AI Revolution in Marketing: Innovations, Challenges, and Opportunities

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In Episode 41 of The Exchange, Karen and Lenny delve into the transformative role of AI in the marketing industry. They explore the latest advancements, such as GPT-4.0 Omni and the anticipated GPT-5, highlighting the importance of staying updated on AI developments and investment trends. The conversation covers the integration of primary research and synthesizing information from multiple sources, emphasizing the evolving landscape of retail insights and data utilization.

The episode also addresses the uncertainties surrounding AI adoption speed and the careful consideration required for technology's role in marketing. A significant portion of the discussion is dedicated to the OpenAI Preferred Publisher Program and the implications of data monetization for publishers. Karen and Lenny highlight the growing demand for companies to pay for access to data to train their AI models, presenting substantial revenue opportunities for content-rich publishers. They also consider the broader relevance of data monetization for companies that publish data-driven reports. 

Additionally, they express empathy and support for Dynata amidst its financial challenges, focusing on maintaining trust and support during tough times. The episode concludes with a preview of upcoming events and a lighthearted chat among the speakers.

Many thanks to our producer, Karley Dartouzos. 

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Transcript 

Karen Lynch: It's showtime.

Lenny Murphy: It's showtime. Here we are. And everything was working against us this morning, but here we are. You can't stop the exchange.

Karen Lynch: You cannot, you cannot, you know, neither, neither location nor internet problems, nor animal, animal interjections in your day.

Lenny Murphy: That's right. That's right. So yeah, it's been a day.

Karen Lynch: So tell everybody, because obviously a new background for you. Um, usually I've been the one on the road, but tell everybody where you are.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, well, I'm actually located at the Great Wolf Lodge in Cincinnati. And by the way, if you've never been to Great Wolf Lodge and you have kids, you should go. It's a big, huge indoor water park. And anyway, it's fun.

Karen Lynch: And if you don't want to have kids, stay far, far away. That's all.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, unless you really like indoor water parks. But this is only about five miles from the P&G Mace Montgomery Center. And yesterday was the annual innovation fair that Charlie Rader puts on. And it invites a bunch of suppliers to present to the entire P&G Insights organization that's live streamed as well. And I've had the privilege for many years of being the keynote speaker, kind of delivering a State of the Union address. So we continued that, although yesterday was more of a fireside chat. We decided at the last minute, because Charlie and I discussed, I said, look, I could present about where things have been. But we didn't talk about where things are going. And that is a radically different thing. And that was that, so we shifted the conversation to talk about that. But a wonderful event, lots of great suppliers were there. We did play the AI drinking game. I spent a lot of time in the bathroom as a result. We'll just do it again, because that was the topic.

Karen Lynch: I actually don't have enough coffee left to get through.

Lenny Murphy: I don't either. One of the things that people have talked about is what's going on with AI.

Karen Lynch: In the world as kind of the current arms race, right? This is the level of disruption and there is a race, race, race with all of these players. And certainly there was so much activity in the world of AI. And yes, this is a show that goes out to data insights and analytics professionals, So who may be like, how's it relevant to me? And I think we get there every single week. But this week was a big week for the meta AI conversation or meta generative AI conversation. So anything, anything that you can tell us from yesterday that is, you know, preaching to the choir, perhaps too, because our audience, I think, has heard this a lot or any big takeaways you're able to share? Is it all proprietary?

