Artificial intelligence continues to be hyped as a game-changer for businesses across all industries. Its swift computing power can鈥檛 be denied, but as many will repeat, it鈥檚 a tool that鈥檚 only as good as its user. While the primary use of AI in the general public is to speed up internet searching 鈥� with AI ripping information from websites, taking away clicks and ad revenue 鈥� some businesses are beginning to lean on its utility in other ways.
Seeing the potential in the marketing sector, Goldman Sachs has led a massive $150 million funding round in Hightouch. The AI marketing startup promises to help create and manage campaigns. The news comes at a time when businesses appear split on where the utility of AI in marketing truly lies.
Leveraging Digital Marketing Remains a Tailored Approach
Marketing needs to be tailored both from the angle of meeting audience expectations and to remain in line with branding to remain unique in ever-crowded spaces. When people , for example, the promotions offer additional ways to play for a community with many gaming preferences.
The welcome offer adds free spins to the initial deposit so that new players can try a curated selection of slots as well as play bingo, while there are also free bingo rooms available before the boost bingo games begin. It all falls into the branding angle of offering low-stakes entertainment that鈥檚 welcoming to players of all kinds.
It鈥檚 difficult for any business to create a marketing campaign or collection of promotions that manages to be both specific enough to be eye-catching but also broad enough to have as much appeal as possible. Gradually, email marketing, social media ads, video ads, and more have become more refined, but personalisation is now the goal.
The Hope for AI to Enhance Marketing Creations
There鈥檚 a strange paradox emerging around the perception of AI in marketing circles. As was , 55 per cent of European B2B marketers see generative AI as being overhyped. On the flip side, 81 per cent are enthusiastic about the tech. The issue is that the reality doesn鈥檛 match the hype yet.
It follows years of AI developers and companies hailing the tech as the way forward for humanity. It鈥檒l be the tech that takes over all of the humdrum, busy work to let us think and act more freely with more time. Surveys find that only 36 per cent of marketers think AI truly frees time.
The research sees a split reality in which marketers say most of their time is dedicated to tasks other than creativity. That said, the over 60 per cent who say that AI helps them work faster see its use in these non-creative tasks. AI isn鈥檛 a creative tool yet, but its computing power could help to achieve long-desired goals like personalised deployment of marketing.
Perhaps the greatest selling point of Hightouch, which Goldman Sachs and others invested heavily in, is its tailored approach. Rather than generate lots of content quickly and let the AI pursue what it thinks is the best marketing route, Hightouch promises to make on-brand content that follows successful patterns of the brand鈥檚 previous campaigns.
In this way, Hightouch comes across as a unique and promising startup, as ultimately, marketing needs to be a creative, branded experience. The utility of AI in this sector looks to be better tailored to enhancing deployment rather than having input from the creation stage onwards.