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Why AI Isn’t a Silver Bullet for Marketers (Yet)
It’s easy to get swept up in the buzz around AI. In theory, this game-changing tech should let marketers move faster, smarter, and cheaper. Who wouldn’t want that?
But while the excitement is real, the reality has been a lot messier. According to the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA), many major brands aren’t sprinting ahead with AI - they’re carefully tiptoeing, wary of all the challenges that lie in wait.
Led by Gabrielle Robitaille, the WFA has built an AI governance community that's already pulled in more than 700 people across 135 brands - everyone from CMOs and chief privacy officers to in-house legal teams. Why such a huge show of force? Simple: Brands don’t want AI dreams to turn into legal, ethical, or reputational nightmares.
And right now, their top headache? The law.
Legal challenges aren’t just a hiccup. They’re a full-on roadblock. Issues like intellectual property (who owns what when AI creates content?) and strict privacy rules have left marketers scared to make the wrong move. Many are opting to only use “safe” enterprise-approved tools - but that leads to so many approvals and paperwork that AI’s promised speed gets buried under bureaucracy.
It doesn’t help that some marketers unknowingly feed confidential company information into open platforms like ChatGPT, raising serious concerns. Tools that were supposed to simplify everything are, ironically, making some teams slower - and making training a nightmare.
Agency partnerships have become another sticking point. While ad agencies are hustling to prove they can take care of AI innovation on brands’ behalf, not all brands trust that AI is being handled transparently. According to WFA findings, legal risks top the list of worries, but close behind are fears over what their external partners are really doing with these tools behind closed doors.
Interestingly, instead of slashing agency budgets (the "cheaper, faster, better" dream again), brands right now seem more willing to pay more - provided the agencies bring real AI expertise to the table. Nobody wants a bargain when legal or ethical fallout is on the line.
Beyond practical hurdles, deeper concerns are starting to bubble up - like bias baked into AI outputs, or the environmental cost of relying on giant AI models. The early assumption that AI-driven campaigns would lower carbon footprints turned out to be a bit too optimistic. Some models actually use more energy than old-school production methods.
Even the question of internal ownership is sparking office power struggles. Should marketing lead AI adoption? Should IT? Should both? Most companies are still trying to find a balance that allows both innovation and safe governance.
Ultimately, though, it's important to recognise something Robitaille emphasises: The biggest, most transformational use cases for AI so far aren't even flashy ad campaigns - they're behind-the-scenes breakthroughs, like turbocharging data analytics to improve media buys.
That’s the bittersweet truth: For marketers, AI isn’t some magic, overnight fix. It's full of opportunity, yes - but for now, it's still tangled up with very real, very human problems.
The journey is happening; it's just a lot messier, and a lot slower, than all the hype makes it sound.