Lenny Murphy: No, I can share in a general way. I mean, certainly, it was probably the topic of conversation. Two big topics, behavioral data and AI and AI across the research process. Of course, the efficiencies that are gained, how it impacts the methodological aspects and of course, increases speed and efficiency on the backend. A lot of conversation related to that as AI supplants more of the process. And it just is. And we'll talk, we'll get to some of this news this week that makes it obvious. But the need, especially for a company like Procter & to connect with humans to understand their experiences. All of the other components are going to create massive disruption in terms of process, cost, speed. They see it, they get it. They are investing to build their own proprietary LLM. That was discussed fairly openly because they have concerns about data privacy or security. But a lot of conversation about fraud, a lot of conversation about how to change the challenges of getting people to participate in research. I think I can say this that Isaac Rogers from Sago presented as well and he continued. The same presentation you did last year about what they're seeing and experiencing because they just have access to so much information about what's happening. We will get Isaac to do something with us at some point to talk more about it because of some amazing data on the shifts that are happening and just how hard it is to get people to participate. And P&G wants to focus on that, like let the AI do what it's going to do. And the theory is that as costs decrease in so many other areas of research from a process standpoint, projects will be able to absorb greater costs for samples, for quality samples to engage with people. And I just think that's a really compelling proposition, and they seem very clear-eyed that that's probably what's going to happen. But great, great, I can't name everybody who was there, but this general idea about the revolution in process, in efficiency, in methodology. Was in every single conversation, every presentation.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. That's great. That's great. Hey, if people are changing, people, people, companies, whatever, when they change for the better based on, you know, pressure to do so, I'm all for that kind of pressure, you know, and, and certainly, you know, certainly it's time for everybody to take action in this space. We've been talking about it for too long.

Lenny Murphy: Resistance is futile. Yeah. Especially if we look at the, you know, We're used to GPT-4, right? This week was unveiled GPT-4.0, which stands for Omni. And it is fully multimodal. It does math. There's a demo that I think we have a link to showing through one single prompt where it did the full analysis and charts and graphs and everything. I mean, it's just, so there we are. And we know that GPT-5 is coming quickly on its heels. And this Arms Race, Google, this week released their latest version. They're all in, Meta, Google, all of them are all just now jockeying and enhancing these capabilities, which are all omni-channel, right? That they voice, image, video, text, the whole shebang. It's pretty cool.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, it is cool. And, you know, to those who are listening, one of the things I was saying to Lenny is, I'm like, you know what, we should just show how the audio interaction works for anybody. And I was like, we should ask it a question live on air. And then I was like, what should we ask for? Hmm. You know, and then Lenny was like, let's ask people. So if anybody has a question that they want us to ask, chat GPT live on air, put it in the comments and we'll do that because that would be super fun. So of course you have to be listening to be able to do this live, right? But, you know, but yes, but playing is, I think it's one of those things where it makes you say, okay, and you teeter on, I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with this, but it's what just happened. If you haven't played, at least have fun playing. Don't ask about anything super important at this point. Ask it, hey, what should I make for dinner tonight? Give it low stakes questions for you to experiment because they've made much of this functionality available to everybody. You don't have to be a paid subscriber to use some of these new functions. And that's one of the big news releases from OpenAI is, look, we want everybody to use this. And yes, they're of course going to monetize. They're going to make something behind a paywall. They are a business. And I think actually one of the articles that we had this week was a link to a blog post by Sam Altman. And he's like, we are a business. We're going to monetize this. But right now, they want people using it and experimenting. And they want developers taking it and running with it. Anyway, it's pretty cool to play around with.

Lenny Murphy: It is. I want to beat that horse just for a second because it came up yesterday. The Android operating system for the most used mobile operating system on the planet, followed by Apple, They are both, their entire OS, the next generation of the releases of their OSs, which will probably come this year, will be based on this technology. The dominant mode that our industry uses to engage with consumers for both Qual and Quant is via mobile devices simply because of the ubiquity of the device. So the form factor of consumers are very quickly going to adapt to no longer necessarily engaging with a GUI interface, a visual interface, but a voice interface. And that just very pragmatically, what does that do to the survey? We are going to have to shift to a voice interface and a video interface engagement mechanism for consumers because a year from now, two years max, That's simply how everybody's going to interact. It is just because there's too much money behind it. There's too much energy going behind it. You know, that is where it's going to be pushed as a consumer. If you want to utilize your phone, you're going to have to use your voice. So for most things. So we need to start really aggressively experimenting right now with adapting to that. So it's just what's coming, guys. Maybe the timing may take a little bit longer. There's signs of resistance from a consumer adoption standpoint. We'll see. But certainly the big tech players, this is what, this is their agenda. And I don't mean that in a negative way. It's just, that's where they're going to push everything. So we'll see.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. Okay. I just had a major internet glitch on my end. I don't know if, if you heard anything, but I did. So I have no idea what that means, just so you know. Um, I don't know if we just went down, we might've just gone down, but we're going to keep plowing ahead, but

Lenny Murphy: I hear you, so you're good.

