Smarter, Not Harder: How AI Is Revolutionizing Performance Marketing

Discover how AI is transforming performance marketing — from Google’s AI Max to synthetic personas outperforming media teams. The future isn’t just automation. It’s smarter strategy, human meaning, and a redefined marketer’s role.

Two nights ago, I found myself in a room filled with LLMs, wine (and water), and wonderfully opinionated minds — a roundtable hosted by Future Forward AI, where the conversation spun around deceptively simple questions such as: is AI here to augment us, or to replace us quietly?

We discussed synthetic data. Accountability when things go south. And most provocatively, the new power dynamic at play: as machines become the decision-makers, where does that leave us, and for me, this refers to the growth hackers and the human strategists? Are we evolving into directors of the play… or just the extras no one remembers in the final scene?

This post is my reflection on that night — a deep dive into how AI is no longer knocking on growth marketing’s door; it’s already moved in, rearranged the furniture, and started running the show. From Google’s AI Max to agents outperforming human media teams, the signals are loud and clear: the game has changed.

So pour yourself a strong coffee (or a bold Syrah), and let’s uncork the future of marketing. Spoiler alert: it’s smarter. Not harder.

1. AI Is (Already) Redefining Targeting and Optimisation

Let’s start with the elephant in the ad account.

AI hasn’t just joined the marketing team, it’s rewriting the SOPs. The clearest sign? The way we target and optimise campaigns today.

We’ve moved from AI as an assistant (“Hey, help me clean up this audience segment”) to AI as a replacement (“Hey, you don’t need to build the segment, I already did. And I launched it.”).

AI isn’t just a better spreadsheet. It’s a strategy engine.

It reads signals, interprets intent, allocates budgets, and even rotates creatives, often in real time, across thousands of permutations.

Tools like Google Ads’ Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ aren’t just “helpful”—they’re becoming mandatory for anyone serious about scale and efficiency. You feed them assets and objectives, they run with the rest.

The result?

💼 Leaner teams.

🚀 Faster tests.

💰 Smarter bets.

💡 “We used to A/B test. Now we A/B delegate.”

The algorithm doesn’t just suggest. It decides.

2. AI Max: Google Just Gave the Algorithm the Keys

If Performance Max is the autopilot, AI Max is the self-driving car.

And yes, Google is firmly in the driver’s seat.

According to Search Engine Land, Google’s latest launch— AI Max for Search, hands over full autonomy to the machine. No more partial control. It dictates bidding, creatives, audience combinations, placements, and timing. All of it.

It’s not just about doing more. It’s about doing without us.

Why does this matter? Because it marks a tipping point. The marketer’s job is no longer to steer the car, it’s to decide where we want to go and let the machine figure out the how.

Let’s unpack that:

Algorithmic Bidding: Gone are the days of manually tweaking CPCs. AI updates bids every millisecond based on thousands of signals you can’t even see.
Predictive Audiences: The AI now predicts intent before users know it themselves. It’s targeting based on probability, not just past clicks.

🧠 “In the past, we optimised based on history. Now, we optimise based on probability.”

Welcome to quantum marketing.

3. AI Agents Outperforming Human Teams: The Tipping Point?

Still not convinced? Let’s talk outcomes.

In a recent case from Adweek, PMG deployed AI agents, built on Mobian’s synthetic personas, for a health brand’s campaign on Fox News.

Now here’s the mic-drop moment:

🧠 Just 18% of the budget went to Fox…

🎯 …but it delivered 34% of total conversions

💸 …at 46% lower cost per conversion.

Why? Because AI agents don’t rely on human gut feelings.

They pick up sentiment, emotion, and micro-signals no spreadsheet can see. They place ads not based on where you think your audience is… but where they actually are.

These agents aren’t replacing interns.

They’re replacing entire departments.

And they’re doing it by:

Creative Automation: Testing hundreds of variants in minutes. No approvals, no bandwidth issues. Just cold, calculated iteration.
Personalisation at Scale: AI knows when you’re stressed, sleepy, or ready to buy. Humans still think in personas. AI thinks in probabilities.

