Skyrocketing Demand For Marketing Content Will Just Keep Growing
The skyrocketing demand comes from broadening customer expectations facilitated by advances in technology. More than 6 in 10 marketers say that customers now expect more personalized interactions with brands. About 46% find that customers now want more audio and video content, while 44% are creating content to enhance a hybrid customer experience—in which a customer interacts with the brand both virtually and in person. And 62% say that customers now expect new content at least weekly.
That adds up to a ton of content, literally. Seven in 10 marketers say their organization creates at least 1,000 assets per year, with nearly a quarter of marketing teams churning out between 10,000 and 100,000 assets annually. Current production workflows make that level of work challenging. Adobe found that nearly half of all marketing teams' workflows involve between 51 and 200 people to create, review, approve and activate each piece of content, and nearly 90% have at least three approval stages before assets can be published. The long approval process makes 36% of marketers struggle to find the time for content creation and ideation.
Generative AI can now help marketers with some of that content creation. Over half use the technology in multiple parts of their production process, and 84% plan to use it in the next year. This can certainly help teams meet the flywheel of demand, but administrative processes also need to be addressed. If the creative process speeds up, approval to use content also needs to be faster. As it stands now, 58% of marketers told Adobe that 41% of content creation time—roughly 25 minutes of every hour—is spent on administration, reviews and approvals.
Reese Witherspoon talks to e.l.f. Beauty CMO Kory Marchisotto at Cannes Lions International Festival Of Creativity.
Much of the marketing world is at Cannes Lions this week, sharing the creative wins, new technologies and challenges facing the industry. WPP Media's midyear report shows that there is a lot for the industry to figure out, Forbes contributor Howard Homonoff writes. Total ad revenue growth for 2025 is projected to be 6%, down from the predicted 7.7% at the beginning of the year. The downgrade extends to revenues for the next several years as well, largely owing to the unstable economy.
Digital advertising continues to dominate, representing 81.6% of all revenue when including streaming TV, digital out-of-home and digital print. Creator-driven ad revenue is projected to reach nearly $185 billion this year, for the first time surpassing projected revenues for traditional and streaming TV ($162 billion). WPP projects digital revenue will take a more than 87% share of all that comes from marketing by 2030.
WPP says search ad revenue, called 'Intelligence Advertising,' is set to grow 7.4% this year. However, that includes generative AI search—and many of the bots and engines people use don't offer advertising just yet.
Walmart
Walmart has a new AI-powered shopping assistant that will be able to do much more than just help customers select products that fit their needs. Forbes contributor Ron Schmelzer writes that Sparky—the assistant personified by Walmart's trademark yellow smiley face—now can do what many AI-powered shopping assistants do: suggest products, summarize reviews and answer a few real-world questions—like which sports teams are currently playing. In coming months, Walmart plans to add features that go several steps beyond basic: reordering and scheduling services, a feature that can take a photo or video and give a sort of 'how-to' guide for tasks—like 'How do I fix this dripping faucet?' or 'How can I make lunch out of these products?' It will essentially become a shopping agent, Schmelzer writes, turning shopping 'from a search problem into a service experience.' If you're planning a cookout, Sparky will present you with grills, check the weather, suggest menus and schedule for the items to be delivered.
It makes sense for Walmart to add these capabilities. According to the retailer's surveys, nearly 7 in 10 customers say quick solutions are the top reason they'd use AI in retail, and 27% now trust AI for shopping advice. Nearly half would be okay with AI reordering household staples, but the same amount said they're unlikely to ever fully hand over control of their shopping to a bot. Sparky combines these two desires: automatic reordering of commonly used items, advice on others. And with such a wealth of information available on Walmart's app, it may also inspire people to begin their shopping on the app itself instead of bypassing it for recommendations provided by an AI-powered search engine.
getty
A generation ago, the way Americans found out something new—from the latest details of presidential scandals to who killed Laura Palmer—was by watching live TV broadcasts. Today, live TV is increasingly turned off, writes Forbes senior contributor Toni Fitzgerald. A new study from consumer research firm Attest finds that 28% of Americans don't watch traditional broadcast TV in an average day, a number that has been rising year-over-year. Traditional TV viewership has especially been decreasing among younger viewers. More than two out of five Gen Zers say they don't typically watch traditional TV, while 27% of adults between 31 and 49 and 20% of those over 50 say the same. However, people are still watching something on their TVs. Attest found that 86% of people watch it daily through streaming services.
Influencers Adam W, Xandra and Wisdom Kaye.
The creator economy continues to grow and thrive. Forbes ranked the 50 richest creators across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube, finding they earned an estimated $853 million this year—not counting equity deals for partnering with consumer brands. Honorees on this year's list have a combined 3.4 billion followers, up 24% from last year's total.
