There has been much coverage in recent news with stories about the growth in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its profound impact across different industries. While much of the coverage has focused on the perceived negative challenges such as privacy concerns, deep fakes, and the displacement of jobs, AI’s role in advertising presents both opportunities and limitations.
Here at TVADSWORK we keep a watchful eye on AI and its growing contribution to marketing and whilst we recognise some of the huge advantages that AI brings to this space in terms of audience targeting, we also acknowledge the restrictions and maintain that, whilst AI has undoubtedly earnt a place at the table, it cannot exist without human creativity.
AI's contribution to marketing
It’s undisputed that AI is revolutionising how brands connect with their audiences. Key innovations currently include:

Personalisation: AI-powered recommendation engines (like those used by Amazon and Netflix) suggest products or content based on a user’s past interactions.
Chatbots: AI-driven chatbots provide instant customer support and guide consumers through purchasing decisions, enhancing the user experience.
Predictive Analytics: AI tools predict trends and customer behaviour, helping marketers to optimise campaigns for better ROI.
In TV advertising, AI can help with ad placement and targeting, ensuring that adverts reach the right audience at the right time. It can also analyse viewing patterns, demographics and consumer behaviour to determine which adverts will be most effective on specific TV shows or during particular time slots.
What about content creation?
Generative AI (Gen AI) is a growing area. Whilst the likes of Chat GPT have been creating text content for some time it is also being used in image generation and more recently video and film production. However, challenges remain:
Bias risks: AI is created from mass data sets. It scours and pulls together information based on what's available on the internet. This can result in social, political and cultural bias that manifest as stereotypes.
Lack of nuance: Without empathy or context, AI struggles to capture humour, emotion, and brand-specific subtleties. This can mean a message can seem spurious and /or generic, creating a lack of trust and alienating audiences.
Creative limitations: Then there's the issue of creating an image that matches your vision. Just a few minutes of experimenting on image generator websites will show you how difficult it is to correctly prompt the image you have in your mind's eye. It requires a high degree of definition and even then it is reliant on the generator being able to find the elements of the image you want. For this reason Gen AI cannot replace human creativity.
Copyright infringement: Legal concerns, such as copyright infringement, add another layer of complexity to using AI content commercially. Regulations are relatively new and vary from country to country.
How age shapes trust and engagement with AI-generated content
There is a consensus that AI generated content should be labelled for the purposes of transparency, but that also brings with it some difficulties as research has found that for some AI is not trusted. It’s also shown that age affects the level of trust the consumer has. A YouGov survey from May '24 found that trust in AI-generated content varies by age group, with younger audiences being more accepting and older demographics remaining sceptical.
16-34s are more than twice as likely to trust content labelling when compared to those 55 and over (31% vs. 12%).
There were variations in how age demographics might influence people’s reactions to AI-generated social media posts.
Younger consumers (16-24) were more likely to say they would engage with the post (i.e.comment, like, etc.) when compared to all respondents (11% vs. 5%). They were also more likely to say they would share these types of posts with others (5% vs. 2%).
Conversely, 55+ consumers were more likely to block/unfollow the account where they saw labels for AI-generated social media posts (33% vs. 27%).

Case in point! Our website app will generate an AI image based on highlighted text. This was the result when we asked it to produce an image based on the above subtitle: How age shapes trust and engagement with AI-generated content. We're unsure why they have both been generated with facial hair!
In summary
AI has significantly transformed the marketing and TV advertising industries by enabling more personalised, efficient and data-driven strategies. While it offers clear advantages, businesses must balance automation with creativity and address the ethical and practical challenges that arise as AI becomes more integrated into the advertising ecosystem.
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