🤖 “What happens when the intern, the strategist, and the designer all show up… inside a single AI agent?”

The question isn’t whether AI can run your campaigns.

It’s whether you’re still needed in the room when it does.

4. But… What’s the Role of the Human Growth Marketer Now?

Let’s be clear, this isn’t the obituary for growth marketing.

It’s the redefinition of it.

The best growth marketers today?

They’re not writing copy or pulling audience lists.

They’re orchestrating strategy, interpreting insight, and setting the ethical and emotional compass of the brand.

Your job isn’t to out-optimise the machine.

It’s to ask better questions, shape better stories, and steer the AI toward impact.

Because let’s be honest, if 80% of your job is building dashboards, you’re officially in AI’s crosshairs.

🎹 “AI is becoming the pianist. You? You better be the composer.”

Final Thoughts: The Future of Performance Is Less About Performance

Here’s the paradox: the more AI nails performance (clicks, conversions, cost-efficiency) the less we need to chase it.

Machines are winning the execution game. But they can’t (yet) tell us why we matter. They don’t understand emotion, context, or culture. That’s still our job.

Your role isn’t to out-optimise the machine.

It’s to give it purpose. Direction. Meaning.

In a world of infinite automation, meaning is the new performance.

Key Takeaway:

The future of growth marketing is smarter, not harder.

Let AI handle the how. You focus on the why.

🫶🏻 Thanks for reading till the end.

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2023 Digital Marketing Predictions

At this point, doing a 2023 prediction now seems to be cheating. I admit that predictions are hard and it probably took me longer than I should to assemble my views. While better late than never, hopefully this will spark conversation and hold us accountable for our predictions.

AI-Powered Digital Marketing

Let’s start with an easy and obvious one – something I have already wrote about previously. Whether we like it or not, the rise of AI in Digital Marketing is upon us.

2023 is probably the first year we see the start of real competition to Google’s Search dominance in the form of Microsoft’s new AI-powered Bing. However, this hype about AI has already transcended Search marketing, and many Ad Tech businesses are eager to incorporate AI into their products.

With AI providing efficiency, what this means for Digital Marketers is the need to go beyond building deep technical expertise and instead focus on soft skills like problem solving, strategic thinking and creativity.

Focus on Enhancing Customer Lifetime Value

From a macro economic standpoint, 2023 is set to continue the tailwinds of a turbulent 2022. Rising interest rates, inflation and a potential recession.

With such a gray backdrop, more companies will probably prefer to be conservative with their digital marketing budgets. As such, to obtain growth in revenue, companies will need to extract higher value per user.

Companies should therefore focus on product and monetisation to enhance their customers’ LTV. Improving LTV will also reduce the opportunity cost caused by the rising interest rates.

Apple to Extend its Digital Advertising Dominance

Since Apple released iOS 14.5, the importance of Apple Search Ads to Digital Marketers has grown drastically. This has clearly revealed Apple’s ambition in the digital advertising space.

Apple’s strengths lies predominantly in its ecosystem. With full visibility of its audiences within the iOS ecosystem, Apple is in the best position to provide personalised ads and measure its effectiveness.

All Apple needs now, is to build its own ad exchange and demand-side platform.

Privacy Forces Transition to Probablistic Tracking

Towards the end of 2023, Google is expected to finally release its Privacy Sandbox initiative where it will reduce cross-site and cross-app tracking. This is almost equivalent to Apple’s iOS 14.5.

So, Digital Marketers should prepare for a world without deterministic tracking such as device IDs or cookies. The broad solution to this is probabilistic tracking and it is likely that advertising platforms will resort to using this.

Tiktok to Finally Overtake Meta and Google

Let’s face it. Attention spans are dropping globally. (If you made it to this point, kudos to you!) We have been saying it for years that video as a medium is the next big thing. Specifically in 2023, short-form videos will takeover the world. To combat Tiktok, Meta and Google have both released their own versions in the form of Reels and Shorts respectively.

