Because automation and artificial intelligence (AI) is nothing new to us, digital media professionals bring a different perspective to AI than people who work in fields where the technology is relatively young. Grant Lapping, Digital Executive at midnight, the innovation agency of iqbusiness, reflects on the lessons AI adoption in digital media has for other sectors and looks at the AI trends that will shape 2025.
Expect the way you work to change, but remember that human expertise remains the key to unlocking value from AI. AI isn’t new to the digital media world. We’ve seen automation profoundly change how we work over the past decade, starting with the launch of automated bidding capabilities on programmatic and social platforms or otherwise known by Google as Smart Bidding.
Since then, we’ve seen AI transform every aspect of how we work at a blistering speed. But despite the disruption our industry has seen during this time, the technology has yet to replace human digital media experts. If there is one lesson that professional should take from this as we move into 2025, it’s that those who skill up in AI are more likely to remain relevant and potentially increase their value.
AI Trends
AI Will Drive A Step Change In Productivity In 2025 And Beyond
Coming from the perspective of an industry where AI disruption has been underway for 10 years, we have seen how rapidly it has transformed slow, laborious manual tasks into automated processes. Just a decade ago, we needed to track every ad we ran across each platform and adjust bids manually to ensure ad spending aligned with revenue generation.
We’d figure out how much we’d need to pay for a click to get decent return on ad spend for the conversions we achieved. Soon, machine learning algorithms were able to perform this function exponentially faster and significantly more accurately than any human could. Automation of campaign targeting and bid structures made the human role in these functions obsolete.
When a campaign is set up with the right conversion metrics and taps into the full capability of the machine learning algorithms supported with first-party data, you can be sure you are spending the campaign budget in the optimal way. The time we spend on optimising campaigns and creating tailored ads to target different users has been sliced down from hours to minutes, allowing us to take on more clients and spend more of our time on strategic, value-adding work.
It’s Not What You Know, But How You Apply It
The big recent development in AI is the advent of generative AI platforms like Gemini and ChatGPT, which promise to profoundly change how knowledge workers do their jobs. These platforms transform AI output from data and information into knowledge and content. This will challenge what so many professionals do in the years to come — from marketing consultants and lawyers to coders and designers.
If you want a medical or tax opinion, you can ask ChatGPT and interrogate its output. You’d still be wise to consult a doctor or accountant (gen AI is known to get things wrong), but you will be well-informed when you talk to them. Likewise, it’s now possible to generate your own images for social media posts, the first draft of a blog post, or a script for your website without being a designer, writer or coder.
We are seeing exponential growth in generative AI platforms and co-pilots that target a range of specialist use cases, from psychotherapy to search engine optimisation. Each knowledge worker and professional will need to think carefully about how to position themselves in a world where knowledge is a commodity and creation can be automated. Expertise and knowledge will need to be packaged and applied, rather than sold as is.
Human Touch Required In An AI-Driven World
If the second point sounds scary, our experience in the digital media sector offers hope. AI has enabled us to be more efficient and effective — but if anything, the demand for digital media experts has only grown as the complexity of the AI technology has increased. Machines are only as good as the instructions and the data they are given. The importance of the human role in overseeing AI from a quality, governance and ethics perspective cannot be understated. Equally important are creativity, empathy, interpretation and judgement — unique human qualities where AI still falls short of passing the Turing test, a measure of whether a machine can exhibit behaviour that is indistinguishable from that of a human.
Expect Acceleration In The Speed Of Change In 2025
2025 will be the year that companies across industries ranging from manufacturing and agriculture to media, professional services and finance will need to scale up and accelerate their investments into AI and generative AI in particular. Each business will need to think about how to get maximum value from the technology. Many task-based jobs will fall away and how businesses create and capture value will change.
I’m optimistic that AI will, much like the internet or the cloud, create massive opportunities for people and businesses. Think back to how the mainstreaming of the internet has changed our lives and how we work. Putting powerful generative AI tools into everyone’s hands will unleash new waves of innovation and creativity in the years to come.
As was the case with the internet, businesses and people will show amazing resilience and adaptability in adjusting to the new possibilities and dangers of AI at scale. While there are understandable concerns about data privacy, data ethics, and job security, AI will boost economies and open up job opportunities that never existed before.
Enjoy The Ride
As AI continues to gain momentum, businesses, industries and professionals all face a leap into the unknown. The important part is to put the governance and ethical guardrails in place to ensure we benefit from the rise of the machines. But along with the caution, 2025 promises to be the year AI truly starts to gain momentum and deliver on the potential it has shown over recent years. Buckle up – it’s going to be an exciting ride.
IQBUSINESS
www.iqbusiness.net
