In the latest Meta earnings call, the word AI was mentioned a record 47 times! Meta over the past two years has shifted their investor messaging to focus on ways AI can bolster engagement and monetization to help the company make more money. Frankly, the AI hype cycle is at its peak. Every big player worth its salt is single-mindedly focused on getting this right.

As I was working on this article, the White House has just announced the first government-wide policy to mitigate risks of artificial intelligence (AI) and harness its benefits. To coordinate these efforts, every federal agency must appoint a chief AI officer with “significant expertise in AI.” The fact is that AI and its use has become a topmost priority for business and policy makers both. This also logically leads us to the value of being right with AI and the price of being wrong, ethically, professionally, and financially.

Before I delve deeper about AI in marketing, I want to throw light on startling but well-known facts:

1. The top 1% of social networks account for 95% of social web traffic and 86% of social mobile app use.
2. The top 1%t of search engines account for 97% of search traffic.
3. The top 1% of ecommerce sites account for 57% of ecommerce traffic.
4. Apple and Google account for more than 95% of mobile app store market, except in China, of course.

These are the same companies that are investing heavily in AI because they believe that AI will help them keep their market dominance while further driving earnings and profitability.

The question marketers must ask is whether any of the AI driven use cases help bring down marketing costs or contribute to exponential growth? I believe the answer, in most cases, is no. So, while the tech companies keep generating obscene profits, marketers must live with cost optimization and a little more. I write about this because terabytes of articles have been written on AI in marketing, its relevance, and its coming dominance. What marketers need to focus on is what helps them meet their business goals. Marketers grossly underestimate their collective power while dealing with the tech giants. Marketing associations must play a bigger and more active role in protecting the interests of marketers and consumers. Currently, AI is being leveraged with impression distribution AI, probabilistic inference processes, etc. all of these help the big four in tech drive their continued dominance. The challenge for marketers is that there is a lack of influence and control over the implementation of new AI technologies. This is a subject for marketing leaders to ponder and act upon. Coming back to the subject of leveraging AI in marketing. Some of the AI applications in marketing include – Chatbots for lead management, customer care, cross-selling or upselling, lead scoring, next best offer, campaign automation, programmatic buying, call analytics, ORM management, etc.

The use cases are evolving, and sharp marketing practitioners are beginning to measure its impact. However, I believe for AI to have a long-term impact on business goals, marketers need to follow a simple strategy driven framework to deliver measurable outcomes:

While I have expressed my reservations about how big tech is leveraging AI in marketing, good and giant strides are also being taken in content generation. Just last week, OpenAI showcased Sora AI video generator, a new generative AI model that can create detailed videos from simple written prompts. They released new Sora videos generated by a few visual artists and directors. At one level, it feels like a threat to creative people; at another, it is a huge opportunity to leverage this technology to push creative boundaries.

AI in marketing holds enormous promise, but at the same time I suggest that marketers be very realistic about its current capabilities. In my experience, AI can currently accomplish only narrow tasks. Some marketers plunge into AI initiatives without fully understanding its capabilities and limitations. They build unrealistic expectations internally and pursue projects AI cannot deliver. I have faced multiple such instances which lead to cynicism towards such projects from the leadership.

AI and its integration with marketing paints a picture full of possibilities and pitfalls. I have always maintained that the synergy between AI and human insights will be the key to marketing success. Artificial intelligence in marketing is not about replacing the Human intelligence but about augmenting it. In the end it will all boil down to the fact that were marketers able to understand