Can AI do it all? 

With recent advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) technology, many creatives and strategic planners are beginning to question how this shift could affect their roles. The problem here is the idea that marketers must pick one or the other. What we should be asking ourselves is how we can put the two together to get the most out of a campaign. AI can do a lot for marketers, but it still requires human insight and guidance. So, what can AI do? Here are some examples: 

• AI can provide insights into audience behaviors to help identify the best time to intercept them

• AI can quickly pull data from different platforms to be used in the creative brief driving the campaign

• AI can automate purchasing, and many platforms such as Facebook and Google have recently incorporated software directly into their systems that do this for us

Despite AI’s many capabilities, it is not the end-all and be-all when it comes to media buying. Initially, it was thought AI could create and manage campaigns on multiple channels, by analyzing data and providing feedback that allows marketers to make changes to optimize performance. However, things haven’t gone entirely to plan. While the implementation of AI was supposed to simplify the media buying process by eliminating minute tasks, some industry pundits have reported that the process has added to the more difficult aspects of their work. The challenge is designing an AI that can handle the complexity of the media landscape. The more data there is, the harder it is to train AI to process it and act accordingly. Due to the complexity of the media landscape, we are seeing AI assisting more in the input rather than the output. Marketers can identify, audiences, budgets, and other key factors which then are pulled into an AI software to be handled. Human insight is still crucial in creative work and strategy. However, humans won’t be able to keep up with placements for much longer. The more tries AI gets, the smarter it becomes and once trained to make the best decisions, the better outcomes will be. So no, AI can’t do it all, but it can give clients and agencies a boost in the dynamic landscape that is media buying.  The secret to successful AI use in media buying comes down to the integration of human intelligence and artificial intelligence.