How much AI is too much AI this festive

As we enter into the festive season, and brands prepare to roll out ads and campaigns, industry watchers are already on the lookout for what trends will dominate marketing this year. And of course, also how big a role AI will play.

From last year’s celebrated and oft-cited festive ad featuring Shah Rukh Khan by Cadbury to similar tech-driven efforts by other major brands, AI has become part and parcel of the season’s ad campaigns. However, it also begs the question: how much is too much?

As artificial intelligence (AI) revolutionizes the advertising landscape, experts warn of a potential paradox: while AI-driven ads promise increased efficiency and personalization in the short term, they may lead to skyrocketing ad spend in the long run.

The immediate advantages of AI in advertising are clear. Professor Sunil Gupta of Harvard Business School noted in a recent lecture attended by this reporter, “There is a lot of academic research which shows that AI can actually outperform humans and many creative idea generations. And of course, once you have some interesting ideas, you can iterate on them and add some of the human element as well. The personalized promotion through AI can increase revenue, and the click-through rates can also be higher.”

John Paite, Chief Creative Officer at .Monks India, echoes this sentiment, stating that AI has brought the “once elusive 'golden triangle' of faster, better, and cheaper” within reach. This efficiency boost is particularly evident in content creation, which Paite describes as “much easier, faster, and with more finesse than ever before.”

However, as AI-driven ad creation becomes ubiquitous, a new set of challenges emerges. If every company starts producing these ads at scale and personalizing at scale, consumers will be bombarded with ads by every large and small company. Inevitably, their effectiveness will go down because both a startup and a large company can create multiple ads, and it will all be automated.

Sudish Balan, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer at Tonic Worldwide, concurs, highlighting the risk of user fatigue, especially if the content becomes repetitive, uninspiring, or even offensive. He cautions against an over-reliance on AI, which could lead to “the erosion of creativity, inconsistent brand tone, and the production of content that feels impersonal or disconnected.”

The core paradox is that while the cost of production will go down, the cost of media will go up because the effectiveness will go down as consumers are saturated with umpteen ads.

Gupta drew a parallel with the rise of digital advertising giants. “If you look at the history of what happened with Google and Facebook coming into the marketplace about 15 years ago, the advertising spend in the US in the last 15 years has gone up dramatically. The advertising expenditure in the US has almost doubled from 2017 to 2023. But the population grew by roughly 5% in this time period, while the ad growth is almost double, which means the per capita expenditure has gone up.”