Today’s AI Stories and Takeaways for Marketers
18 April 2025
AI continues to shape the marketing and advertising landscape with profound impact—from creative automation and hyper-personalisation to ad targeting and ethical oversight. In today’s edition, we explore how marketers are adapting their stacks, how B2B and B2C brands are enhancing engagement via AI, and how ad platforms like Google, Amazon, and TikTok are evolving rapidly. As always, staying ahead means not just adopting tools, but understanding their strategic implications.
AI Embeds Itself in Marketing Workflows
AI adoption is no longer experimental—it’s infrastructure. Nearly half (41%) of brands use AI for video production, up from 18% a year ago, reflecting AI’s transformative role in content creation. Martech platforms such as HubSpot are advancing this further by integrating natural language AI (via acquisitions like Dashworks), making tools more intuitive and conversational.
Notably, there’s a surge in marketers building in-house AI tools tailored to specific workflows—a trend fuelled by the desire for differentiated, data-rich execution. However, the role of AI in areas like email marketing remains under scrutiny, with mixed opinions on whether it drives substantial uplift or just increases output noise.
Hyper-Personalisation Gains Real-Time Momentum
From B2B landing pages to music streaming, AI has become central to contextual personalisation. In B2B, real-time personalisation powered by behavioural signals and predictive AI is driving meaningful gains in engagement and conversions. Drift’s dynamic content strategy, inspired by user actions, has increased site interactions by 40%.
In B2C, platforms like Spotify use AI to micro-target with tools like Marquee, generating 30% more streams. Across both spaces, AI isn’t just feeding algorithms—it’s actively reshaping how brand relationships function, enabling better audience discovery and reinforcing distinct brand identities.
Opportunities and Ethical Imperatives in AI Marketing
While democratisation of content creation is unlocking creativity across teams and budgets, challenges are rising in parallel. Deepfake abuse and algorithmic opacity threaten consumer trust, especially as AI blends seamlessly into the funnel. Customers increasingly demand transparency and control over AI-driven targeting and recommendations.
As AI’s role expands, the need for human oversight becomes more urgent. Leading marketers are implementing safeguards and internal policies to govern ethical AI use—without stifling innovation.
Digital Advertising Evolves Through AI and Diversification
In search and programmatic media, AI is enhancing both creative and performance aspects of digital advertising. Google Ads now crafts image, video, and text assets from prompts while optimising for conversion KPIs like Max Conversions or target ROAS. Campaigns are becoming more adaptive, with new controls around brand safety, asset sourcing, and placement exclusions.
Platform diversification is accelerating. While Google’s US search ad share dips below 50%, Amazon pushes past 22%, and TikTok Search makes headway. Advertisers are shifting budgets accordingly, using AI tools to optimise campaigns across ecosystems. More than 75% of PPC pros now leverage AI for creative generation—with high satisfaction—and mobile-first remains critical, accounting for over 70% of search impressions.
Enterprise-level innovations are also taking hold. Amazon’s improved SageMaker and Bedrock tools streamline data prep and model deployment, while MediaGo’s award-winning native ad suite applies deep learning to target users through the full funnel, marrying precision with scale.
What This Means for Marketers
– Incorporate AI across the end-to-end marketing process—from ideation and production to personalisation and distribution—to improvise speed and scalability.
– Re-evaluate martech stacks: opportunities exist in AI-driven custom tooling, especially for brands with access to proprietary data.
– Implement ethical review protocols to govern AI use, especially in areas prone to consumer distrust (e.g. recommendation engines, retargeting, deepfake vulnerability).
– Diversify media buys across platforms with strong AI integration—Amazon and TikTok are increasingly viable complements to Google.
– Prioritise mobile usability and dedicated landing pages to maximise the impact of AI-optimised paid campaigns.
As AI shifts from novel to foundational, success will come to marketers who combine smart automation with strategic oversight—and use emerging capabilities to build more relevant, trustworthy, and engaging brand experiences.