Karen Lynch: All right. Well, good. All right. Did you hear me say, I don't know if you can hear me?

Lenny Murphy: I did not hear that. So that definitely was not good.

Karen Lynch: That implies that I disappeared for a while. So we move on, friends. We move on. We move on. So where are we going now? So we've talked about all this AI stuff. You know, I just think every week, the important thing is people should be tracking this and, you know, follow the money. We always say follow the investment dollars. This is, I mean, the future of our industry. We have to just.

Lenny Murphy: I don't think we called out the Google component on search and I know we have two different ways that we do that, but there is the article, Karley, Google unveils several new AI features. I don't know if we linked to that, but that is really interesting to kind of get a scope of Google's release as it relates to search, as it relates to the Android operating system, you know, overall tools, et cetera, et cetera. There we go. Yeah, but we can go, let's just say too, Anthropic is now expanding to Europe. So, you know, we can't count them out either. All of these companies, they're just leapfrogging. They're just boop, boop, boop. And we'll find a fit for each one. And that's just going to keep happening.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. The rate of change is just enormous, and it's going to keep happening. And I think that when we think about ourselves as users, one of the things, like with Google Search, Every time I search for something in Google now, things are changing. They are making incremental changes to how Google search works and how they're handling answering those questions. So for anybody paying attention to their company's search results in Google, that is worth just looking some stuff up. Don't do it just for your own pragmatic usage, but look some stuff up to see what Google is providing so that you can start to see those changes because they're happening. The AI integrations on LinkedIn, I feel like we've talked about this before, but maybe just internally, LinkedIn is starting to, hey, you want to look this up if you're a premium subscriber. It's just being slowly integrated into our everyday usage applications and we all need to pay attention to those things because it will be a way of life.

Lenny Murphy: This is interesting. LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft. OpenAI is mostly owned by Microsoft, right? So we talk about Google because they do have the largest market share, but this integration of these technologies across all Microsoft platforms and across Safari, Apple as well. Right? Yeah, they are partnering in open AI. So, we talked about Google, but the reality is that search is not the only game in town anymore, as these tools are utilized in embedded across all the things that we just use daily, especially from a business standpoint. I mean, I've been, been using, sorry, my, my brain just went dead. It's been a long week. It's just, Yeah. Research. Co-pilot. Thank you. Co-pilot. Yes, I've been using a co-pilot.

Karen Lynch: I'm here to help, Lenny.

Lenny Murphy: I'm here to help. I know. Thank you, Karen. Yeah, it's been. Yesterday, I'm a P&G all day. Today, we're at Great Wolf Lodge. About to go to the pool with the kids. My brain's all over the place.

Karen Lynch: But yes, no, absolutely. And I think that what's interesting is when you're in the Google you know, ecosystem, you don't necessarily know what's happening in the Microsoft ecosystem. So it's, it is important for everybody to, we want you all paying attention to everything. That's really it. Just, you know, pay attention to all of it.

Lenny Murphy: Yes. And when, when you are, cause we talk about chat GPT, that's open AI. They are the leader, but they are part of Microsoft. So for all intents and purposes, Microsoft owns a huge chunk of them, right? They're an independent company. I want to be clear, you know, but the, uh, those tools will, they're just going to change. They are changing everything.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. So let's switch gears. Cause I'm like, we're happy to hear. Let's talk about, you know, more industry specific and some of the cool things that are going on. So, um, I didn't get a chance to look at the system, one new forecasting tool, but tell me about it. What'd you see?

