Advertising and marketing companies are the most important adopters of AI; and it’s not stunning.
The IAB’s State of Information 2025 discovered twice as many companies and publishers have totally scaled AI in comparison with manufacturers. And Forrester’s 2024 report discovered 91% of U.S. promoting companies are both utilizing or exploring generative AI.
This isn’t stunning as a result of AI is nice at:
✅ Automating tedious duties that include operating an company
✅ Leveling up shopper technique and deliverables
✅ Saving time and assets
Nevertheless, regardless of the momentum, most companies nonetheless haven’t totally built-in AI into their operations. In actual fact, the identical IAB report discovered that solely 34% of companies have adopted AI at scale. The remainder are nonetheless figuring it out.
Based mostly on our talks with company leaders, three key points are holding groups again:
- Too many instruments, not sufficient technique. With over 30,000 AI instruments in the marketplace, most companies solely use a fraction, and even then, not with a transparent strategic roadmap.
- Information chaos. Fragmented sources, safety issues, and inconsistent inputs make it onerous to belief the outputs.
- Worry of breaking shopper belief. Many companies are nonetheless uncertain of tips on how to be clear about AI use with out making purchasers uncomfortable.
That can assist you overcome these challenges and implement AI efficiently, we talked to company leaders who’ve been by way of the method and compiled their high AI finest practices on this article.
1. Be clear together with your purchasers
That is the #1 rule. When you’re utilizing AI in any a part of your workflow, your purchasers have to know.
“Many companies don’t inform, promote to, or are clear about their use of AI in client-facing work. This causes a bunch of issues,” says Ryan Anderson, President at Markiserv, a artistic company. “We’ve had purchasers swap to us as a result of their earlier companies used AI with out disclosing it.”
These purchasers usually really feel misled after they uncover that work they assumed was human-crafted had, actually, been generated or supported by AI. This type of breach of belief is extraordinarily expensive to restore.
“Purchasers might simply use AI themselves at no cost,” Ryan says, “however they rent companies for the added technique, creativity, and high quality that human oversight supplies.”
Past belief, compliance is one other main concern. “Many organizations have strict guidelines in opposition to utilizing AI-produced work of their advertising and marketing campaigns or artistic belongings,” Ryan factors out.
Given AI’s murky copyright historical past, failing to reveal AI utilization can result in authorized problems.
The answer is to be upfront. Clarify the place AI is used, equivalent to in analysis or ideation, and emphasize that human experience nonetheless drives the ultimate deliverables. Transparency strengthens belief and retains purchasers with you.
2. Examine your purchasers’ AI coverage
Talking of compliance, realizing your shopper’s AI coverage upfront is non-negotiable.
As Robin Emiliani, Founder and CEO at Catalyst Advertising and marketing explains, “My largest recommendation to companies is to seek out out their AI instruments, rules, and protocols first.”
Completely different purchasers can have totally different mindsets and insurance policies in direction of AI and never clarifying this prematurely can result in awkward conditions, churn, and even authorized battles.
“Out of the library of 25 or 30 purchasers, we’ve most likely 1 / 4 of them that say, ‘you can’t use AI with us’. After which one other section that claims, ‘Okay, you need to use AI however solely these particular instruments, and you must VPN into our workspace to have the ability to use it,’” she shares.
For instance, one among Robin’s purchasers approves the utilization of Jasper, whereas one other one will approve Gemini. And it’s essential to seek out out which instruments your purchasers would give the inexperienced gentle earlier than you begin utilizing them.
One of the simplest ways to do that is to bake the AI-question into your onboarding course of. As an illustration, you’ll be able to add these inquiries to your shopper onboarding doc:
- Do you enable AI in our workflow?
- If sure, which instruments are authorized?
- Are there any safety restrictions we have to observe?
Then, undergo this on an onboarding name to verify each you and your shopper are aligned on AI. Robin advises, “Actually get a transparent understanding from the purchasers, what you’re allowed to do and what you’re not allowed to do earlier than going all in.”
3. Consider your processes earlier than automating
AI can automate just about any course of nevertheless it’s essential to make it possible for course of is definitely crucial and value automating first.
“A foul course of, when automated, simply turns into a quicker dangerous course of,” says Peter Lewis, Founder & CEO at Strategic Pete, a advertising and marketing consultancy company.
“I’ve seen companies bounce into AI for lead technology with no good system in place to observe up on the leads. The leads began flowing in, however the gross sales didn’t as a result of the group had no good workflow to deal with the load.”
Earlier than automating something, audit your processes. Ask your self:
- Is that this course of helpful and really crucial?
- What inefficiencies can we get rid of?
- Is there a wiser technique to obtain the identical objective?
When you’ve recognized {that a} particular course of is critical and helpful, you’ll be able to got down to automate it with AI.
Advertising and marketing company leaders are bombarded with AI product launches, new options, and competing claims from tech giants.
The result’s what Jeff Su, Product Advertising and marketing Supervisor at Google, calls an “AI instruments paralysis”—the overwhelming feeling of not realizing which instruments are literally price utilizing.
He warns that the majority AI device discussions deal with hype quite than real-world productiveness. “New options and spectacular benchmark scores imply nothing in the event that they don’t translate to real-world impression,” he explains.
Slightly than chasing each new AI device, Jeff recommends constructing a minimal viable toolkit: a small, centered set of instruments that deal with important enterprise wants.
