GAIN's Director of Digital Media on AI and the future of digital marketing

We chat to GAIN Director of Digital Media to explore how brands can remain agile in digital marketing amidst economic shifts, emphasising a "test and learn" approach as the key to rapid adaptation and efficiency gains. He also delves into the transformative role of AI and automation in shaping future strategies, enabling hyper-personalisation and predictive decision-making.

How can brands adjust digital marketing strategies quickly in response to economic shifts?

To remain agile in an evolving economic climate, brands should embrace a test and learn approach. Continuous testing allows marketers to build a clear understanding of what truly drives performance, enabling rapid adjustments when conditions change. This proactive mindset ensures brands can pull the right levers with minimal impact on results.

Testing is an ongoing journey and the most effective lever for driving efficiency gains across all platforms. While AI-powered campaigns have eased operational workloads, testing remains essential for maximising results. A robust naming convention, detailed campaign labeling, and accurate tagging are critical to scaling learning through testing.

Today, the value of agencies lies in their access to aggregated data, which informs testing strategies and pipelines to maximise returns based on available resources. With that in mind, creative is the primary area where testing can unlock incremental gains. Though it’s not the only one.

Build your strategy to maximise content diversity, not just in terms of look and feel, but also in the use cases, angles, and product stories you tell. Prioritise content velocity and refresh your winning creatives regularly to avoid fatigue. Be smart in your creative production: use modular creative assets to maximise impact. By designing content with reusable and easily updatable components, brands can make swift changes to messaging or visuals without overburdening design teams - particularly valuable when resources are limited. 

Finally, adopting flexible, channel-agnostic budget allocation allows brands to shift spend dynamically based on real-time performance. Rather than locking in spend per platform, this approach enables marketers to respond quickly to shifts in consumer behaviour, changes in channel effectiveness or external factors.

How will AI and automation shape digital marketing strategies in the next quarter?

AI and automation will play a vital role in shaping digital marketing strategies next quarter by enabling hyper-personalisation at scale. They allow marketers to deliver highly tailored content, recommendations, and experiences in real time. To make the most of this, continuous testing of creative enhancement tools across static, video, and feed-based ads will help improve performance and engagement.

Furthermore, AI supports predictive decision-making by forecasting consumer trends and campaign outcomes. This enables brands to plan proactively and optimise strategies ahead of time, rather than reacting to changes after they occur.

AI also helps marketers adapt to shifting consumer behaviour. For instance, AI-generated summaries are changing how users interact with search, which affects organic traffic. Meanwhile, paid performance remains relatively stable on platforms like Google, but strategies are evolving rapidly. Early adoption of innovative platform products can provide a competitive edge. This is particularly relevant in ecosystems such as Meta and Llama, where changes in user behaviour are driving higher engagement and increased time spent on formats like Reels.

The integration of AI into campaign management on Meta and Google has shifted the focus from manual optimisation towards strategic input. However, AI-powered campaigns and predictive models are only as effective as the quality of data they receive. That’s why we assist clients in implementing advanced tracking and signal infrastructure across platforms, ensuring high-quality conversion data is fed into algorithms for efficient optimisation.

Consequently, brands must run more frequent tests and prioritise the development of high-quality, engaging creative assets. Testing should also extend to pricing, offer mechanics, landing pages and other behavioural levers that influence purchasing decisions. Traditional tactics like audience targeting or manual bid adjustments have become less impactful, making it increasingly important to support algorithms with strong creative and a robust test-and-learn approach.

Last but not least, make sure you are constantly testing conversion and revenue incrementality driven by all campaigns and channels you’re running.

How can advertisers start preparing now for summer to capitalise on seasonal demand and shifting consumer behaviours?

As summer approaches, advertisers should begin by analysing past summer data to identify peak demand periods and key consumer trends unique to the season, ensuring campaigns are timed perfectly to capture attention.

It’s essential to plan early for stock and promotions related to summer favourites - whether that’s seasonal clothing, outdoor gear, or holiday essentials - and coordinate marketing efforts closely with inventory and logistics to meet anticipated spikes in demand.

Build your strategy upon your data. Use your historical data across funnels, product categories, SKUs, and even external factors like weather to inform your summer strategy. 

Refreshing creatives with summer-specific themes, such as sunshine, holidays, barbecues, and outdoor activities, helps make campaigns more relevant and engaging during this vibrant season.

Advertisers should also anticipate seasonal shifts in user search behaviour, such as increased queries for outfits suited to hot weather or summer BBQ recipes, and ensure these trends are clearly reflected in their ad copy to stay relevant and capture demand.

Read how we helped AC Milan increase sales by 48%

AC Milan faced the challenge of maximising online merchandise sales during the competitive Christmas shopping season. Seeking to leverage the power of automation, they embarked on an A/B test to compare the effectiveness of Meta's Advantage+ Shopping campaigns against their traditional image ads, ultimately aiming to score big with their digital marketing efforts. Read the full case study here>>

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For more information about how we can help, visit our paid digital media services. Or if you'd like to chat about any of the topics discussed above or your wider digital marketing, get in touch today.