Marketers' Gen-AI Priorities for 2024

As the generative artificial intelligence hype cycle cools down from the launch of ChatGPT last November, marketers’ expectations for the technology in 2024 will extend beyond simple chats to decoding client briefs and gathering real-time data on campaign performance, as well as cleaning up reams of unstructured data. How Zipcar's Gen AI Campaign Drove Brand Awareness and Site Visits "In 2024, we will see gen AI used to create efficiencies in three main areas of marketing: enhancing the creative process, furthering personalization and bringing greater precision and sustainability to the media buying process," said Raja Rajamannar, Mastercard’s chief marketing and communications officer. Here are key focus areas for the year ahead. Brands build agent AIs Loosely defined, agentic AI elevates gen AI beyond the chatbot to perform tasks on behalf of a person, mirroring the behavior of a real-world agent. OpenAI launched its Assistant API and GPTs in November, letting developers create AI-based agents to understand queries and complete actions. Ultimately, this development will facilitate direct interactions between potential consumers and brands. “These agents are like little minions who, based on your query, will come back with answers or complete them,” said Michael Liu, head of innovation for media company Carat. Business models are yet to be worked out and are all new territory. Glenn Derene, senior director of content strategy, Consumer Reports Travel brands like Expedia or United Airlines, which already provide comparison services through third-party agents, will likely be early adopters of agent AI on their websites. Someone planning a holiday in Greece could use the gen AI agent to compare hotel and plane prices, check the weather and convey preferences such as a desire to save money. Eventually, the AI agent would share a customized itinerary and complete the booking on their behalf. This could open up new models for niche or specialized publishers, A travel publication with local information and user reviews contains rich source material for an AI travel booking and concierge service. "Combine that content with an AI agent that customizes travel plans, and you can automate and book custom travel itineraries based on user preferences," said Glenn Derene, senior director of content strategy at Consumer Reports. "However, business models are yet to be worked out and are all new territory." Multimodality and managing unstructured data Multimodality, a term gaining prominence with Google's release of Gemini, involves combining different types of prompts—text, video and audio—into a large language model both as input and output. Companies like Adobe’s Firefly are already exploring text-to-image capabilities. However, with multimodal approaches, brands can extend to include image-to-text capabilities, combining existing visual assets with predictive AI to accomplish tasks like image captioning, composing emails, generating ad content and creating highly relevant ads. Google’s AI Model Gemini Spurs Fresh Concerns Among Publishers “[This] is the next evolutionary step on the different ways one can use AI to either create outputs or leverage specific types of inputs,” said Jay Wilder, vice president of product marketing, marketing cloud at Salesforce. Product-driven brands, like retailers or cosmetics, will benefit from this. Someone who bought a faulty couch from Ikea can take a picture of a damaged product and use the application to seek the right assistance, with the AI providing instructions on how to fix the problem. However, companies will first need to pay more attention to structuring their amorphous data, noted Wilder. Some movement to regulate AI The European Union was the first region to pass comprehensive AI rules, set to come into force in 2025. However, the hiatus before the EU law comes into effect, coupled with the election season in the U.S., means that publishers, brands and ad-tech partners need to be vigilant with challenges around privacy, intellectual property and bias mitigation. The U.S. Department of Commerce could form an agency to audit AI firms in order to ensure that they follow ethical standards and regulations that protect public interests, said Milan Kordestani, CEO at Ankord Labs. “These audits might focus on evaluating the impact of AI technologies on societal stability, economic disruption, misinformation, assessing the impact of biased LLMs and ensuring that large companies are not exacerbating social inequalities or compromising privacy and security,” Kordestani added.

Emerging Technologies

Marketers' Gen-AI Priorities for 2024

Brands expect progression in agent AI, multimodality efforts and regulation

Trishla Ostwal

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Trishla Ostwal