5 ways AI could revolutionise search advertising 🔎

A newsletter about AI and Marketing by Tom & Charlie

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AI Marketing School Newsletter #20

5 ways AI could revolutionise search advertising

The Marketing Against The Grain podcast recently explored how AI might change search marketing.

Here are the 5 key takeaways.

What marketers need to know

1. AI might not have a huge impact. That’s because most search advertising revenue comes from transactional queries (e.g. “cheap laptop to buy”).
   
   People will still want to do their own research when making buying decisions. They won’t just ask a chatbot for a cheap laptop to buy. Instead, they’ll do their own digging on search, which will lead them to interact with transactional keyword-based ads.

   
   
   

2. It’s only a matter of time until AI tools (like ChatGPT and Bard) integrate ads into their interface. For example, if you create a legal contract, it might have a call-to-action saying “Want a lawyer to review this contract for you? Click here”.
   
   Remember: it costs OpenAI and Microsoft billions to run ChatGPT and Bard. Therefore, they will obviously soon find a way to make advertising revenue from AI chat tools.

   
   
   

3. But what about AI plugins? Imagine a consumer asks a chatbot “Book me a plane ticket to Paris between these dates and organise my schedule, reserving me a table for lunch and dinner every day at restaurants with a 4.5*+ rating on Google”.
   
   The chatbot could then do this automatically without the user interacting with blue links (i.e., paid ads).

   
   
   

4. In this case, businesses will bid on the sale, not on the keyword. Marketers will continue spending money for chatbots to recommend their company to consumers—so not much will change.
   
   However, life will get easier as conversions will happen automatically (e.g. the chatbot will reserve a table at their restaurant on the consumer’s behalf).
   
   
   

5. Marketers will likely also save money. Imagine someone asks a chatbot, “I want to travel from LA to Japan on the 13th May. I want a window seat, for the flight time to be under 13 hours, and to be served three full meals”.
   
   Only some airlines will have these options available, meaning those that don’t won’t pay for the chatbot to recommend them. Currently, however, marketers pay for clicks even when searchers don’t convert.

Thought of the day: Is the era of marketing specialists coming to an end?

AI is democratising specialist marketing knowledge. With AI tools, all marketers can:

• Create written or visual content

• Produce graphics

• Optimise paid search campaigns

• Perform sentiment analysis

• And more…

Does this mean the end of marketing specialists is around the corner? Will all marketers become jacks of all AI trades, masters of none?

On the one hand…

• Yes—AI tools are creating lower barriers for entry. Being an expert in just a single field (content, paid search, SEO, etc.) could soon become a competitive disadvantage.

• With AI handling the nuts and bolts, marketers will need to become strategic generalists. They’ll be the conductor that gets an orchestra of AI tools to perform at the highest level.

But then again…

• Specialist knowledge never goes out of fashion. Companies will always need genuine experts to make the most out of their tools. Anyone can drive an F1 car—but only a select few can drive it to its full potential.

• AI isn’t always correct. Therefore, you need specialists to guide the overall strategy and sense-check their output.

What do you think? Let us know by getting in touch at [email protected]. We’d love to hear your thoughts!

Prompt tips

1. The perfect tone for AI-generated emails

Want to use AI to create emails but worried you’ll strike the wrong tone? If so, try adding the following, recommended by Pete Huang:

Tone: Conversational, 50% spartan.

This will keep your email message friendly but succinct—the perfect balance.

2. Save time formatting written content

If you’re tired of manually reformatting AI output, this prompt’s for you. Simply add:

Format in markdown.

Yep—that’s it. See the difference in the examples below.

Unformatted

Formatted

Have a laugh

Shana Bull asked Tripnotes.ai to help her plan an upcoming holiday. The results were interesting, to say the least.  

Recommended tools and resources 🔧📚 🎥

1. 20 ChatGPT prompts that turn you into a Marketing God

Despite the wildly sensationalistic headline, Moritz Kremb offers up some decent tips to up your marketing prompt game.

2. Introducing InfiniteGPT

A Python-based script that lets you use the ChatGPT API with an unlimited amount of text. No more tedious prompting, or copy and pasting.

3. Majority of marketers plan on using AI despite limited understanding

72% of marketers in the UK plan to use generative AI in their strategies, allocating as much as 30% of their advertising budget on AI tools. However, 45% of marketers say they aren’t prepared for generative AI tools.

Thanks so much for reading. With the abundance of content on the internet, your attention means a lot. If you have any suggestions or feedback on how we can improve the newsletter, please shoot us a reply. We'd love to hear from you!

Until next time. Happy marketing.

Tom and Charlie