Leading the pack is Jimmy Donaldson, also known as MrBeast, who is the most followed person on social media. His earnings in the last year are estimated at $85 million, and the YouTube star has expanded beyond digital platforms with candy brand Feastables, fast food chain MrBeast Burger, and his Amazon Prime game show Beast Games. YouTube producer Dhar Mann, who has established his own Hollywood studio with teams of hundreds to create modern back-to-school specials, ranks second on the list.
The ranking also includes Adam Waheed, known online as comedian Adam W, who pulls in more than 1 billion views on social platforms each month. Forbes' Steven Bertoni talked to Waheed about his social brand: sketch videos that are an exaggerated take on everyday life, often using high-quality cinematography and complex props. He definitely approaches the creator life as a full-time job, starting at 9 a.m. and posting a sketch every other day by 2:30 p.m. 'You can get 10 million views on a video, and the next day, someone else is getting 100 million views. You must continue putting up those numbers,' Waheed told Bertoni. 'When my back's against the wall is when I thrive.'
Every marketing job comes with some busywork, which can be a creativity killer. But AI can take care of a lot of those tasks. Here are seven ways to use it to free up your mind for the type of work you prefer to do.
While all of your customer reviews may not be positive, they provide windows into customers' mindsets, as well as opportunities to deliver better customer service and improve your company's processes. Here's how to turn bad reviews around.
Weigel Broadcasting Co. is launching its next specialty TV network. What kinds of programs will it show?
A. Documentaries
B. Talk shows from years past
C. Reality shows from years past
D. Westerns
See if you got the answer right here.
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Fast Company
42 minutes ago
- Fast Company
Why you need intergenerational marketing
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Harvard Business Review
an hour ago
- Harvard Business Review
Research: Marketing Tech Is Broken. Here's How to Fix It.
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Fast Company
an hour ago
- Fast Company
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I imagine that—like me—many of us got into advertising because it beat the alternatives. No real rules. No 'right way to do it.' No boxes you have to check. That sense of creative freedom chirped and blinked like an EXIT sign in the smoke-filled hallway of career choices. We ran to that EXIT, bypassing doors leading to more stringent, structured careers like lawyer or accountant or 'business consultant.' And before technology and analytics usurped advertising—like it has other entertainment-based industries like sports and film—that creative freedom drove the industry. Look at how analytics has all but eliminated the creativity in the mid-range game in the NBA and the subsequent Finals ratings. Advertising is in a similar state: seeking ideas that feel like predictable, analytically defensible, 'high-value' shots. This thinking is now making us operate more and more like those stringent, structured industries we avoided in the first place. BRAND STRATEGISTS AS CREATIVE LITIGATORS Take brand strategy for instance. Our main role now is 'creative litigator.' We gather stakeholder interviews like depositions, review client's internal documentation and data like evidence discovery, and research competitor companies and culture like case histories, statutes, and laws that give us the precedents to build off of. Then, ultimately, we piece together findings into a cohesive story like an opening statement that lays out the case for creative work. That's great for stakeholders, but not so much for viewers. People are paying $100+/month to avoid the 'disruption and irritation of advertising.' However, being disruptive or irritating shouldn't be the worry for brands. They should worry about being boring. THE RISK OF BEING BORING Jon Evans estimates the ' cost of being boring ' at $189B for brands in the U.S. Creators and influencers know this. Their freedom to 'just shoot' and develop an understanding of 'how not to be boring' enables them to run circles around ad agencies in terms of engagement and efficacy. In fact, a recent Deloitte study showed 56% of Gen Z and 43% of millennials find user-generated social media content 'more relevant than traditional TV shows and movies.' WHAT BRAND STRATEGISTS REALLY NEED TO DO In short, boring inputs result in boring outputs. To change that, in the case of brand strategists, we need to be thinking more often like creative instigators and agitators than just litigators. We need to approach our work like a journalist or a stand-up comedian. Because we're after 'interesting,' not justice. And you don' t get to 'interesting' by filling in funnels or bogus 'white space' quadrants or any assortment of rectangles in a framework. You get there by passively observing rather than actively 'working a case' at all times. Allowing anomalies to appear and not just looking for commonalities. Not looking for white spaces, but for colorful ones. Being able to 'explain the situation like I'm five,' but being able to ask questions like a 5-year-old first. Why? Why? Why? Getting the time to be the dumbest in the room, not the smartest. To be able to find something and show it to someone and say, 'Is this anything?' With the advertising industry's current landscape and dominant forces as they are, the sell of creative work will always require litigation. But it's much easier to sell creative work when the decider is focused on the tears in their eyes and not whether the idea is 'ownable' or 'culturally relevant' or 'shareable' or whatever analytics creativity is foolishly judged against today. Great creative ideas deserve to exist and shouldn't live and die based on their ability to fit in Meta, Alphabet, or Amazon's 'predictable' boxes. Come to think of it—maybe we are after justice after all?
