A recent report by Sprout Social and The Harris Poll reveals that most marketers are ready to embrace AI and ML tools as a part of their creative arsenal, but many are unsure of how to proceed. In this post we’ll look at some of the new tools in the works at Google and how marketers can leverage AI effectively.

According to a recent report by Sprout Social and The Harris Poll, as much as 97 percent of business leaders believe that AI and ML tools will help them analyze social data more efficiently and 86 percent see AI and ML implementation as critical for long-term business success. 

Source: Sprout Social

Yet many leaders see significant barriers to using those tools for marketing, with most pointing to internal issues such as their organization’s lack of experience in organizing AI and ML integrations, a lack of training or a basic understanding of how AI and ML tools can be used, and resistance to change among stakeholders.

Source: Sprout Social

Google Plans New AI Enhancements For Marketers 

Google’s recent event, Google Marketing Live 2023 showed how much the company is wagering on AI becoming the marketer’s new best friend. Here are some of the biggest takeaways on upcoming or experimental AI integrations:

Marketers will be able to ask Google to generate recommended keywords, headlines, descriptions, images, and other assets.

Google clients may soon be able to use generative AI to create ads that are highly customized to address the specific requirements of each part of the search journey, connecting Search and Shopping ads into a seamless experience. This is an expansion of tools introduced last year, now allowing marketers to target the full funnel with new customization options.

Source: Google

Google is integrating generative AI with automatically created asset functions for its Performance Max campaign options. This connects a user who searches for “How to calm teething, cranky baby” with an ad that shows an original, AI-generated headline that targets critical keywords based on natural language analytics with ML-powered precision.

Google’s new Product Studio allows marketers to create custom product scenes instantly, using generative AI to adjust backgrounds and settings, as well as optimize resolution.

Source: Google

How Marketers Can Make Sense Of It All

Generative AI is complex—but using it to meet your needs doesn’t have to be. Here are some tips to keep in mind as you look at AI integration.

Focus on function and ease-of-use: Just like any other MarTech tool, AI can become just another toy that no one uses—or uses to a fault, allowing quality assurance to fall behind. AI should amplify the value of your existing strategy by taking over tasks that don’t require human insight. Repetitive, administrative tasks that drain productivity and don’t require human originality are AI’s forte.

Work on merging human and AI creativity in unique ways: While 100 percent AI-created campaigns can be useful—the most successful ones are powered by a human understanding of their audience. AI tools, like Google’s, can spark new creative paths for great campaigns and add the heft of analytics to any strategy—but a marketer’s insight and experience are always needed to develop the parameters for AI tools to work within. Think of AI as an assistant that will boost your productivity but not do your job for you—at least not yet.

Exploit AI’s best feature—data and speed: Google’s new tools present lots of great new options for marketers to streamline creative production. However, they also offer a broad range of analytics and targeting optimization tools that represent the best of AI and ML capabilities. AI is still evolving, but its capacity to speed up normally slow processes and drive efficiency is stunning—especially for marketers. AI tools can help you glean deeper insights from social, fine-tune audience segments, and develop a more impactful marketing strategy by showing you real-time trends that show what content is engaging audiences.

Watch the full Google Live Event here.