Generative AI is still maturing, but marketers aren’t waiting to fold it into their workflows, including content creation to audience segmentation. Marketers’ top use case is personalization, but they say copywriting has the most potential. Here are five charts demonstrating how marketers are using generative AI right now.

Brands expect agencies to understand AI while providing unique value. That means agencies need to walk the line between highlighting their AI innovations and emphasizing their human creative work. Since different agencies provide different value, some, like VML, are showing up to pitch meetings armed with an AI toolbox. Others, like Mischief USA, are letting AI fade into the background as they show off unique outputs.

On today's podcast episode (part 2), we discuss what the end of cookies means for publishers, what new media business models look like, and who's done the best job of pivoting to digital. "In Other News," we talk about when brands should disclose that they have used AI and whether Spotify's new video learning courses can move the needle. Tune in to the discussion with our director of Briefings Jeremy Goldman and analyst Daniel Konstantinovic.

Q1 has been a mixed bag for marketers. Ad spend grew in January and February, hitting double digits for the first time since March 2022. But many tech and retail companies were hit with layoffs as companies tightened ad spend. IBM, TikTok, and Google all slashed their marketing and advertising teams. On earnings calls, Nike’s finance chief said the company is planning for a “subdued macro outlook” and Paramount mentioned “softness in the global advertising market.”

Generative AI will “supercharge our creativity,” said VML chief innovation officer Brian Yamada. He believes the tech will improve marketers’ ability to tell stories, but it will also raise new privacy concerns.

OpenAI’s Sora could be to video generation what ChatGPT has become to text generation—a user-friendly, scalable tool that creates human-quality work. Tyler Perry put an $800 million studio expansion on hold after seeing the tool in action. And creators with access to the tool have created impressive works, from surreal nature documentaries to underwater fashion shows.

“What’s really exciting about retail media is a lot of it is uncharted territory,” said Paul Longo, general manager of retail media at Microsoft. “We’re in inning two, inning three. What’s gotten us here will not get us where things need to be.”

Payment providers are tapping genAI to personalize marketing offers and virtual assistants while streamlining customer checkout. These tools could help providers monetize transaction data and help merchants drive sales.

“95% of what marketers use agencies, strategists, and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly and at almost no cost be handled by the AI,” said OpenAI founder Sam Altman. The prediction sent marketers into a frenzy. Altman’s statement may not be all hype, so it’s important marketers prepare rather than panic.

South By Southwest was last week, and AI and VR were all the buzz. Gen Alpha is growing up with these technologies, which means the next generation of consumers will not just be used to AI and VR—they’ll expect to see it. Here are three takeaways from our analyst regarding tech trends at the event.

Last week, Apple made news for testing an AI-powered ad product similar to Google’s Performance Max. Apple has been successfully investing in advertising for the past few years. But Google has a multibillion dollar advertising advantage. Even with AI advertising improvements, Apple is nowhere near Google’s ad dominance.

As Latin America’s digital revolution marches on, advertisers and retailers must keep pace with how and where consumers are spending their time—and money—if they wish to maintain a competitive edge in today’s rapidly evolving business environment.

Apple tests AI-powered ad buying: Its tool focuses on App Store ads and allows advertisers to set budgets and cost per user before automatic placement.

“Most marketers want to be cutting-edge, and to be able to say that they’re exploring new technology,” Jack Johnston, associate director at Tinuiti, said about AI’s explosion into social media tools. “But our focus is not just being gimmicky and tapping into AI because it’s AI, but doing it because there’s a real business value and a positive impact that can come from it.”

LinkedIn Premium is the company’s AI proving ground: After making $1.7 billion in subscription revenues thanks to AI, the company looks to expand the tech elsewhere.

Google’s new core update focuses on decluttering spam from search, targeting sites that employ generative AI to mass produce low-quality content with minimal oversight. Marketers can still use ChatGPT to draft content, but using the raw output of these tools is a bad idea, according to Lily Ray, vice president of SEO strategy and research at Amsive.

Big Tech has a big problem: The regulatory tide has turned against it. Digital advertising giants face several major lawsuits, and competition authorities are working to launch more before a possible change in leadership following US elections.

Brands need to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. AI can help. But the content needs to be personalized and trained on the brand's own data to avoid generic output. And brands need to be sure that source content has a clear voice and point of view.

Last week, Arc, a web browser from startup The Browser Company, released a new AI-powered feature called pinch-to-summarize, which provides an instant summary of full web pages. That follows Arc’s release of “Arc Search,” a mobile app that will search the internet based on a user’s query and deliver an AI-generated page summarizing the breadth of information it searched. It’s not the only AI tool targeting search. Perplexity is seeing increased attention for its ability to summarize data sets, including searching in Reddit posts or YouTube videos. This month also saw the rebranding of Google’s Bard chatbot to Gemini as the company doubles down on AI search.