How ChatGPT is changing digital marketing

From copywriting to SEO, from understanding market needs to campaign personalization – the smart bot is a force multiplier in the world of marketing and advertising. How best to utilize it and what is important to be careful of?

Assuming you’ve been on Earth in recent months, you’ve likely heard of ChatGPT. Maybe you’ve even tried it yourself. Open AI’s smart bot, in its current version, has spread like wildfire. The news has spread from word of mouth, from post to article, from country to country, and reached more than a million users on the day of its launch. Since then, it has managed to turn several content worlds upside down, and quite a few professionals are wondering if it’s time for a conversion. In advertising and digital marketing, the tool’s disruption potential is enormous.

Take any accepted practice of market research, strategy formulation, audience segmentation, copywriting, and campaign building – there is something to be done with our robot acquaintance in all of these and more. It excels at identifying keywords in a particular content world for the purpose of optimizing its appearance in search engines (SEO); it can suggest titles and adapt one of the options it provides according to demand and new criteria; it presents a list of topics to develop the discussion in a particular field, for example – chapter titles for a book, blog, or podcast; of course, writing the entire content itself – for now in somewhat broken Hebrew, in English it is quite impressive – or correcting and proofreading emails and seasoning them with examples and calls to action; and it keeps getting better as it rubs against the real world and receives feedback from it.

But not only with words does our AI bot understand; it is also making progress in programming. Quite a few pages have already been written this way, whether in structured formats like WordPress or by writing code for an HTML page. As of this writing (without the help of the bot, for now), this specific component of the product is still not very developed. But we won’t fall off our chairs if by the time you read this, that too will change.

The entire product is far from perfect, and it is no substitute for brainstorming. But it can certainly shorten processes, advance Time-to-market or campaign uploads, save resources, and streamline work. It’s no wonder that advertising and marketing agencies already see it as a team member for all intents and purposes. As for customers, after years of somewhat templated and metallic interaction with chatbots – the new personalization capabilities, extensive knowledge, and more human style are a refreshing innovation.

Caution, biases in AI   

The tool also has limitations that are important to be aware of. It may provide inaccurate information, and worse: phrase it in a way that is completely plausible (i.e., avoiding the red flags and warning lights for the reader). Sometimes it tries to guess “what the poet meant,” instead of simply presenting a follow-up question. In other words, it is “ashamed” to admit that it didn’t get our point the first time.

Another problem is the possibility of creating biased, harmful, and even offensive content. In general, the issue of ethics and biases in AI is one of the hottest and most fascinating today in a wide range of industries, and is evident here as well. The bot is sometimes overly sensitive to wording or overuse of expressions, in a way that could damage the result. And it has not been completely up to date with what is happening in the world since its launch in 2021.

Still, it is difficult to ignore the advantages: 24/7 availability, including at night, on Saturdays and holidays, without midday fatigue, strikes or taking children out of settings. It can dramatically save time and resources, help develop ideas and creativity, correct, fax and even suggest alternative directions. It learns quickly, increases effectiveness and cost-effectiveness, helps with personalization in advertising and encourages engagement.

Is this the future? It is certainly part of it. The shortcomings require us to follow closely, not to trust the machine with our eyes closed, certainly not at this stage. But the potential is so great that it cannot be ignored for long. Customers will not settle for less.