It is probably still a stretch that Tiktok may actually overtake the two behemoths in 2023. But with as the fastest-growing platform dominated by youths, it is clear that the future, for now, lies in Tiktok’s hands.

In all, 2023 will definitely be another interesting year for digital marketers.

What other futures do you see yourself in 2023?

AI-Powered Search Engines: 3 Ways It Will Change Digital Marketing

I got to be honest. Writing this article, I had help from ChatGPT (an AI language model). While not to the extent of it (he, she or they?) writing the article for me, but good enough proof that the future of work is indeed changing.

First, a quick premier to set the context.

What is ChatGPT and why is it causing an AI browser war?

ChatGPT is an AI language model developed by OpenAI. Since its web interface version was released to the public in November 2022, it has taken the world by storm due to its capability to generate human-like text and its ability to perform a wide range of tasks such as answering questions, summarising text, and producing creative writing.

Most recently, Google fired the first salvo when they announced their own experimental AI chat service, Bard, which will be accessible in the upcoming weeks. A couple of days later, Microsoft (which has already invested $1 billion into OpenAI) announced that it is launching a new Bing with OpenAI’s GPT-4 model (ChatGPT was built using GPT-3 which only has data until 2021). This will provide a ChatGPT-like experience within the search engine. In addition, Microsoft is planning to include AI features in their Edge browser as well.

This kicks off the AI wars between Microsoft and Google. As we pray that this will not degenerate into an ending like The Matrix, let’s check out the three biggest impacts AI-powered search engines will have on us Digital Marketers.

Search Marketing To Take Larger Proportion of Ad Marketing Spend

With access to the user’s search history, location and behaviour, AI-powered search engines will deliver highly personalised search results and advertisements that can be used to create more effective targeted marketing campaigns. This would lead to higher conversion rates and better ROAS (return on ad spend) for digital marketers. As a result, it would be expected that our investment in Search Marketing will only grow in importance.

Furthermore, with Microsoft’s Bing returning with a vengeance like a Jedi, we will no longer be able to get away with just Google SEM (search engine marketing). Time to broaden our Search Marketing repertoire and pick up Bing advertising.

Increased Efficiency Leading to a New Breed of Digital Marketers

Imagining having JARVIS (Ironman) or Griot (Black Panther) helping you with your manual tasks. It is highly possible that AI-powered search engines may automate many of our manual tasks such as keyword research and bid management. This will free up precious time and resources and thus allow us to focus on more strategic initiatives.

This means that we as Digital Marketers will need to develop and focus on other skillsets besides technical expertise such as strategic thinking, creativity and problem-solving.

Unique Content is Required to Stand Out

As AI-powered search engines focus more on conversational results instead of the traditional search query results, search engines will likely drive fewer clicks to your content.

In a world where AI may synthesise large amounts of data to produce a summarised answer, sites with similar content will be buried away. Therefore to stand out, an even greater importance will be placed on creating unique content. A tip here would be to add your own unique view on top of what AI services like ChatGPT provides.

In conclusion, AI-powered search engines will transform digital marketing by improving the ROI through enhanced targeting, creating a new breed of digital marketers, and forcing content creation to be more unique.

What other ways do you think AI-powered search engines will affect us as Digital Marketers?

The Duopoly of Facebook and Google

In Economics, we learn that in an Oligopoly, the consumer suffers because of potential collusion leading to higher prices and lack of consumer choice.

Google and Facebook Rigged the Ad Market

With a combined share of ~53%, the digital ad space is currently being dominated by Google and Facebook. In such a duopoly (a special form of Oligopoly), collusion is always a possibility, and it turned out to be true when Google colluded with Facebook to favour its own exchange.

Oligopoly Trend is Not Waning

This problem of Oligopoly is definitely not going away anytime soon. It is exacerbated by further consolidation in the ad supply space (Applovin acquiring Mopub & ironSource acquiring Tapjoy) and Facebook/Google withdrawing further behind their walled gardens.

