Digital Media AI/Automation

But, Why?

The speed at which the marketing world is moving right now is so fast. Yes, I sound like an old man (I am getting there), but marketing technology is moving at warped speed.  Take AI, where 12 months ago it was a buzz word in the marketing community and now it’s something we have all explored and implemented.  Every agency and brand are leaning on ways to become more efficient with AI being an answer to a lot of that, layered with nearly every ad platform moving towards greater automation/AI intelligence, the media landscape is evolving quickly.

At DNW, we work with primarily small to medium sized brands that spend almost 100% of their budget on digital, so using things that produce more content efficiently is extremely valuable. But there is an undercurrent happening as more money moves to digital and additional tools are used (often AI) to save time and money. You would believe that with more data and digital spending, we should get greater visibility into what’s going on with a campaign, but the opposite is happening - and we are sprinting towards a world of less clarity.

One of the most important traits I look for in interviews is curiosity.  Does the candidate show curiosity about their profession and how things work?  A lot of skills can be taught, but someone who has an inquisitive nature is so important because they will do what’s necessary to find out why things are the way they are and what it all means in the context of their work.  If a CTR looks too good to be true, it might very well be.  There could be a glitch or something random happening we didn’t account for.  For all of the marketing world, people who continue to ask questions will succeed because they want to understand why things are happening which will lead to new insights and better ways forward.

Current technology in media is moving us in the opposite direction of an inquisitive nature.  Meta, Google, and others are forcing Automation/AI on campaigns with little insight on why things are going as they do.  Yes, it’s great our CPA was 10% lower than benchmark, but shouldn’t we strive for why that is happening?  Well, if you run a Performance Max (PMAX) campaign in Google, you may get the first question, did we hit our benchmark, but you are almost certainly not getting your second question answered, why did it do well? PMAX is literally Googles answer to – throw it at the wall and see what sticks.  Put a bunch of assets out there and let a system get the best results with no insights into why.  Not a trend I am that thrilled with.

Its frustrating seeing this trend because Automation without insights shouldn’t be the goal or direction we go in.  For more junior employees starting their careers in media and marketing, we should be teaching the skills needed to triangulate data to turn into meaningful insights.  Sadly we are moving quickly to an advertising world where data that leads to actionable insights is not available. The best marketers will be able to fake it a bit and use all their experiences to make sense of the limited data you get back, but we are staring at a future with less data and we should question that now.

Its our job as marketers to be questioning a lot of things and the loss of data is here and only going to become more prevalent.  Lets push for a work-world where insights and understanding exceed the need for just results for results sake.