Advertisers love to talk about AI, but they face a big problem: Consumers are skeptical of the technology and resist being bombarded with AI messaging.
The problem was on full display at the Olympics, when Google suffered a major advertising blunder for its Gemini AI tool. The “Dear Sydney” ad, which featured a father using AI to help his daughter write a letter to her idol athlete, drew widespread backlash and led Google to pull it. Google said in a statement that it had sought to show AI's ability to enhance human creativity, rather than replace it, but critics slammed it as outdated.
“There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding about what AI should be used for,” says Ian Thomas, co-author of the book “What Makes Us Human?” and founder of Sounds Fun, an agency that helps marketers use AI. “AI shouldn't be used to write poems or books, but to take on the grunt work and expand creativity in different ways.”
The problems with AI messaging go beyond Google: A June ad from Toys R Us that it claimed was made with OpenAI's text-to-video conversion tool Sora drew mixed reviews, with some saying it sent the message that filmmakers are being replaced by AI. An “AI-powered” ad from Under Armour in March drew criticism from some in the creative community for using other people's work without giving proper credit.
These high-profile blunders speak to a fundamental problem facing advertisers: Consumers still don't trust AI and are less likely to buy AI-powered products. A study by Washington State University researchers published in the Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management earlier this year found that U.S. consumers were less likely to buy products like televisions, medical devices and financial services products if the product descriptions included “artificial intelligence.”
With growing fears about AI's potential to upend jobs and dehumanize them, the sense of unease is easy to understand: A November Pew Research Center survey found that concerns about AI are on the rise, with 52% of Americans more worried than excited about it, up from 37% two years ago.
But advertisers may be susceptible to being influenced by their own positive views of AI: A Yahoo study published in February in collaboration with Publicis Media showed that advertisers are twice as likely as the general public to view AI positively.
Toys “R” Us used OpenAI's Sora to create this ad. YouTube
Companies are investing heavily in AI and spending millions on marketing.
But marketers can’t ignore AI.
Companies are expected to spend more than $40 billion on generative AI this year, and many are looking to their marketing departments to help promote these investment decisions.
According to data from MediaRadar, companies have spent more than $107 million on ads promoting AI-related products and services in the first half of 2024, up from the total of $5.6 million spent in the same period last year. To date, 575 companies have bought ads to promote AI products in 2024, up from 186 in all of 2023.
“They need to differentiate, and they're using AI to do that, so they're in a dilemma,” Josh Campo, CEO of ad agency Razorfish, said of advertisers, adding that it's particularly tough for companies like financial services and healthcare that handle sensitive personal information.
“They can talk about AI, but not as much as you do. AI is not a strategy, it's a tool,” he said. “We advise them to focus on what the benefits are in terms of the human experience.”
Matt Rebeiro, executive strategy director at creative agency Iris, said B2B brands are also incorporating AI into their advertising, using AI as shorthand for marketing to show how it can help their customers be more efficient, but he added that “AI” in itself isn't a unique selling point and marketers need to focus on the benefits and results of AI.
“If the sausage is delicious, I don't care if it's made by an AI,” Rebeiro says. “In the same way, I don't make a big fuss about a new product being designed in Photoshop, so why talk about a product being designed using AI? It may be a new product, but in most cases it's irrelevant to the customer.”
Data shows the best AI ads include human-driven storytelling
System1, which evaluates TV ads' potential to drive long-term growth for brands, found that the AI-driven ads that work best with consumers are those that focus on human-driven stories. The research firm asks consumer panels across several countries to indicate how they feel about the ads they're watching from a list of emotions that range from contempt and disgust to happiness and surprise.
One of the best-performing ads in the US in 2023 was from Adobe, which aired a spot featuring a girl using AI to create a birthday card. The ad received a 5.2 out of a possible 5.9. System1 testing showed that viewers initially reacted negatively when the AI element was introduced, but that faded as the tool showed that it helped the girl's creativity, rather than hurting it.
Another top scorer, coming in at number four, is Dove's “The Code” ad. When AI-generated beauty images appeared in the ad, negative reactions spiked from System 1 testers, but the reactions subsided when Dove showed realistic beauty examples and images of everyday women. The ad concludes with a promise that the brand “will never use AI to create or distort the image of women.”
Meanwhile, Microsoft's “They Say” Olympic ad, which showed how people can use Microsoft's Copilot chatbot to overcome doubts and achieve their dreams, received a modest score of 2.9. System1 attributed the ad's low rating to overemphasizing the negative aspects rather than the great feats that AI technology can help people achieve.
Thomas said some consumer companies are finding success using AI to personalize experiences or do something new, such as Virgin's ad featuring Jennifer Lopez, which uses AI to humorously portray people impersonating the star and encourages people to send personalized invitations to book a cruise, and Cadbury's tool allows people to upload their own photos to a classic Cadbury poster.
“It's in bad taste to try to do everything with AI,” Thomas said of AI. “People are becoming more sensitive to how things are made.”
