How AI is Challenging Digital Marketers

“So, the basic end goal is that any business comes to us, say what their objective is. I wanna get new customers to do this thing. I wanna sell these things. Tell us how much they’re willing to achieve those results. Connect their bank account, and then we just deliver as many results as we can” Mark Zuckerberg said these words 2 months ago to Stripe president Jhon Collison at the Stripe Session event in San Francisco.

He was seated in a comfy seeming chair with his signature cozy -shirt and some good-looking glasses. The get up has been quite common among the tech bros. And you could spot Mark on multiple occasions pulling off a similar look.

But during that even, it wasn’t Marks dress sense – it was these words of his as he enthusiastically explained what the future of Meta will look like.

His words explicitly stated that businesses will no longer require the talent of creates, the analytical mindset of a performance market, and in fact even a minuscule need for a digital agency. Marks wants to bring the whole marketing industry to its knees. And he’s positive he will not be the only to do it.

Mark Zukerberg’s words make me recall some of my office days. There’s a group of much experience professionals who are reluctant to have their hands on AI. They believe they’ll never be superseded.

Then we have the other younger group. This group has less experience. They sometimes talk too much. They seem always excited about something. But there’s a catch. This group can generate work pretty similar to the people of first group if not greater or same. They weapon? A bunch of AI tools from tracking down campaigns to creating copy that converts and ads that actually sell.

Mark Zuckerberg wants to erase both the groups.

Meta vision is to eliminate the bridge between itself and ad buyers. It wants to remove any obstacle that has been stopping these businesses to come to Meta directly for their ads.

And that’s why it wants to finish the role of marketers and digital agencies. It wants to turn the advertising business upside down, especially those directed towards pure sales.

From planning the budget, to targeting the best potential customers, to deciding placements, to even creating copies and ad visuals. All of this has been automated. Meta still seems to have the option where we can take things manually to at least some extent.

The button to decide things manually is hidden somewhere in these tabs and can easily bypass someone’s eye is one isn’t observant enough. Meta’s AI backed Advantage plus campaigns option leaves advertisers with little options to play with.

Google’s Performance Max campaigns evolutions is strong evidence that Meta’s not the only one after legacy and upstart marketing agencies.

For decades, performance marketers and digital agencies have prided themselves of being a part of something that will never be replaced. These have also been one of the fraternities to welcome AI with open arms. When Chat GPT created havoc in the creative world, marketers and agencies were quickly to jump in and embrace it.

When ChatGPT announced its capabilities to generate images and ads, the same marketers were there to applaud and apply it all cool new features. Today the same AI engines threaten their very existence.

Surprisingly, the same agencies and marketing professionals have been promoting AI. They would flex it at conferences and podcasts about how AI is game changing and how they imply it for productivity and efficiency and how they’ve managed to generate huge revenue with it.

Today the same AI tools and platforms are not only changing the game, they’re changing the players too.

While on the branding side, the human element is still indispensable. Funny, wholesome, less edited human content is gradually making its way back into the world. People enjoy raw and rough content with less dramatic animations and without high studio quality production.

For creatives and content creators, AI which was seeming a threat initially is ironically paving a path for their comeback. The more AI gets used on the internet, the more we will crave content created solely by humans, the imperfect ones. This further strengthens with the fact that YouTube announcement of not monetizing any content that seems made entirely by AI and without any human input.

But while the branding goes through this new renaissance, performance and digital marketers with analytical mind. The ones who rely on data and campaigns and metrics, they’ve become the real victims.

10 years from now you might need a content creator to shoot wholesome videos for your business, but you won’t be needing an expensive resource to look after the digital paid ads if what Mark Zukerberg said becomes true.