What can be Done?

Brands / Advertisers definitely have their work cut out for them. To stand out and succeed in time to come, I believe advertisers would need to focus on the following:

Grow their product’s core value: Costs of digital advertising will be on the rise, and thus it will be important to provide real value to customers/users.
Increase their users’ lifetime value: With the rising costs, revenues need to go up by either extending your customers’ lifetime or improving the ways you are monetising.
Diversify to market disrupters like TikTok: We need to start diversifying to other digital marketing channels so that we do not continue to feed to their duopoly. It is probably easier said than done, but this is why we need more disruptors like TikTok.

The digital ad space will certainly start to feel tighter but do not mistake that for it being smaller.

We just need to grow bigger and better with it!

Attribution: The World Is Not Fair

We want a fair and just world. A world where all our marketing partners are attributed equally. And, we would like to think that is the case. Sorry to burst your fairy tale bubble, but we are certainly far from the truth.

In 2020, Facebook and Google will continue to rule over Digital Ad Spend land. Estimated by eMarketer, the duo will seize 61% of the US Digital Ad Spend. I guess this should not come as a surprise to many. With copious user data coupled with the smartest AI algorithms, is there any doubt as to why Facebook and Google are leading the race?

Yes, there is no doubt. But it is not only because of their superior technology and user base. Facebook and Google do not play fair.

Facebook and Google US Digital Ad Spend Share in 2020 — Source: eMarketer

What is Attribution in Digital Marketing?

Alright, let me set the context straight-up first. What the heck is Attribution? To put it simply, Attribution refers to credit allocation to marketing interactions. In relation, there are two key concepts on Attribution that will be relevant here.

First up is the concept of which marketing interaction gets the credit. On the fundamental level, there are five basic methods (as illustrated below). Relevant to what we are discussing later, we can just refer to the “Last Interaction” model where the last marketing interaction gets all the credit.

The second concept to note is the type of marketing interaction. Broadly speaking, there are only two – Click-through attribution and View-Through attribution. Don’t worry all this mumbo-jumbo is simpler than it sounds. It is the players like Facebook and Google which complicate it.

Click-through simply means the credit is given when the user actually clicks on an ad, whilst View-through means the credit is given when the user views the ad.

Sounds simple enough?

When a View Becomes a Click

What is a view? What is a click?

It may sound simple but when you really think about it, it is going to be borderline philosophical. Take some time and think through the following scenarios:

The ad image has loaded only the top 25% but the user has already scrolled past it.
The web page is loaded and there is a potential banner ad to be shown below-the-fold.
A video ad auto-plays but the user immediately pauses it.

Would any of you consider the above as a view? Here’s the kicker. The answer is yes and no. Yes according to Facebook but not according to Google. According to Appsflyer, a major Mobile Measurement Partner, Facebook considers an ad unit as a view as long as the ad unit is rendered. Even if it is not necessarily in view. And for videos, all it takes is for 1 pixel of which to appear on the screen. In contrast, Google requires at least 50% of the ad unit to be visible. The majority of the rest have pretty stringent rules too. They require 100% of interstitials and banners to be loaded before a view is counted.

At this moment you might think it is mighty of Google to be implementing such strict rules on itself. Don’t be rejoicing too soon. When we move on to a click, which I thought should have way less ambiguity, Google performed magic. For video ads that have been watched for 10 seconds or more, Google will transform that view to a click!

Impact on my Attribution Game

So what have all these funky definitions got to do with not playing fair?

Because Facebook and Google have risen to such importance to advertisers, all 3rd party partners such as Appsflyer who wish to continue partnering with them have to play by their rules, or risk being left out in the cold. In an ideal world, attribution rules should be the same for all players, and in my opinion, should be decided by an independent 3rd party.

When Facebook is allowed to consider unseen ads to be counted as a view, and Google is allowed to ‘magically’ convert a view to a click, we advertisers will constantly be playing in a world where we can never truly understand what channel works best with our customers.