Experts expect AI to replace marketing tasks

MANILA, Philippines — Generative artificial intelligence (AI) will take over three in 10 jobs in the marketing industry in Asia-Pacific by 2027 due to efforts by companies to automate their operations.

In an analysis, the International Data Corp. (IDC) said generative AI would gobble up 30 percent of the traditional marketing tasks in the region.

The IDC said these duties include search engine optimization, content and website optimization, customer data analysis and segmentation.

The IDC interviewed chief marketing officers (CMOs) in Asia-Pacific and found out that more than a third of them are already employing generative AI in the workplace.

Half of CMOs in the region want to improve the quality of marketing content in the next 12 months.

By 2028, the IDC estimates that the largest corporations in Asia-Pacific will automate 30 percent of actions in the consumer journey. This means that CMOs will deploy generative AI in the purchasing process – from marketing to sales.

The IDC also expects that as early as 2026, over half of consumers will rely on generative AI in discovering, evaluating and purchasing the products and services that they want.

Further, the IDC believes that half of the largest marketers in Asia-Pacific will depend on generative AI by 2026 to conduct two-way conversations with their consumers.

IDC research analyst Lavanya Jindal said the use of generative AI in marketing would improve the skills sets of marketers such as in data analytics.

Before 2023 ended, the IDC released the results of a survey wherein the largest 2,000 companies in Asia-Pacific were asked to share their insights on generative AI. The survey reported that firms will initiate studies in 2024 on how to best maximize AI platforms.

With this, the IDC said that generative AI may take over 15 percent of enterprise talent shortages by 2025. As a consequence, Asia-Pacific could suffer from a surplus of talents across all sectors by 2027, as companies automate most of their tasks.

Generative AI like ChatGPT refers to applications that can create images, texts and videos in an instant, and they learn how to produce these based on available data on the internet.

Although seen as the future of businesses worldwide, the technology is approached with caution by some innovators, such as Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, for the dangers it poses like displacing workers and violating copyright.