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, all right, so our friend System 1, you know, used to be a brain juicer. They, for a long time, have successfully predicted ad performance based on emotional engagement. They've now launched that effectively as a DIY tool around new products, analyzing emotional responses. That is what they're famous for, System 1, right, System 1 versus System 2. The, so they're just continuing to go down that path of creating self service tools for, for folks to test and market performance now around new products, where there was, you know, with, with ads, there's other companies working on conceptually similar stuff. So that's Yeah, and it may not be AI led, but I guarantee you that underneath there is some AI that's creating efficiencies in the processes. So that was really interesting. Hats off to them, continue to innovate. They were the, every year in the GRIP50, the most innovative company back when they were Brain Juicer, they won every single year for a very long time. And it's good to see them working to kind of recapture that. That positioning. The Walmart Luminate one though, that's- This one's global, right?

Karen Lynch: So we've talked about this launch before, but now they're like, yeah, now we're doing this globally, friends. So it's a big deal, right? Walmart Luminate going global.

Lenny Murphy: Aims to revolutionize retail insights and data utilization. And we know that there is what we would think of as primary research is embedded in that as well. So the We're just gonna see more and more of that occur as well. The, well, the next one.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, I was gonna say, and then just when you think, all right, Walmart, it makes sense, right? We all got our heads around Walmart this year, but now Coca-Cola's Lens platform has evolved and they are going to be sharing insights with retailers. So not just a retailer sharing insights with, you know, with, you know, CPG companies or, anybody who might be on shelf, but now the reverse could be happening. So now we are data sharing for profits, which I find this Coca-Cola one fascinating.

Lenny Murphy: Absolutely. I mean, these companies, you know, it started with Jen Humby and back in the day, right? And now we're 84-51 with Kroger. There's many, AT&T has had a version of this for quite some time, but companies utilize their data to help their customers, right, to, or in this case, their partners, I guess, to be more effective. It's kind of a virtuous cycle. It's enlightened self-interest to an extent. So what does that do to, you know, the Knicks of the world or Circona, you know, there's still value. There's gonna be different things that they do, especially from multiple data sources. But many of these large dominant companies are, you know, they are creating insight solutions within their customer and partner ecosystem. And that will have an impact on us. We're not the only game in town anymore either.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, well, what's interesting about this Coca-Cola lens thing, so if they're, you know, kind of flipping that model, and I had actually done some work back in the day, back in the day for 8451, and it was interesting, you know, I'm doing an online bulletin board, and I have both Coke and Pepsi, and Dr. Pepper, Snapple Group, all in the back room, I'm sorry, Keurig, Dr. Pepper, and Snapple Group, like everybody was in the back room of this online work I was doing, and I'm like, hmm, this is really interesting to me, because, they were all paying attention to what that organization was putting out there. So I think it's really interesting that Coca-Cola might be, you know, working on this kind of info sharing in a way that maybe isn't, you know, is keeping it, keeping it from competitive intel also being a part of that equation, right? Like I felt uncomfortable knowing that PepsiCo was seeing what was being said about Coca-Cola in that forum, right? It felt uncomfortable to me that these two large competitors were a part of the same research initiative, but now it's like, well, now I'm not saying this is research, this lens platform is really information sharing, but we'll see where it goes, right? This says it's an evolution, it will keep evolving.

Lenny Murphy: Well, you know, I'm a black rock going small anyway, so the at that level, but yes, and again, we can envision how just the ability to synthesize information from multiple sources is now just so much easier. Will they build a, well, we know that Coke is building their own LLM in cooperation with Microsoft. They've announced that publicly. So what will that look like? Will they now kind of be like an 8451 or a Dunn-Humby and you have to pay for access to certain things and that's a new revenue stream? Potentially, what does that look like from, will they incorporate their own primary research that they do around consumers and products? Will that be incorporated in and accessible in some ways? There's lots of interesting opportunities there. So yeah, interesting times. Do you see this question Patrick, excuse me Patrick Johnson, I did not because I'm on my kids laptop. You want to see what the latest GPT model thinks about the veracity of the following? All right. Well, I Let's do it before we go into the last thing.

