AI Revolution: Tech is changing the game for marketing, advertising professionals

Search engine optimization, a major tool in today’s marketing and advertising industry, has been around since the late 1990s, according to Forbes. But the landscape is changing for how businesses market themselves online since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.

“We’ve been keeping track of AI search developments over the course of the last year and a half or so,” said Ryan Simmons, SEO manager at Campaignium LLC, a digital marketing agency in Springfield. “The big news right now is that we are starting to see some data on how many people are using AI search tools and how it compares to Google, a major player. Google usually ranges between 80-90% of the search engine market, depending on the source you use.”

It was announced in late November that ChatGPT has secured just over 4% of the search engine market share compared to other search engines such as Google and Bing since its launch, according to data from SimilarWeb and Datos, industry data sites for SEO statistics.

“If you think about the time span they have been on the market, that’s a pretty significant dent that they’ve already made,” Simmons said.

Month over month, ChatGPT has grown in use by 13%. Projections from BrightonSEO, a worldwide search engine marketing conference for professionals, suggest that if ChatGPT continues its streak, it will catch up to Google in four years.

AI is not a new concept, as the term was coined back in the mid-1950s at Dartmouth College when professor John McCarthy started research classes centered on thinking machines, according to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, part of the U.S. Department of Energy. But today’s AI, through search engines such as Google’s Gemini, Claude or Perplexity, in addition to ChatGPT, is presenting new options and challenges for marketing and advertising professionals.

Challenges
Kyle Drenon, co-owner of Supper Co., a creative advertising and marketing company, says that while AI offers good results when searching for a specific company – for example, searching for their client BigShots Golf yields extensive information about the venue – a generic search such as “things to do in Springfield, Missouri,” does not include that business. Drenon says there’s not enough data yet to know how to get generic AI searches to include specific clients, like SEO made possible for internet searches.

“We can’t optimize to fit into those AI-generated responses,” he said. “Optimizing for search engines is fine, but there aren’t any great techniques just yet for the AI-generated stuff.”

Drenon and Simmons agree that how to best utilize AI searches in business is still evolving and represents a curveball in the marketing industry.

Simmons says staying up on the trends and changes in the industry is a big part of cracking the code.

“For me personally, I spend probably the first 15 minutes or so of my day just going through updates,” he said. “I have some Google Alerts and search Google News for SEO updates. I have blogs that I read and monitor from credible sources. Even on social media, I follow a lot of SEO thought leaders and get some information that way. It’s at least a good way to sort of get some insight into what other people are seeing and thinking.”

Productivity
Drenon says although AI presents many unknowns, it’s definitely not all bad news for marketing professionals. In fact, he compares it to a modern-day version of the Industrial Revolution. The job hasn’t changed, but the approach has.

“People used to spend time making wooden shoes by hand, and then a machine came along that could do it a lot faster,” he said. “So those people began designing new types of shoes that were not wooden shoes and then we had sneakers. It’s just going to make what we do better because we’re able to spend more time on the things that require a lot of thought. Anything that can be automated will be automated, which saves some of that menial time or tedious tasks, but it allows us to be more strategic in our thinking and think about the bigger picture.”

For industry professionals, AI can be a great tool for the background part of the job, Drenon says. He says he uses it for client research.

“If we are trying to learn about a new approach for a client campaign, we will use AI in the research phase, almost exclusively,” he said.

Drenon says you can even make images as a prototype to show a client what a marketing idea might look like. For example, AI could create an image of a family enjoying a meal around the dinner table. But Drenon says this is only in the research phase, and these tools are not a replacement for the creativity and adaptive skills that a marketing and advertising firm can bring to a client for a full campaign.

“Something we talk about with our clients all the time is that robots can help us do things a little bit faster, a little bit more efficiently, but they are not a replacement for the ingenuity of human beings,” he said. “They cannot think strategically in a way that breaks the mold. It’s all based on what’s been done before. So, it can’t bring a brand-new idea that’s completely novel because it’s only looking backward into what it can find online. There’s so much more depth to human beings than just what’s found online. It can do some impressive things if directed by a very creative human being.”

Moving into the future
In an SBJ opinion article published in December 2023, Simmons gave suggestions on how industry professionals can help businesses market themselves during a time of AI changes. Although that future he predicted is here now, Simmons says his marketing technique recommendations have not changed. Right now, the only thing that’s certain about the AI driven search engine is continual change.

Simmons suggests web marketing focusing on showcasing expertise and experience, building trust through web testimonials, enhancing metadata to accurately reflect page content and utilizing schema markup with structured data for search engine accuracy.

Regardless of the future, Simmons says he believes that websites will continue to be important for years to come.

“It just may change in the way that we look at it,” he said. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions, but 2025 may help us see some of those answers. I still think the basics are what’s important, at least right now.”