Ad world adopting AI for creatives, influencers

Though AI has been in use in media planning for a while, it is yet to acquire scale in advertising, Gupta said. It is being used to generate text, images and videos and is a blessing for small agencies which can now produce work without hiring expensive designers and artists, he said

On Wednesday, Google announced the launch of Gemini, its new, ambitious model in the field of generative AI (Artificial Intelligence) set to compete with OpenAI’s GPT models. Google said Gemini is ‘multimodal’, that is, unlike others which accept only one type of user prompt – either text or images, it will take multi-media inputs such as text, videos, audio etc. Back home, India’s advertising industry is watching the development with interest as it takes baby steps to embrace AI in various functions.

irms specializing in social media marketing use AI to create entire calendars for brands for these platforms.

Digital agency Pulp Strategy has just released a totally AI-generated campaign for Dabur India’s oral care brand Red paste. “We’re using AI in some form for 95% of our clients and they are excited about it,” said Ambika Sharma, founder of the agency. The sentiment is echoed by digital agency network Zoo Media’s co-founder Pratik Gupta who said AI has become the new buzzword for clients for their brand campaigns.

Though AI has been in use in media planning for a while, it is yet to acquire scale in advertising, Gupta said. It is being used to generate text, images and videos and is a blessing for small agencies which can now produce work without hiring expensive designers and artists, he said.

Ramya Ramachandran, founder, Whoppl, a young digital firm that spans content to commerce solutions, uses AI for influencer discovery on its listing platform for creators and for making campaigns. The agency has serviced more than 100 brands in FMCG, fashion, retail, beauty, fintech and real estate. Whoppl uses AI for prompts for scripts and concept notes. “They are like thought starters that we can use to build our stories,” Ramachandran said.

Firms specializing in social media marketing use AI to create entire calendars for brands for these platforms. “Earlier large teams brainstormed for a month to create a social media calendar for a brand including topical posts. Today, it is literally done at the click of a button. You put in the key words and, thanks to AI tools, you get a readymade content calendar,” said Ramachandran.

Ad firms are also using AI for videos, creating mascots and bringing them to life. Though not all brands require it, animation is faster and the quality is richer. “The ability of the tools is also improving very fast,” Sharma said.

But to achieve the desired results, be it texts or videos, the skills of those giving the command are crucial. “Skilled graphics or web designers need to give commands which are descriptive and good enough for AI to generate optimum results. This brings us back to the industry’s age-old issue, that is, the need to give better briefs to get better results,” Gupta said.

To be sure, AI has given rise to virtual influencers too that are now being chased by brands much like the real influencers they have been engaging for promotions. Why virtual influencers seem attractive to brands and agencies is because they are tantrum free, Gupta said. In other words, the brand can exercise better control over their content and their tone, ensuring that they do not upset their audiences. Besides, they can generate content faster. “With human influencers you may think of 100 topics but you can shoot probably only two films in a day. Also, they are likely to be proficient in either one or two languages. AI influencers can speak on diverse subjects and in different languages in different regions,” Sharma said.

However, building followers for AI influencers requires equal effort in terms of investment and marketing muscle, Gupta added. He doesn’t think AI influencers will cannibalize people’s influencer business. “They may just expand the influencer marketing horizon,” he said. Pulp Strategy’s Sharma also foresees the emergence of a hybrid influencer business.

The use of AI in creatives or influencer marketing makes headlines as that’s the glamourous part of the business, Sharma said. “In advertising and marketing, the real use of AI is in customer experience, data analytics and media planning where it has already been happening. That is the hardworking part which brings down your training costs, error margins, etc,” she said.

But Zoo Media’s Gupta said the value of AI in advertising cannot be emphasized enough. “The ad world is adopting it at pace. If you don’t adopt it, you will be obsolete in 3-4 years,” he said.