42% of traditional marketing tasks will be handled by gen-AI by 2029: Report

For many marketing professionals, a key bottleneck to execution is the sheer amount of assets needed to drive campaigns across countless channels, formats, audiences, and languages. Luckily, generative AI is uniquely suited to unlock the promise of personalisation at scale through content.

Savvy CMOs and their teams need tools to help them work smarter and feed the content beast. IDC predicts that by 2029, generative AI will assume 42 % of traditional marketing’s mundane work and, what’s more, boost marketing productivity by over 40%.

Those numbers are astounding. But not all generative AI strategies and platforms are created equal. Marci Maddox, research vice president at IDC, is upfront about marketers’ concerns: “Adoption is not without its challenges.” By implementing AI tools that prioritize responsibility, ethics, and security, forward-thinking leaders can take advantage of the speed and productivity boosts AI promises, all while driving both top-line revenue growth and bottom-line optimization.

The benefits of unlocking AI

Organisations are already utilising generative AI, IDC research indicates that 79% of marketers are currently using it for content tasksbut it’s how they use it that will be the game changer.

“GenAI unlocks a new era of content marketing, demanding a new breed of ‘creative scientist’ roles that can leverage its power,” wrote Maddox in the paper. “These teams will need to adapt their daily tasks, transitioning from content creation to strategic storytelling, scaling capabilities across the organisation, and driving exceptional customer experience design.”

3 ways generative AI can make a difference

Accelerating production- AI can help you overcome the content avalanche. Product descriptions, social media posts, and basic ad copy are time-consuming tasks that, when fielded by generative AI, can give teams time back for ideation, exploration, and testing.

Content personalisation- Messaging can be tailored to specific audiences and channels for increased engagement, conversion, and customer lifetime value. This data-driven marketing takes out the guesswork and helps calibrate campaigns based on performance metrics.

Brand protection- A thoughtful approach to generative AI can help organizations maintain transparency and brand protection through watermarks, secure custom models, and brand-specific style kits. These functions mitigate misinformation, foster trust, and maintain brand consistency.

Challenges to overcome

The path to using generative AI ethically and creatively isn’t without bumps.

Marketing leaders have valid concerns about the following:

Trust- Customer interactions start and end with trust. IDC found that 22 % of enterprises are making significant investments in generative AI, and 80 % of organisations globally are exploring it. With a saturated market, organisations need to be clear about how they are using such tools to preserve trust.

Authenticity- Brands build connections with genuine, authentic customer experiences. To avoid a breakdown with indistinguishable content, leaders will need to find creative ways to use generative AI while preserving their unique brand voice.

Security- Building robust AI security starts at the data layer. Organizations must find a balance between the benefits of public models and keeping proprietary information safe.

“Enterprises must develop robust data governance frameworks to ensure data privacy and establish clear guardrails for using GenAI,” said Maddox.

Adobe has designed a generative AI platform that revolutionises content creation for creative and marketing teams. With generative models that are designed to solve key creation and production workflows for enterprise teams, Adobe is uniquely positioned to support businesses by transforming content creation and production across the enterprise. Solutions like Firefly Services, for example, can generate endless content variations to power personalization, localization, and ecommerce needs, and capabilities like style kits and custom models help teams across the enterprise safely create content while staying on brand.

“Adobe empowers broader creative thinking and streamlines the production of personalized content at scale,” Maddox wrote.