Janelle Zacherl
September 17, 2021
As a trained scientist relatively new to digital marketing, I love the idea of robots doing mine or anyone’s work for me. They’re traditionally better and more efficient than humans as long as they’re taught (programmed) well. Although after switching from science to digital marketing, the idea that “robots” can do the work I’ve been doing has been inching closer and closer. One of my favorite digital marketing activities is writing ad copy.
There now exists some AI that can actually take your website link and what you’re selling and turn it into better ad copy than a human could ever write. That’s because this technology syncs with established algorithms to position your ads to be the most effective they could possibly be. And keyword research? Done in seconds. While that sounds great, it’s also going to make good copy writers obsolete, or at least reduce them to proofreaders. This blog discusses three ways that AI may be affecting digital marketers in the near future:
Luckily, for us professional freelance copywriters, AI technology is still quite expensive and not perfect for this particular task. But AI programs are faster, write more relevant, personalized copy (based on data), and show up on time for every meeting. There’s also still a deep mistrust in this regard. If the computer shoots out something inappropriate or tone deaf, you can’t fire the computer, you can only give it more instructions.
While the idea of using AI for Ad copy sounds great, it’s also going to make good copywriters obsolete, or at least reduce them to proofreaders.
Most brands and businesses still prefer a human touch for proofreading at least, with AI as a “supportive co-pilot” coined in this article from Neuroflash. Kind of what the opinion is on GPT-3 (Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) by Open AI, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.
Digital marketers thrive on consumer data. Once AI starts injecting artificial responses and ad copy into the “natural” data, trends may shift in unpredictable ways. The human consumer in its own variable habitat has always been a black box for the marketing world. We can give our clients possible reasons for why and how things went down in the background once a marketing wave is over, but even with all of that data, we’ve never had irrefutable proof. Slipping AI into the mix just adds one more confounding factor into the consumer habits puzzle.
The only thing that may be helpful is collecting data from AI, and learning from how it addresses consumer concerns. But that’s just one more variable. What is effective? Why did the program choose certain words or placements? What can we take from it, and what is something we wouldn’t use as an actually human person?
People who are unfamiliar with forms of AI, such as “CopyAI,” often find it creepy. And it kind of is. It’s a machine mimicking human speech. It’s a computer program assuming things about us as people. It’s the effective mechanical end to writers’ block. It’s robots doing “human stuff.”, which means we the people are predictable. And perhaps not the bold individuals we think we are. But despite the creepiness factor, AI programming has been embedded in most areas of daily life whether everyday consumers are aware of it or not. AI is helpful with social media posts, product descriptions and headlines. It gives those who are otherwise useless at writing some brainstorm and seed word capabilities.
AI might seem scary, but it can really only help the future of digital marketers. Want to do some experimenting? Read some of these innovative AI suggestions for marketers by Marketer Hire’s Raisin Bread piece and let us know how it goes for you in the comments section.
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September 17, 2021
