The AI Train is Speeding By. Will You Board or Watch it Pass?
As the nationwide labour shortage continues to make headlines in Canada, employers are offering everything from pay increases and new benefits to lowering hiring requirements in the hopes of filling needed positions. With the economy driven by digital transformation, the labour shortage feels even more dire as there simply aren’t enough workers with the requisite technology skills to address the needs of companies today.
While the impact of labour shortages are very real issues for employers, the statistics fail to paint the full picture. Advancements in technology, specifically artificial intelligence, are helping companies work smarter and faster, empowering their workforce with better tools to more effectively do their jobs. As these technologies grow more ubiquitous, so does the need to employ individuals who are comfortable working alongside emerging technology.
The good news is that Canada is well-positioned to lead in bringing AI talent to the market. The country’s emerging tech scene is quite robust, Canada punches above its weight in the field of AI, and universities such as McGill and Waterloo are known the world over.
New entrants into the Canadian workforce are primed and eager to join companies that are embracing AI. As AI is predicted to be the biggest driver behind GDP growth by 2030, this is especially good news. For the digital marketing industry in particular, individuals with AI know-how just may find their expertise is opening a lot of doors.
The Great AI Equalizer
AI already has a foothold in digital marketing, with the technology being used to improve ad decisioning. Additional opportunities will increase in the years to come, and they will have a democratizing effect as AI will be less of a boutique tool for the largest and most powerful players, and instead, something that’s commoditized and accessible to everyone.
Digital marketing leaders are using AI to support strategic business applications and future-proof media strategies to remain competitive—particularly in our new, privacy-first era. We can expect this trend to continue as other technological advancements pave the wave for broader use of AI—everything from 5G to edge computing is making it easier to deploy AI-based capabilities. Digital marketers will find themselves at the forefront of this evolution as they work to meet the ever changing needs of today’s consumers.
Inbound marketing isn’t going anywhere either, and AI can automatically generate content that’s literally designed to resonate, based on specific data points, in mere minutes or even seconds. This doesn’t supplant the value of content creators, but instead gives them a rich tool to use, ensuring more diverse content is seen at just the right time and place.
With companies of all sizes using data science and AI-driven analytics, we’ll also see greater dynamism in things like pricing, personalization and recommendations. Predictive chatbots, whether text or voice, will be a timesaver and a particularly important use of AI given the ongoing labour shortage.
AI will prove to be the bridge that connects advertisers and marketers to consumers in a new era of privacy prioritization. Apple’s app tracking transparency, Google’s Privacy Sandbox and the death of third-party cookies have forced digital marketers to radically rethink how they work. Entire marketing strategies are being ripped-up and rewritten, and AI is being cast as a central player.
Perhaps most important, AI is already a proven revenue generator. AI helps marketers increase sales, improve customer retention and succeed at new product launches. Customizable algorithms for advanced optimization have been shown to lift paid media performance by up to 70%. As more efficiencies in spend are realized, access to budgets improves. Learning data sets specific to each campaign also evolves, progressively shedding variables that do not create performance and welcoming ones that do.
AI as a tool, not a replacement
With every new technology and automation comes the fear that it will eliminate humans from the workforce. To some degree, disruptions do impact the workforce and it would be short-sighted to imagine that they won’t. AI has been particularly demonized, with the assumption that an intelligent interface will take over human contact.
The good news is this will rarely, if ever, be the case. AI, as effective as it is, is still a tool that needs to be managed by human talent to be at its most effective. When it comes to AI use in digital marketing specifically, it is about optimizing human talent to be more strategic and more effective. With the global economy becoming more digitized, there will only be more data to make sense of. AI can save time, create efficiencies and empower teams with better data and insights. It cannot replace people. Instead, it augments their efforts.
AI has the power to deliver a level of unbiased functionality that can be particularly useful for marketers navigating the targeted reach of their consumers without encroaching on privacy or veering into the overly creepy, all-knowing insights that turn consumers off. This is where human inputs become most important to derive the most value from AI.
The cost benefits and potential of AI have been well documented. The only thing standing in the way of its full potential is human adoption, and the number one barrier to that adoption is a lack of education and training. A recent study showed that two-thirds of marketers ranked their confidence in evaluating marketing AI technologies as medium or low. They also cited other common barriers to AI adoption of lack of awareness (46%) and lack of resources (46%).
The time to overcome those barriers is now. Canadian marketers are primed to bring in the talent they need to more effectively use AI, and resources are available to better learn its value and promise.
Digital marketers who fail to embrace AI will become obsolete and less effective. Early adopters will enjoy the advantage of not only leading in a new privacy-first era, but to being at the forefront of opportunities that will emerge from our changing economy.
Written by Tanya Illiakis, Senior Director l SCIBIDS Technology. In February 2022, Tanya was announced as the Senior Commercial Director for SCIBIDS Technology Canada.