Senior marketers are operating under false allusions about how efficient they actually are, according to new research from AdSapiens, which reveals that campaigns fail to meet KPIs a shocking 48% of the time.
The report, which polled senior marketers at brands with more than 500 employees, about their current strategies, tools and perceptions around AI, found that fearing AI has led senior marketers to simply avoid it – thereby slowing their output.
Despite marketers citing “lack of resources” as one of their key struggles despite noting an average of 19 people involved in each ad campaign. Ad Sapiens found evidence of a dynamic where marketers felt restricted despite having more than enough time dedicated to each campaign.
The report found that this is having a knock-on effect on the success of advertising campaigns, with marketers citing quality assurance (29%), format adaption (27%) and language translation to be the three main areas that stifle progress.
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Half of the marketers reported spending a “moderate amount” of time on scaling campaigns across different formats and languages, with more than a quarter admitting to this taking a “significant” amount of time. The report also highlighted that this is despite the fact that AI can be used to help automate some of these processes.
Yet, despite the challenges around 92% claimed to be “satisfied” with the efficiency of their creative advertising process.
“Our landmark research has revealed some alarming truths about the way ad campaigns are being resourced and executed,” said Adludio CEO Chris Allan.
“It’s time senior marketers woke up to the realization that this is not a sustainable approach, particularly when lengthy processes like ad formatting adaptation can now be automated at the click of a button,” Allan added.
“We’re calling on brands and their marketing teams to reconsider the way they resource and execute their campaigns – it’s time to embrace automation to free up valuable time, set a new standard for the industry, and unlock a huge competitive advantage.”
However, some adland heavyweights like Sir John Hegarty believe that too much process and too much focus on efficiency should never come at the cost of original creativity.
