At the 2024 ARF Creative Excellence Conference, MarketCast’s Tina DeSarno, along with PayPal’s Josh Goldfinch and Six+One’s Leigh Baker, sat down to chat about the evolving role of AI in advertising testing. They explored one critical question: Is AI ready to predict ad success on its own, or do we still need humans? Here’s what they said:
1. Use AI to Accelerate Advertising Creative Processes
Great advertising comes from unique creative ideas and AI cannot replicate this yet. While AI can analyze large datasets and speed-up some creative processes, it still is not being used to generate big campaign concepts.
“AI is amazing at driving efficiency relating to analysis, deep diving into creative categories, and understanding things quickly,” says Leigh Baker, Managing Director, Six+One. “We see it as a study in incrementalism, in that it’s taking our existing creative workflows, processes, and behaviors and helping us do it faster.”
2. AI Won’t Replace Human Insights Yet
While AI continues to advance, it won’t completely replace the need for human insights according to our panel of experts.
“We see AI as an ‘and,’ not an ‘or in the creative process,’” Baker noted. “Talking to people and gathering their perspectives remains essential, and AI can enhance this process rather than replace it.”
“I’d choose a focus group over AI telling me an ad is perfect,” said Josh Goldfinch, Senior Director and Head of Customer Insights at PayPal. “I can see, hear, and contextualize human responses in a focus group, which machine learning simply can’t match yet.”
3. Don’t Let AI Over-Optimize the Creative Concept
From a market research perspective, there is a risk of over-optimizing ads through AI research solutions, which can lead to losing the creative spark that makes ads memorable. As Baker puts it, good creative often has some rough edges; the creative elements that might not initially make sense on their own, but together, they turn into something great.
AI used on its own might try to smooth out those rough edges, compromising the core idea that drives an ad’s distinctiveness and appeal.
4. Ask AI the Right Questions
One of the most important skills marketers need in using AI effectively is knowing how to frame the right user prompts. AI can only be as good as the person feeding the model, i.e., the questions you ask, the brief you provide, or the framework you ask it to operate in. While it can be tempting to use AI as a crutch, creative professionals need to guide AI in a way that leverages its strengths without replacing human curiosity and contextual understanding. PayPal’s Goldfinch equates this skill to that of being a focus group moderator.
“Anyone who’s been a moderator over the years knows the value comes from how you frame questions and move through them, not just from the analysis,” said Goldfinch. “Framing and asking the right questions help produce more meaningful, valuable insights from AI-driven analyses, ensuring better outcomes.”
5. Get Creative Inspiration from Multiple Sources
Baker shared a memorable analogy, likening the best ad creatives to magpies, who gather bits and pieces from different places to build their nests. Successful advertisers should do the same: draw inspiration from diverse sources—AI, cultural insights, human feedback, and quantitative data—to create something original. When using AI, you need to triangulate your understanding. Don’t just take AI as the single source of truth; combine it with quantitative data, human insights, and real-world observations.
At MarketCast, we believe AI should amplify the voice of consumers in advertising research, not replace them. MarketCast Ad Effect Express is powered by our proprietary Audience AI technology, which gives advertisers a smarter, faster, and more cost-effective way to test ads—without losing the power of the human connection. Ready to take your advertising to the next level?