Do you know the true value of generative AI in content?

You’ve probably used AI for digital advertising, given how it powers Google’s search ad assembly.

But are you using generative AI to develop advertising content?

Reuters recently reported on some of the largest advertisers using generative AI to reduce costs and increase productivity. But what is really happening?

Robert Rose, CMI’s chief strategic advisor, explains how generative AI contributes – and what it doesn’t contribute – to digital advertising. Watch it below or keep reading for the highlights:

Automated forms of AI or algorithmic advertising creation have been around for a long time. Nearly 10 years ago, one of Robert’s marketing heroines, Julie Fleischer, used content marketing at Kraft Foods to track over 22,000 attributes of over 100 million annual visitors to their websites. They used this data to automatically create millions of dynamically assembled ads to targeted people.

In 2023, the conversation focuses on generative AI and how big brands are using it to reduce the cost and time of their advertising programs. But is it just a gimmick? Or, to paraphrase the Reuters headline, is it “Mad Men and Women to Machines?” »

Leading brands are using #generative AI to reduce the cost and time of their advertising programs. Are we going from Mad Men and Women to Machines, asks @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. #GenAI Click to tweet

Despite wariness over security and copyright risks, many of the world’s largest advertisers are using generative AI to create content to deliver more effective advertising campaigns.

Robert says that while the use cases detailed in the article are a bit outdated, they highlight the real value of AI and what it is not in this approach to ad creative.

The first campaign came from Mondelez International for its Cadbury brand in India. It used AI-generated voice and facial technology, featuring Bollywood superstar Shah Ruh Khan. Small businesses selling Cadbury used a microsite to generate a version of the advert in which the star mentioned their store by name. Some 2,000 stores created 130,000 advertisements for digital channels.

Cadbury used #AI technology to ‘voice’ a Bollywood superstar for 130,000 personalized ads for 2,000 stores via @Robert_Rose @CMIContent. Click to tweet

“It’s similar to what Julie did at Kraft 10 years ago. You iterate thousands of versions of the ad at scale and on demand. This saves a lot of money on producing the creative in ads,” says Robert, emphasizing Coca-Cola did it not too long ago.

Side note: the Cadbury campaign raises a worrying concern. Robert says, “Let a big movie star provide a testimonial to a local business that fills the void? What could possibly go wrong with that?

Reuters included a second example of AI-generated advertising: the misdirection campaign for Nestlé’s Laitiere (Milkmaid) yogurt and dairy brand. This created a riff on Amsterdam Rijksmuseum uses X-rays to show hidden objects behind the Vermeer painting The Milkmaid.

Nestlé’s WPP agency used OpenAI’s DALL-E2 to generate “imagined” scenes outside the boundaries of Vermeer’s painting. He developed almost 1,000 iterations and managed to create around 700,000 euros of media value. But the real story was how much they saved in terms of money and time by not letting humans create all these images.

Recently used HubSpot AI to design ads for its newsletter The Hustle. The campaign reduced the cost of acquiring subscribers by 300% as it saved the cost of designing advertising images.

“These campaigns are interesting experiments. To paraphrase one of my favorite shows, Friday Night Lights, we should have clear eyes and full hearts about what is being done and where real value is being generated,” says Robert.

CMI’s latest career-focused research (registration required) shows that content practitioners are very concerned about how generative AI will devalue their skills. The two most frequently cited concerns were “less respect for qualified writers” and “writing/editing is seen as a commodity.”

But creative generative AI campaigns for Cadbury, Nestlé and HubSpot haven’t really done that. “All of them needed a human to create the content idea. They needed another human to whip him into shape. And they needed another human to focus on the creative output of what that would look like,” says Robert. “Technology has only been used to expand the expression of this content.”

All AI advertising campaigns from major brands needed humans. Technology has only scaled #content, says @Robert_Rose via @CMIContent. Click to tweet

This is also how technology worked in the pre-AI era. Think about advanced photo editing through Adobe Photoshop, the evolution from film cameras to digital cameras, collage layout processes to desktop publishing software, and more.

“You always need great marketing creators at the table,” says Robert.

As content creators, marketing practitioners, creative artists, you have the ideas and give context to the multiple iterations created by AI to work in the moment. This is something only you can do now.

Howard Gossage, a character on the hit TV series Mad Men, said it best: “Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an advertisement.

It’s your job to use generative AI tools, master them, and evolve so you can use them in the right way to better express your interesting things – and sometimes, that will be an advertisement.

What do you think? Is your AI a better person than you – or your team? Or are you using AI simply to scale up the expression of these big ideas? Let us know in the comments.

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Cover image by Joseph Kalinowski/Content Marketing Institute