Plus Company and Statista have published a report that compiles responses from 200 chief marketing officers on the use of AI and the challenges they face when applying this technology.
The report, “Marketing’s AI Era: Strategies & Measurement Driven by AI-Powered Prediction,” shows that 43% of respondents see the potential of AI but have encountered challenges in implementing it. According to the study, 75% of them also say they have not yet taken steps to prepare for measurement in a world without third-party cookies because they need guidance on how to act. “There is an urgency for businesses to prepare for a paradigm shift – that is the impetus for our study. Soon, we will be in a cookieless world, and we will need to find new ways to plan for and measure success,” said Plus Company global chief data and analytics officer Michael Cohen, and the company’s global lead of customer success Kristin Wozniak.
Some 81% of CMOs say they have adopted AI to plan marketing campaigns, but only 36% say they use the technology to create attribution models. Around 63% would like to use AI to design more complex attribution models. “This number is not surprising given the lack of solutions for either audience level measurement for assessing advertising investment performance or for establishing a single metric that advertising buyers and sellers agree upon to trade digital media” said Cohen.
The report also reveals that 75% of respondents believe that AI provides deep insights on customer behavior and preferences, while 73% say it enables them to continuously monitor and adjust campaigns. Around 69% believe AI helps optimize ad spend across all channels for maximum ROI. However, two out of five CMOs say they have struggled to quantify the impact of creativity on business results and the impact of individual creative concepts.
A significant portion, 74%, express their intention to employ AI for campaign planning, measurement and attribution in the future. Some 63% of marketers surveyed say they will explore AI to gain insights on consumer behavior, while respecting privacy rules. And there is a 53% consensus among respondents who anticipate an increase in creative roles as a result of AI use in the next two years.
“Ensuring you have a clear definition of success, keeping an open mind, and having honest dialogue with your partners is key. Implementing an AI solution is going to be a process, not a single point in time,” said Wozniak. “Providers and vendors need to be very upfront about any speed bumps or challenges they have along the way, while customers and clients need to be open about how they are feeling about the process and if their goals change. Everyone involved needs to know and be okay with the fact that nothing about an AI adoption process of any kind is going to be ‘perfect’ from day one.”
Respondents are from Canada, the U.S., the U.K. and Germany, and they work in a wide range of industries, including financial services, retail, consumer packaged goods, telecommunications, hospitality and transportation.
