How can marketers and advertisers stand up against the sea of AI slop online, on search and on socials?
It is a question that modern marketers are wrestling with as they try to get their message out through the scams, fakes and deliberate misinformation online.
At the launch of a new membership tier last week, ADMA‘s leadership team addressed these questions.
Education is part of the solution to continue building a strong cohort of “informed, responsible, confident, connected marketers,” according to the Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising’s CEO Andrea Martens, but that alone is not enough.
I asked the ADMA team, ‘what about the irresponsible marketers and scam content creators who don’t approach their work responsibly?’
ADMA Chair David Morgan believes brands depend on consumer trust. “Breach that trust and you will destroy the brand,” he told me. Scams and AI fake content is destroying trust, which he believes will bring them undone eventually.
Responsible marketers can be role models who “resist and stand up” to call out fakes and the misuse of AI, otherwise “customers will be on the receiving end of AI slop.” ADMA wants to equip marketers with the skills to call out bad AI content.
A recent study by ADMA found that 36% of Australians say they don’t trust AI.
Marketers have a double headed mission, to build trust for their own brands while exposing the scams and fakes. Every marketer needs the skills to do that, not just those in big companies. That is why Australia’s largest marketing association ADMA is opening its doors to individual marketers through its new Individual Membership program.
Individual Membership will give every marketer direct access to the nation’s most trusted source of marketing standards, thought leadership, training and regulatory guidance.
Andrea Martens says the expectations on marketers are continuing to rise, so this new initiative will “build the marketing industry of the future, with data at its core.”
At the launch of the new initiative David Morgan said it is “a foundational shift that reshapes how the profession will build skills, connect and stay future-ready.”
ADMA’s Individual Membership will open up opportunities for training on privacy reform, AI adoption, regulatory changes and other capability gaps that have been identified, with the aim of lifting capability across the entire profession.
Talking to marketers after the launch event, Paul Hewitt from In Marketing We Trust told me that 85% of AI search is now “non-click” answers that don’t send searchers to the original website, instead scraping the answers without directing them to the original source. This click theft is disadvantaging marketers and depriving companies of web traffic.
AI, when used responsibly by professionals can speed up the marketing process and deliver more segmented messages, but it can also be threatening to marketing teams that are just ordinary. Cameron Roberts from the new media agency Forteen10 put it this way: “It’s never been a worse time to be mediocre at your job.”
Reporting: Steve Ahern