A newsletter about AI and Marketing by Tom & Charlie

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AI Marketing School Newsletter #16

Google to unleash robot Don Draper generative AI for ads

Google will soon introduce generative AI into its advertising business, using it to “create novel advertisements based on materials produced by human marketers.”

Advertisers will provide imagery, video, and text related to their campaign. Then, Google’s AI will “remix” the materials to generate ads based on the target audience’s preferences.

What this means for marketers

• Better results: Google’s AI will be able to pinpoint precisely what makes your target audience take action.

• Less effort: Without you needing to lift a finger. Well, you’ll need to send in creative materials, but that’s pretty much it.

• Minimal wasted spend: Which will eliminate “meh” campaign results.

• But a new rulebook: However, we’ll probably have to learn a whole new set of strategies so Google doesn’t rinse our ad budgets.

How often search marketers use ChatGPT, Bing Chat & Google Bard vs traditional search

Barry Schwartz, owner of web consultancy RustyBrick, wanted to see how often search marketers used AI search (ChatGPT, Bing Chat & Google Bard) versus more traditional alternatives.

Here’s what he found.

Why might this be?

• AI chat hallucinates… and it’s hard to know when.

• But marketers can use other signals (e.g. a site’s reputation, search engine ranking, design, the author, etc.) to more accurately identify if a search result is true or not.

• Traditional search offers a more interactive browsing experience. You can select which results to look at and check out multiple different pages.

• AI chat, by contrast, gives you one answer—and it usually doesn’t state where this information comes from.

‘I’ve never hired a writer better than ChatGPT’, says founder who obviously doesn’t know what good writing looks like

Melissa Shea used to hire freelance writers via Upwork for $22 an hour to create marketing copy and transcribe audio for her company, Fashion Mingle.

But she’s not posted a job since discovering ChatGPT in January 2023.

As she puts it, “I’ve never hired a writer better than ChatGPT.”

Some, however, are unconvinced.

Rand Fishkin—SparkToro CEO—describes Shea’s strategy in less-than-favourable terms: “You can Google FashionMingle yourself and poke around their AI-generated blog. I think you'll find that the content is boring, generic, low-quality drek far worse than anything else you'll see in a Google search for "must have fashion items for women" (or whatever keyword they wanted to rank for).”

Ouch.

What this means for marketers

• AI tools can definitely replace low-paid, repetitive, time-intensive freelance tasks (like transcribing audio).

• But you need some human input if you’re looking to create content that stands out.

• Whether it’s conducting in-depth research (online and offline), joining the dots between tangentially related ideas, or creating something truly original, human freelancers can still add significant value to your marketing campaigns.

• There’s no point using AI to replace writers but create bland content that adds little value.

GPT4 Tip of the Day 💡

Give GPT4 a temperature (out of 10) to dictate the complexity of its output. The higher the temperature, the higher the reading age. 

Temperature: 0.1

Temperature: 10

Tools to Try

DreamPose: Fashion Image-to-Video Synthesis via Stable Diffusion

Turn a still image of a model into a photorealistic video showing them pulling various poses. A must-use for fashion brands.

Eleven Labs: Prime Voice AI

Dubbed as “The most realistic and versatile AI speech software, ever”, ElevenLabs certainly lives up to the hype. Whack in some text, pick your voice, and let it do its thing. Could this spell the end of voice acting work (as mentioned in our last newsletter)?

tl;dv

This GPT-powered meeting recorder instantly transcribes and summarises your calls. You can even create bitesized video clips by simply selecting the relevant portions—ideal for capturing hidden gems within client conversations, webinars, and so on.

Recommended Resources 📚 🎥

1. The inside story of ChatGPT's astonishing potential

Watch OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman’s TED talk examining ChatGPT’s true potential. With demos of as-yet unreleased plugins, it’s a valuable watch for even the most experienced ChatGPT users out there.

2. Michael Schumacher: Magazine editor sacked over AI-generated 'interview' with seven-time F1 champion

A German magazine editor has been fired after using AI to create a fake interview with Michael Schumacher, who’s not been seen since suffering serious head injuries back in 2013. Remember: No matter how hard you’re trying to sell a story, don’t publish AI-generated imitations of someone without their permission.

3. AI in Hiring and Evaluating Workers: What Americans Think

Roughly 6/10 Americans think AI will significantly affect workers in general, but only 27% believe it’ll affect them personally. Unsurprisingly, people are wary of AI being used in the hiring/firing decision-making processes.

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