Google Ads VP Believes AI Is Making Consumers More Predictable

The Institute for Advertising Ethics (IAE), which in February announced it was expanding its curriculum and certification program to include so-called "greenwashing" prevention, this morning unveiled a new "Greenwash Prevention Toolkit" to help individuals and companies in the ad industry avoid the practice. The toolkit includes a new "Environmental Advertising Integrity Checklist," a guide on "Prevention Mechanisms," and a template for planning strategies over windows ranging from 30-days to one year.

A study released today by R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company (RRD) reveals that 91% of marketers with print marketing programs are embracing strategic integration of print and digital channels in 2024. Of those, 51% describe their print and digital marketing channels as “closely integrated and tightly coordinated.” The Print Impact Report, the company’s latest annual printing industry report, compares how 300+ marketing decision makers are planning, executing, and adjusting their strategies as well as integrating technologies into print marketing campaigns. The Print Impact Report found marketers are embracing technology to support their print campaigns, with 31% of marketers planning to use AI to support their print marketing efforts and 32% already using the technology. The study also found that 39% of marketers have adopted web-to-print technology, citing the following main advantages: reduced costs through on-demand printing (50%), personalization and customization of the message (37%), improved efficiencies and streamlined workflow (36%) and enhanced brand consistency (31%).

The way people interact with brands is not as orderly or linear as a customer journey map seems to indicate – or a sales funnel, for that matter. I’m not implying that understanding, mapping and optimizing the customer journey, and your path to conversion isn’t mandatory – it is. But I am suggesting that it’s worth looking further in an attempt to understand the way actual, living, breathing, thinking humans experience your brand. As a human, I can attest that my journey from awareness to purchase and later repurchase is never linear or orderly. If we drill down to a closer view, we can talk about the cluster of interactions that are driven by something the customer did. Place an order? There’s a cluster of activity there. Visit the website? There’s a cluster of interactions there. Sign up for email? Ad cluster. more at source: https://www.jschmid.com/blog/look-inside-the-customer-journey/