According to data from the Boston Consulting Group survey, 80% of respondents have already experienced improvements with technology
A new study by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), conducted in partnership with the Association of National Advertisers (ANA) and titled “How CMOs Are Shaping Their GenAI Future,” highlighted the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) on marketing operations.
According to the data, 80% of the 200 CMOs interviewed, from different regions, stated that they are already experiencing significant improvements in automation, speed and productivity with the adoption of technology.
The survey also showed that most professionals have positive feelings towards GenAI, such as optimism (78%), confidence (75%) and curiosity (65%), even with 18% of them indicating that they are still resistant to the technology, representing an increase of six percentage points compared to the 2023 survey.
With pressures to balance short-term efficiency and long-term investments in digital transformation, half of CMOs have AI and GenAI adoption as one of their top five priorities for the coming year, and three in five plan to invest at least $10 million annually in these solutions.
Additionally, nearly 60% of respondents indicated that they expect GenAI-attributable revenue to grow by at least 5% over the next three years.
“Currently, half of CMOs are using GenAI tools to create content, especially copy and images for social media ads. Thus, campaign launches that used to take weeks can now be completed in hours, with improvements in engagement on the main platforms and generating efficiency gains of up to 60% in some companies,” said Eduardo Leone, executive director and partner at BCG.
Challenges
The study also highlighted the main challenges faced by CMOs when implementing the technology, with 70% of respondents saying they are concerned about the impact that GenAI could have on creativity and brand characterization.
As a result, about half of CMOs revealed that they are hiring talent with specific technology skills in the hopes of maintaining the essence of the company.
According to BCG, personalization at scale is another challenge, as a continuous flow of data is required to feed machine learning models, providing a more detailed understanding of consumer behavior.
“While using GenAI to create content variations is effective, predictive AI is essential to determine the next actions with each customer. Therefore, there is a growing need to focus on strategic areas such as customer insights generation, personalization, segmentation and predictive analytics to maximize the benefits of GenAI,” concluded Leone.
