Though it’s come a long way in recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has not yet come close to matching human intelligence. However, it is already proving to expedite processes and inspire dramatic improvements across nearly every industry, from cybersecurity to healthcare. It’s also impacting digital marketing and advertising, with more than 80% of marketers using AI to drive visibility, boost lead generation, and increase sales. But how does ads AI (a shorthand for using AI in paid media) help advertising pros meet their objectives?
Read on to uncover how AI-powered ads work, the primary benefits AI offers advertisers, and why you may want to implement them into your digital marketing strategy.
What Is AI for Paid Media?
AI for paid media is the act of leveraging the capabilities of artificial intelligence to conduct and enhance labor that has historically been handled by human intelligence. Learning models, analytics, chatbots, and automated processes are four of many forms of AI that are employed to accelerate and perfect advertising campaigns.
A handful of AI-powered tools are used to improve upon the chief tasks of advertising experts and digital marketing strategists. These include:
- AdCreative
- Persado
- CopyAI
- Jasper
- Phrasee
- Anyword
- Seventh Sense
- ChatFuel
- Pattern89
Simply put, industry experts use these tools to radically enrich their advertising strategies, use their ad spend wisely, and significantly reduce manual labor costs.
What Are the Applications of AI for Paid Media?
Artificial intelligence can assume a range of responsibilities that were once delegated to an expert or a team of experts. Only some of these duties are accomplished at a speed that exceeds human capabilities. Some of the many specific ways AI can elevate your advertising practices include:
AI-Generated Ads
With rapid-paced analytics, ads AI has the significant advantage of understanding which ads can best resonate with your target audience and fuel conversions.
AI-generated ads are advertisements created based on algorithms, data insights, and — in the case of learning-based models — what you tell your AI-powered tool. For example, ads AI software may ask you a few questions, such as:
- A description of your product or service
- The price of your product or service
- Your company’s name
- Keywords associated with your product or service
- Your buyer’s persona
From there, an AI-powered tool provides you with ads that you can use in a variety of digital settings, including:
You might think this means you can simply input key information and walk away. However, that is absolutely not the case. Like other forms of digital marketing, advertisements still require a human touch — in particular, your human sensitivity, creativity, and more nuanced understanding of the target audience.
Nonetheless, AI-generated ads can be produced more quickly and efficiently than those devised solely by a marketing creative. Consider them rapid first drafts, if you will, which you can then modify to become spectacular. Indeed, AI can help you produce a high-quality advertisement of any kind, whether that be a search, display, email-sponsored, or retargeting PPC ad.
AI Ads Automation
Determining which type of ad from your selection will deliver results with a particular consumer is time-consuming and vulnerable to human error. It is similarly challenging to decide when and where the paid ad should appear.
Since AI works autonomously, using it for ad automation provides you the gift of energy and time as it makes its lightning-fast decisions. In turn, you can make sure that your advertisements are seen by the right prospective consumers at the right time. Additionally, AI ads automation can conduct the bidding of digital space on your behalf, substantially decreasing employment costs.
AI Ad Targeting
AI ad targeting precipitates automation, and both are vital to a successful advertising campaign. AI has the power to gain a comprehensive view of your target audience by:
- Creating a buyer persona based on key demographics, interests, and online behaviors and preferences
- Crafting “lookalike” audiences to broaden your reach and strengthen brand awareness
- Employing audience segmentation to further personalize and refine ads and reach untapped but relevant populations
In a recent study, 29% of respondents reported being more inclined to do business with a brand that personalized its ads. Another 31% asserted that personalized ads support customer retention and brand loyalty. In summary, AI simplifies and fine-tunes targeting to fortify your reputation and increase profits.
Optimized Content Creation
AI is increasingly being used to create content that will “land” with audiences and improve customer satisfaction. Through keyword analytics, demographic insights, A/B testing, and more, AI can draft content for your advertisements that may capture your target audience’s attention and increase your chances of conversions.
As with AI-generated ads, this doesn’t mean you should strip your business of its visual artists, video marketers, copywriters, or other content creators. Again, this content should simply serve as a first draft that you then elaborate upon with that unmistakable human touch. Together, artificial and human intelligence can create more compelling and engaging paid advertising.
What Are the Benefits of Using AI for Paid Media?
Ads AI is, first and foremost, an enormous time saver, freeing up space in your schedule to tackle more pressing issues at hand as well as big-picture objectives. In addition, using AI for paid media may:
- Boost sales
- Improve customer communication
- Conduct social listening to broaden your understanding of your target audience
- Identify – and capitalize on – trends, both in advertising as a whole and topics related to your industry
- Predict consumer behavior to display ads at crucial moments on their purchasing journey
- Reduce overhead costs
- Increase ROI
The Australian brand Red Balloon is just one example of how beneficial using AI for paid media can be. Entrepreneur Naomi Simson spent approximately $45,000 each month on advertising her Down Under company and paid $50 for every new customer she acquired.
Once she employed the AI tool Albert, which strategizes, tests, optimizes, and modifies ads, she saw a 3,000% ROI on her ad spend. This case, as well as these potential benefits, are fundamentally altering the future of paid advertising, the topic examined next.
What Is the Future of Paid Advertising?
The digital marketing landscape has always been prone to changing — sometimes gradually, sometimes rapidly. But AI is already proving to alter the realm of advertising in unprecedented ways.
The use of AI-powered tools is predicted to grow in the following specific areas:
- Supplementing human efforts with the application of an AI ads manager and AI-generated ads
- Developing richer, more comprehensive consumer profiles
- Generating ad ideas and advertising content
- Tailoring ads for a more personalized experience
- Enhancing ad performance
- Diminishing advertisement biases
- Gaining information about your competition
- Predicting results of campaigns before they’re launched
- Distributing ad budgets with greater accuracy and discernment
- Measuring results and automating updates and changes
All of this is well worth paying attention to. Research shows that 45% of people who have adopted AI for their advertising needs report a substantial edge over their competitors.
What Are Ads AI Best Practices?
AI is becoming progressively sophisticated, but no system is flawless. To ensure that your paid advertising campaigns fuel the results you’re after and preserve or improve your brand’s reputation, you may also want to adopt the following measures:
Implement Enhanced Data Privacy
AI is known to gather and analyze customer information at a rate that far exceeds humans’ abilities. Despite this, it’s also subject to accidentally collecting sensitive consumer information that could not only put your reputation at risk but also place you in a legal bind. Installing additional security measures to safeguard your customers’ sensitive info will help you work toward solving this.
Invest in Solid IT Infrastructure
Collecting and analyzing massive swaths of data, generating AI-powered ads at a rapid pace, and automating paid advertising can overwhelm your devices. With this in mind, it’s important to invest in sound IT infrastructure to avoid errors and delays.
Experiment with Several AI-Powered Advertising Tools
There might not be a single AI-powered ad tool that can satisfy all your needs or give you the precision- and performance-driven AI-generated ads you crave. To this end, you should consider trying out several tools to discover which ones work best with your tasks and goals.
Using AI for Paid Media: Is it Right for You?
Only you can determine whether using AI for your advertising needs and aims is right for you. That said, companies ranging from small businesses to global enterprises are reaping the benefits of these fast, efficient tools. From creating more targeted, personalized ads to automating when and where ads are displayed, AI can save you from performing both complex matters and simple yet tedious issues.
In turn, it may prove to be a cost-effective, valuable, and logical next step, one that will set you up for growth and success. In fact, failing to join the thousands of companies that employ ads AI may put you at a considerable disadvantage. And don’t you want to be ahead of the game as businesses continue into the future of paid advertising?