Right here’s tips on how to apply it:
- Establish your recurring challenges. What repetitive duties in your company take too lengthy? Instance: researching digital promoting traits.
- Discover one device that solves the issue. Jeff examined a number of AI analysis instruments and located that Perplexity outperformed others in velocity and accuracy.
- Grasp it earlier than including something new. He dedicated to utilizing Perplexity completely till it turned second nature.
This technique ensures you don’t waste time switching between instruments that overpromise however underdeliver.
5. Embed AI prompts into workflows
Even if you happen to’ve recognized particular instruments that may be nice in your company, you or your group would possibly nonetheless not be utilizing them persistently due to one thing referred to as “loss of life by prompts”.
This implies you recognize {that a} particular AI device can assist (e.g. Claude) however you’re not utilizing it persistently as a result of it looks like an excessive amount of effort to craft the best immediate each time. Jeff shares an instance:
“I’ve this unimaginable immediate that transforms my writing into clear and concise copy. However there’s completely no approach I’d be utilizing this 20 instances a day if I needed to sort it out each single time.”
His answer is to? Scale back friction. Right here’s how:
- Use a textual content expander. As an alternative of retyping prolonged prompts, set up a textual content expander device like Raycast (Mac) or Beeftext (Home windows). Jeff demonstrates how a easy shortcut (e.g., ::chptconcise) immediately hundreds his favourite immediate into ChatGPT.
- Embed prompts immediately into workflows. As an alternative of holding prompts in scattered notes, Jeff advises making a database of prompts in your favourite mission administration device, like Notion.
Then, he advises including a hyperlink to the related immediate immediately the place you want it.
For instance, when you’ve got a job in your Google calendar to “Write a webinar promotion electronic mail”, you’ll be able to add the hyperlink to the immediate that may enable you write or edit the e-mail on to the duty.
This reduces the psychological overload of remembering the place to seek out your prompts and helps you get to outcomes quicker.
6. Centralize and clear your knowledge
You’ll be able to’t construct sensible AI workflows on messy knowledge. In case your group is plugging AI into siloed spreadsheets, inconsistent naming conventions, or outdated reviews, you’re simply automating confusion.
“Information readiness and cleanliness are actually essential,” says Artūras. “When you consolidate cross-channel knowledge and ask AI to generate summaries, your thoughts will likely be blown by how effectively AI can detect the whole lot.”
That is the place a advertising and marketing intelligence platform like Whatagraph is available in. With it, you’ll be able to:
- Centralize your knowledge from 55+ advertising and marketing platforms into one area
- Arrange the information to make sure knowledge high quality. Repair naming inconsistencies, get rid of duplicates, and standardize codecs.
- Mix knowledge from totally different sources collectively to get a extra holistic view of promoting efficiency
As soon as your knowledge is clear and centralized, any insights AI offers you about that knowledge is extra related, correct, and really actionable.
As an illustration, on Whatagraph, you’ll be able to ask our AI chatbot any questions on your advertising and marketing efficiency like:
- Which advert campaigns introduced within the highest conversions?
- How a lot cash did we spend on X marketing campaign final quarter?
- Which advertisements transformed essentially the most?
The AI provides you with succinct solutions primarily based on the precise knowledge supply and timeframe you wish to analyze. And you may totally belief the solutions as a result of once more, it’s primarily based on centralized and cleaned knowledge.
Based mostly on these correct insights, you’ll be able to take the best actions like:
- Adjusting bids in your advertisements
- Turning campaigns on/off
- Optimizing creatives to spice up conversions
7. Construct a behavior of studying AI commonly
AI isn’t a one-time implementation—it’s an ongoing functionality. Instruments evolve shortly, new use instances emerge consistently, and staying forward requires extra than simply preliminary adoption.
Companies that make AI studying a part of their routine are those capable of adapt, scale, and lead with confidence.
Jeff Su, Product Advertising and marketing Supervisor at Google, refers to this because the Affect Loop Technique:
“Even if you happen to can solely spare half-hour per week, taking motion and implementing one thing you’ve realized is infinitely extra highly effective than passively consuming one thing.”
Right here’s how one can embed common AI studying into your operations:
- Select one or two trusted newsletters like The Rundown AI, Advertising and marketing AI Institute to remain knowledgeable with out getting overwhelmed.
- Put aside 30–60 minutes per week to check instruments, refine prompts, or discover new workflows, and doc what works.
- Encourage inner data sharing by making a central place to log AI use instances, prompts, and classes realized.
The Backside Line
AI is now not a buzzword for advertising and marketing companies. It’s changing into a core a part of how work will get finished.
However implementing AI efficiently isn’t nearly selecting the correct instruments. You want the best programs, clear communication, and a willingness to be taught and adapt.
To recap, listed here are the AI finest practices we’ve mentioned on this article:
✅ Be clear with purchasers about how and the place AI is used
✅ Examine your purchasers’ AI insurance policies throughout onboarding to keep away from compliance dangers
✅ Consider inner processes earlier than automating (solely automate what works)
✅ Construct a Minimal Viable AI Toolkit and grasp it first
✅ Embed AI prompts into current workflows to cut back friction
✅ Use a advertising and marketing intelligence platform like Whatagraph to centralize, clear, and put together your knowledge for AI
✅ Make AI studying a weekly behavior—take a look at, share, and doc what works
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Discover extra sensible methods and AI device suggestions from company leaders on this AI playbook. Obtain our AI Playbook for Companies in 2025.
