most relevant use cases for marketers.
In June, Forrester reported that by 2030, 7.5% of ad agency jobs would be replaced by AI. Errr, I thought it was an enabler? And even Google was under attack from Perplexity’s personalised AI search – according to Forbes, it’s like Wikipedia and ChatGPT had a baby. That explains the name at least!
At this time, a number of dedicated AI agencies began to emerge with sometimes dubious time saving propositions. Every corner of adland was being disrupted, even the lovely people of New Zealand began eating their own tail.
The hysteria was growing as the industry flatlined and client side marketers and expensive senior creative talent were chopped in response to reduced client spending, in-housing and a majority held view that brands could entrust influencers and MidJourney to produce ‘content’ nobody really cared for but which met the minimum requirement. What could possibly go wrong?
Cannes subjected rosé drinkers to even more AI themed content than the previous year as it became the place for new feature and investment announcements as nicely summed up by this Digiday article:
Platforms: Meta announced a new chatbot for Messenger, and a new API for content management on Threads. Meanwhile, AI products were announced by Reddit, Yahoo and Spotify. TikTok used the week to debut a way to make ads with AI avatar influencers, while Adobe announced a new partnership to let Adobe Express users create AI-generated content for TikTok using TikTok’s library of commercially available music.
Agencies: Havas used the week to unveil a new “Converged” strategy for the agency focused on creativity and personalization that includes a €400 million investment in a new group-wide “operating system.” News from WPP included the launch of a new AI-enabled production studio with Nvidia and a separate B2B-focused platform in partnership with IBM’s Watsonx. Meanwhile, IPG’s new deal with Disney uses AI for live sports advertising and uses Disney’s own AI-powered “Magic Words” platform to identify events and emotions for ad placements.
Ad tech and martech: Zeta Global formed a new partnership with Amazon’s Bedrock platform to improve the use of creative AI agents that help marketers have more control and customization with automated content production.
Notably, for all the in-housing going on, very few brands were showcasing their AI achievements. Those that did, leaned heavily into ‘potential’, perhaps highlighting the lack of creativity in the outcomes of deploying AI.
July… and the Drum reported on how, not to be outdone by the braggers in Cannes, 7 major agencies were all using AI extensively. Naturally, many were disclosing they’d been using AI for years – of course they had.
August saw Leonardo.ai bought by Canva and the emergence of more new tools for agencies to use AI for not just asset creation but creative thinking. Springboards.ai promises to combine agency intuition & experience with the speed of artificial intelligence. It was demo’d at SXSW Sydney. European rival Seenapse.ai was bold enough to test their creative output against ChatGPT using a prompt to generate ideas that “strike people as clever, unusual, interesting, uncommon, humorous, innovative, or different. The responses were scored based on originality and quality with Seenapse significantly outperforming ChatGPT.
In September, Five by Five conducted one of the industry’s first experiments to pit AI against a human creative team on a live client brief. Seven hours after being briefed, the two ‘teams’ presented in front of a panel and live audience. Watch the two minute summary here.
It proved the popularity of human pitch theatre and demonstrated the current strengths of AI rest more in the mid to lower funnel than in top of funnel activity. Tom Dowuona-Hyde did a fantastic job of showing how his new venture Redbaez can deliver creative at scale. The client bought an idea from each team and asked for redactions in the video to keep them from competitors. This one day sprint was described by the client as a “phenomenal use of 7 hours” and Five by Five now offer it as a product.
Into Q4 and two high profile examples of AI’s impact catch the eye of marketers itching for a bit more Linkedin outrage. The suggestion that AI was to blame for the Mattel / Wicked packaging mistake was shut down by Mattel’s Director of Global Brand Communications.
But the very fact this rumour gathered so much momentum perhaps reveals just how much we’re hoping the flaws in AI are exposed and are perpetuated. But the baying mob weren’t to be denied as Coca-Cola launched their AI generated television commercial for the holiday season. Six-fingered Santa was a rather sad aberration and came about a year after Coke’s first AI efforts – a new drink called Y3000 co-created with Stable Diffusion. The accompanying mobile experience is no longer live but maybe that’s ok. Maybe what we need is to keep experimenting.
If 2024 is known as the year AI broke advertising, I hope it’s because we realised that over the course of twelve fast months, we gave permission to ourselves to be brave and risk looking a little bit foolish.
Thankfully, AI is helping us invent new medicines and solve societal problems far beyond the efficiency or effectiveness of advertising. We get to play with it and use it to help communicate all that progress to diverse audiences. Audiences, we have a duty to keep curious and engaged in the stories we tell. Artificial intelligence won’t always be able to add value, but we have a better relationship with it now than we did a year ago.
Matt Lawton is CMO of Five by Five Global.
Disclosure: Five by Five subscribes to Springboards.ai.
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