{Capture}’s Post

Spent the week reading everything I could find on "the future of digital marketing." Most of it says the same thing. AI. Personalisation. Video. Privacy. AEO. All true. All being said everywhere. The piece nobody's really sitting with is this. Gartner is now forecasting that by 2027, half of people in advanced economies will have AI assistants that can make purchases for them. By 2030, a quarter of consumer buying will be handed off to machines entirely. Customer interactions handled by AI agents are projected to go from 3.3 billion this year to over 34 billion by 2027. Read that number again. 10x, in two years. Which means the shift underway isn't just about how customers find you. It's about who the customer actually is. In a growing share of transactions, the decision maker isn't a human anymore. It's an agent making the call on someone's behalf. And agents don't care about your brand story or your creative direction. They care about whether they can find you, parse you, trust your data, and recommend you. So the real question for the next few years isn't "how do we use AI in marketing." That's a productivity conversation, and it's mostly solved. The harder question is "how do we market to AI." That one's still wide open, and it's the one that decides who's still relevant in 2028. At Digital Symphony, this is where we've been quietly focusing. Not because it's trending. Because everyone we've talked to who's started thinking about it early is already ahead of where their competitors will be next year. If 2027 planning is on your radar and it's still built around the old customer, worth a conversation now. DMs open.

I've been thinking about how the role of recommendation is changing. Recommendation has always been part of how people buy. Long before social media or eCommerce, we asked friends, colleagues and people we trusted what they thought, or explored products recommended by journalists in magazines (remember those?). Word-of-mouth has always helped shape people's shortlists. What has changed isn't the principle. It's the scale. As commerce became digital, recommendation did too. Customer reviews became mainstream. Creators built audiences around product advice. Now AI assistants are entering the same space. Recommendation hasn't been invented. It's been integrated into the buying journey. What was once limited to conversations between people is now embedded throughout digital commerce, influencing millions of buying decisions every day. Customers are narrowing their options long before they interact directly with your brand. They're asking AI assistants for suggestions, watching creators compare products, reading reviews and accepting personalised recommendations from retailers and marketplaces. Recommendation is helping create the shortlist before your brand ever has the chance to make its own case. That feels like an important commercial shift. Historically, many organisations focused on discoverability: "Can customers find us?" Now there's another question that may matter just as much: "Who — or what — is helping customers choose us?" Those aren't necessarily the same thing. Because if recommendation is becoming embedded across the buying journey, competitive advantage may increasingly depend on how you're represented by others, not just how you present yourself. I don't think recommendation is replacing marketing. But it does seem to be have become an increasingly more important part of the route to market. Perhaps the strategic question is no longer just, "Can customers find us?" but also, "Where is recommendation shaping customer choice before they ever reach us?"

Douglas Nicol; "Sometimes we're using these really amazing models for really simple use cases, and we're already hearing of CFOs starting to complain about the cost of AI for the business." IBM Kantar Karin Du Chenne Miki Luong Uma Oldham Lahnee White #marketing #advertising #media https://lnkd.in/gfM-gcpZ

Yesterday morning, I read David Raab CMSWire editorial, “Are Marketing Campaigns Obsolete Because of AI?” Labeled a 6-minute read. Took me 15. Whatever, I read slowly. He must’ve worn out his mouse right-clicking the thesaurus, because holy freaking buzzwords! The article boiled down to this: Companies should use AI to create direct conversations with customers instead of just automating traditional campaigns. My reaction: NO SHIT. Huh? WTH did I just read? Okay, okay. Finally! Ugh, nooo! Make it stop. Isn’t the point of any marketing campaign to start a conversation? David used an entire article to explain marketing to marketers. Instead of just saying it clearly, we got phrases like “orchestration algorithms,” “volatile contextual data,” “touchpoint infrastructure,” and “centralized orchestration logic.” The point wasn’t insightful. It was elementary and contradictory. Worse, the language buried it. Come on, David! You're a Columbia and Harvard guy. I guess this is the unfortunate reality of too much marketing content: simple ideas inflated with complicated language to sound more intelligent than they are. Just say what you mean. Please. https://lnkd.in/ecNengBt

Campaign-led marketing no longer works. AI is changing what marketing actually is. McKinsey’s latest article argues that the traditional campaign-based model is reaching its limits, because customer behaviour is becoming continuous, fragmented and increasingly AI-mediated. Nearly half of consumers already use AI-based search somewhere in their purchase journey, while shoppers now use roughly twice as many channels as they did a decade ago. At the same time, companies are experimenting heavily with AI: 90% of CMOs are testing use cases. However fewer than 10% have scaled AI or captured value across marketing workflows. McKinsey’s point is important: The opportunity is not in adding AI tools to old processes. It is in rewiring marketing into a continuous growth engine built around five capabilities: • continuous customer insights • scaled creativity • hyperpersonalization • marketing to AI agents • always-on orchestration And this has a major implication for marketers themselves. Execution is becoming dramatically cheaper. McKinsey estimates that AI can reduce execution-related costs by 60–70%, while always-on orchestration could reduce the time marketers spend on execution from 60–70% to just 10–15%. So the value of the marketer shifts upward. Less value in simply producing, launching and reporting. More value in understanding customers, making strategic choices, designing systems, setting priorities and deciding where humans, not AI, should apply judgment. Read the article: The future of marketing in the age of AI | McKinsey https://lnkd.in/ewC7v_4p

AI has turned marketing into a moving target. AI has compressed the lifespan of marketing tactics, forcing teams to replace fixed annual plans with a continuous cycle of testing, measuring and retiring what no longer works. #Opinion Mickey Haslavsky https://lnkd.in/dNwGxfiC

Your next customer might meet your brand before they ever visit your website. They may ask AI which providers to consider, what criteria to use and who can actually solve their problem. But becoming AI-ready isn’t about replacing marketers with prompts, or producing ten times more content. The tools are the easy part. The real challenge is building a strategy that: 🤖 Makes your brand clear and credible to both people and AI - Uses technology to improve research, personalization and prospecting 🤖 Keeps strategy, creativity and final decisions in human hands So, is your marketing strategy truly AI-ready, or just AI-curious? We’ve created a practical guide, including a 15-point checklist to help you find out: https://hubs.ly/Q04sMg-80

Are European Marketers Playing It Too Safe With AI? AI adoption is accelerating across marketing teams. But the biggest opportunity may still be ahead. In European Marketers Are Playing It Safe With AI — That’s The Problem, Forrester highlights a growing gap between using AI for efficiency and using it to create better customer experiences.  📌 50% of European B2B marketing organizations have deployed AI for advertising and media buying.  📌 Yet only 8% say personalization is the biggest benefit they've achieved from AI.  The takeaway: AI can help teams work faster, but its long-term value comes from improving customer outcomes and driving growth.  🔗 Read the full blog: https://forr.com/4w7McpU

Are European Marketers Playing It Too Safe With AI? AI adoption is accelerating across marketing teams. But the biggest opportunity may still be ahead. In European Marketers Are Playing It Safe With AI — That’s The Problem, Forrester highlights a growing gap between using AI for efficiency and using it to create better customer experiences.  📌 50% of European B2B marketing organizations have deployed AI for advertising and media buying.  📌 Yet only 8% say personalization is the biggest benefit they've achieved from AI.  The takeaway: AI can help teams work faster, but its long-term value comes from improving customer outcomes and driving growth.  🔗 Read the full blog: https://forr.com/4w7McpU