Agencies wonder whether generative AI leads to more wasted ad spending and production
As generative artificial intelligence is used to create more content, the industry is beginning to question the quality of this content in relation to the amount of ad spend being put toward this inventory.
As more influencers and marketers turn to generative AI to scale their work, agencies are exploring how this trend can lead to wasted media dollars going toward fake or bad impressions — or in some cases backing plagiarized material and misinformation created by AI that could pose risks to the brand.
Lindsay Hong, COO of Stagwell Group agency Locaria, mentioned anecdotally seeing a rise in AI websites that are “diverting media spend into pointless impressions.” Hong contended that advertisers need to get better at identifying AI websites, but there is an added risk of wasted production as well.
Out of more than 300 marketers recently surveyed by digital experience platform Optimizely, 92% of the senior marketing executives said they were adopting generative AI capabilities from everything including generating text, code, as well as images and audio.
In this context, the pitch being that live brand experiences help target consumers directly, said Andrew Beranbom, CEO of First Tube. “AI is enhancing doom scrolling,” Beranbom told Digiday. “AI is making creators develop things faster and easier than ever, which is just increasing the quantity of distractions and ways that consumers can choose to spend their time. So that volume to me is just going to grow and grow and grow.”
“Often, it’s both,” Franconi said. “As marketing and advertising channels and placements continue to diversify, and brands get smarter about audience segmentation, the need for a high quantity of relevant and compelling content has drastically increased. But brands continue to struggle to fulfill their content needs due to limited resources and production budgets.”
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