2025 And AI: What We Like And Don’t Like About It.

Is AI good or bad for digital advertising? Regardless of how we are adapting to AI, we need to know that it is here to stay. In many arenas AI is considered a "good thing" because it can significantly improve efficiency by automating tasks, using data to enhance decision-making, personalizing customer experiences, and minimizing human error. These automations are supposed to lead to better outcomes in various fields like healthcare, finance, and manufacturing. But… it can also remove the human element, which is necessary when dealing with human consumers. 

Key benefits of AI:

• AI can automate routine tasks, freeing up human time for more complex work. 

• AI can analyze large datasets quickly to identify patterns and trends, leading to better informed decisions. 

• AI-powered systems can personalize customer interactions and provide efficient support. 

• AI can reduce staff costs. 

AI algorithms can detect potential errors and make corrections in real-time, reducing human mistakes.

In 2025, it is predicted that AI will manage a good percentage of digital marketing campaigns. AI is changing the process for businesses connecting with their potential clients/customers.

AI information comes from many different sources including:

• Web scraping

• Public data

• Government or university data

• County data

• Company data

• Third party vendors

PRO: AI writing tools can generate tailored content quickly. It’s fast!

CON: AI writing tools can lack the human element and therefore can be inaccurate.

AI and SEO

The information can come from the following:

• Internet

• SERPs (search engine result pages)

• Queries

• Website content

• Social media

PRO: AI can optimize content from consumer searches and perceived intent. It does this by analyzing top-ranking pages and recommending keywords that it believes will help boost visibility.

CON: Without human reasoning, AI can get it wrong. This can cause non-useful traffic.

AI Chatbots and Automated Responses

This is done through algorithms that understand the language uses (called NLP – Natural Language Processing. AI does this by:

• Interpreting intent

• Analyzing keywords

• Interpreting previous interactions

• Interpreting previous context

PRO: AI chatbots can handle inquiries 100% of the time. This can improve response times and customer satisfaction. Statistics show that nearly 70% of customers prefer chatbots for quick interactions.

CON: Customers can experience frustration when they can’t get to a human to ask a specific question.

Predictive Analytics for Customer Behavior

Predictive Analytics attempts to predict customer behavior by:

• Utilizing browsing behavior

• Customer feedback

• Purchase history

• Social media

• Correlations between demographics, time of year, weather, current events and customer behavior.

• AI can try to interpret emotional tone of texts, reviews, social media

• Real time chatbots

PRO: AI algorithms can analyze customer data to predict consumer behaviors in the future. This helps businesses plan their marketing strategies with real-time data.

CON: AI and algorithms can’t always accurately predict human behavior. There are human factors that AI can’t anticipate such as changing moods, relationships, current events, all which can influence purchasing patterns.

Predicting Personalized Customer Experiences

PRO: AI tries to anticipate the customer experiences which can reduce the time from inquiry to final purchase. A great example that you likely experience yourself is an online music platform (like Spotify or Pandora) that customizes your playlist based on what you listen to. AI will also try to predict what you “may” like.

CON: Because AI is not human it can incorrectly personalize the user’s experience. When this happens, it can lead to users mistrusting and negatively perceiving the brand that is using AI.

In addition:

• AI can make a person feel like their privacy has been invaded

• AI can cause ethical concerns

• AI can get it wrong, causing incorrect patterns

AI And Automated Ad Buying

PRO: Search engines like Google and Bing are fast promoting automated ad buying. It is quickly being touted as enhancing efficiently in ad placement.

CON: Again, automated AI ad buying can lack human insight that is necessary to make correct decisions. It can also:

• Limit creativity

• Over rely on data

• Cause concern by the consumer for privacy violations and ethical use of consumer information

• Wrongly interpret information causing more incorrect patterns

AI-Powered Audience Segmentation

PRO: AI can refine audience segmentation for better ad targeting. Many large brands use AI to analyze user data to reach their customers. Moving forward, AI will likely optimize audience targeting more and more with the thought it will improve conversion rates. Correctly or incorrectly, AI can do what is called predictive modeling. It is identifying patterns and predicting future customer behavior.

CON: AI-powered audience segmentation has the potential to rely too much on algorithms that do not fully grasp subtle human insights. This can create:

• Narrowly defined audiences without considering human intuition to properly understand consumer behavior.

• Not realizing that customers don’t care about your product; they care about the problem your product solves.

Real-time Bid Optimization

PRO: AI is great for real-time bid optimization. By quickly adjusting bids based on performance, businesses can maximize their ROI. Through research it has been revealed that AI-driven bidding strategies can increase campaign efficiency by up to 50%.

CON: This works assuming you have unlimited funds, accurate data, and are OK with having limited control. If data is incomplete or inaccurate, the optimization may be wrong. AI can also focus on short term goals which underprioritizes long-term goals. Also, if consumer behavior changes quickly, AI may not “get the memo” in time.

• Data privacy issues

• Real time bid optimization can share users’ data across various ad exchanges.

• User privacy sharing can potentially misuse sensitive information.

• Bot traffic is fast and hard to monitor, which may waste the advertising budget.

• Proper brand classification can happen when advertisers don’t have complete insight into where their ads are being shown or targeted.

• Real-time competition can be fierce which can drive the costs up.

• Technical expertise and tools can be difficult for smaller businesses to steer in the right direction.

Advanced Data Analysis and Insights

PRO: AI allows marketers to analyze data quickly which helps identify trends quickly. This can drive strategic decisions swiftly.

CON: AI requires a lot of data. If there is not enough data or incorrect data, AI can provide inaccurate results causing a drop in ad performance. It can also lead to unfair or discriminatory outcomes based on the lack of human reasoning. Attempting to figure out AI’s behind the curtain decision-making process can lead to time waste. Ever changing and/or enhanced processes can make it difficult to trust or interpret results.

• Data that is incomplete or wrong can cause incorrect insights and poor decision-making.

• Algorithms can lead to inaccurate results.

• Algorithms can lead to discriminatory practices.

• Data breaches can be caused by collecting large amounts of data.

• Data breaches can open a company up to cyber-attacks.

• Finding qualified analysts to interpret the complex data can be challenging.

• may resist adopting data-driven decision making due to concerns about changing established practices.

• Improper use of data analytics can lead to unethical practices like manipulation of consumer behavior or discriminatory targeting.

Measuring Marketing ROI with AI

PRO: AI tools can effectively measure marketing ROI. This can allow businesses to see the success or failure of the campaigns quickly.

CON: Determining ROI with AI can be a challenge if there is poor data quality. Also, there is no universal metric for measuring AI ROI. It requires specialized skills for an organization to set up, monitor, and interpret and it can require a large upfront cost.

Identifying Emerging Trends and Opportunities

PRO: AI can identify new trends so that they can help adjust quickly to market changes.

CON: AI may incorrectly identify trends causing false positives. Not being human, AI might rely on irrelevant or non-viable trends that can cause wasted opportunities that lead to nothing.

Summary

AI is redefining digital advertising and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon. When accurate, AI can provide excellent data and opportunities.

DO

• Rigorous evaluations

• Have a balanced approach

• Continual adjustment and modifications

WATCH FOR

• Data privacy and security concerns

• Misinterpretation of data

• Not enough data

• Algorithmic bias and unfairness

• Transparency and accountability issues

• Lack of human reasoning