Generative AI changes how marketing is done

No new platform or technology is impacting the marketing space in 2025 more than generative AI.

In fact, marketers are already using AI tools to create content, brainstorm campaigns, and improve overall efficiency.

It's given rise to a whole new philosophy of "vibe marketing".

One study found that 73% of marketers already use AI tools on a regular basis.

Notably, Google searches for "AI marketing tools" have increased by 967% over the past 24 months.

Here are a few practical ways that AI is being used for marketing:

1. Ideation and brainstorming: ChatGPT and other LLMs can help come up with ideas for new campaigns, ad creatives and more.

2. Content creation: User-friendly platforms like Midjourney and DALL-E make it so any member of a marketing team can create ad copy or even social media images.

3. Campaign analysis: Analyzing campaigns once tool days or weeks. Much of this work can now be done in minutes with generative AI.

For example, marketers can upload a spreadsheet of an email campaign containing data like open rates, click-through rates and sales. And within minutes understand which messages and user segments performed the best.

4. Predictions and forecasting: With the right data, AI can help forecast future consumer interests and demand. In 2025, expect AI usage to expand into new use cases (like automated A/B testing, AI influencers and campaign management).

5. Content planning and optimization: Content marketers are increasingly using AI to outline, update, and optimize content. In SEO, LLMs can be used for topic clustering and keyword planning.

AI in Search Engines

The introduction of AI in search engine results has huge implications for websites relying on organic traffic.

Interest in the search term "answer engine optimization" skyrocketed in November 2024.

And this trend is continuing to rise rapidly in 2025.

There are a few reasons behind this. First, AI Overviews have spiked in frequency since the March 2025 Google Update.

In a recent analysis, Mark Williams-Cook used 155,000 queries and found 80% of them triggering AI Overviews in Google.

Google also started experimenting with a new AI Mode integrated into Google search.

This appears as a separate tab at the top of SERPs. In AI Mode, Google is using a custom version of Gemini 2.0 which aggregates information from multiple related searches for more comprehensive results.

The results are a combination of AI-generated text, citations, web links, and images. Although AI Mode displays web links to sources it considers helpful, it's likely to hurt click through rates for websites similar to how AI Overviews are eating away clicks from websites.

AI Mode looks all set to be one of the most challenging trends that organic marketers will have to tackle in 2025 and beyond.