Karen Lynch: My gosh, I'm so nervous, but we're going to do this, Patrick. Ready? I'm going to say, hey, chat. Hey, chat, we want to know what you feel about the veracity of the following statement from Sam Altman, who was asked, what do you think AGI will mean for us? And for consumer brand marketers trying to create ad campaigns and the like to build their companies. His reply was that 95% of what marketers use agency strategists and creative professionals for today will easily, nearly instantly, at almost no cost, be handled by AI. Again, can you tell me what you think of that statement? Is it accurate?

OpenAI's GPT-4o: Sam Altman's statement presents a bold view of the potential impact of AI on marketing, suggesting a significant shift towards automation and creative and strategic tasks. While AI has indeed made strides in automating some aspects of these tasks, such as data analysis, content creation, and customer insights, the statement might overestimate the extent and immediacy of AI's impact. Creative and strategic marketing often involves deep understanding of cultural nuances, emotional engagement, and brand values that AI may not fully grasp yet. Additionally, the integration of AI into these roles requires careful implementation and oversight to align with brand goals and ethical standards. Overall, while AI will undoubtedly transform many marketing functions, The statement might be a bit optimistic about the extent and speed of this change, especially considering the complexities and subtleties of human creativity and strategy in marketing. 

Karen Lynch: Patrick shared that that was roughly three weeks ago. Yeah. And, and she, cause I choked, by the way, my default was a male voice. I went in, chose a female voice. So just, if you start to experiment and you don't like the voice, you can change the voice. Um, but, um, Yeah, that was a pretty articulate response to what- It's a great point about police customization. Oh, stop.

Lenny Murphy: And one that I would agree with. I mean, that is- Yeah, I agree with her. It's about that classic, the future's already here, it's just not widely distributed yet. The speed of adoption, that is the unknown.

Karen Lynch: I mean, you know, we're talking about if one or the other of us can't be on this show, we don't need each other. We can just.

Lenny Murphy: I don't know about I mean, I'm probably the most easily replaced, but that was pretty cool. Thank you, Patrick, by the way.

Karen Lynch: Thank you for bravely speaking up and giving us a topic because, you know, again, this is just let's do this right. We don't have to agree with everything the technology says. See, this is the danger, right? It's like I want to call her what she says. And Anyway, it's so interesting. We are living in interesting times.

Lenny Murphy: Yes, we are. Yes, we are. Well, all right, we got a few more minutes. We got a couple of things we wanted to get to. Yeah, speaking of interesting times, let's just do this.

Karen Lynch: Pull the band-aid off and let's talk about it.

Lenny Murphy: Yeah, let's talk about this one. So the news came out this week that Dynata  is likely to file for bankruptcy to restructure their business. Unfortunately, based on industry news and rumors and not unexpected, I personally was expecting an acquisition and apparently that acquisition fell through. Look, here's the bottom line. You read that and you think, oh my God, that's awful. They'll come out a better company when all is said and done, this has happened before. I mean, hell, it happened to me individually, right? So with Rockhopper. So sometimes you make bets and they don't pay off and for a variety of reasons and that's why bankruptcy laws exist. So to give you a chance to retool, restructure and move forward for success. So it is, It's tough. People are going to be impacted by this. I've already heard that there's folks that are being laid off, and that's been continuing as part of the process. But Dynata has got strong bones all the way back to the year award days. And there's good people there, and they've got a lot of assets, and they will come through this. A better company when all is said and done.

Karen Lynch: They just have to rebuild. On some level, it's a level setting that will help them to come back. As it does for a lot of individuals. Like once you do that, I, you know, I know somebody also personally who was involved in Bankruptcy. And once they did that big, big weight off their shoulders and then just had a chance to build up again. And it was actually very helpful in terms of the process. So, yes.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. It's challenging, but I want to reiterate to anybody on the buyer side out there or any well, I mean, Dynata touches everybody. I would in no way expect any degradation of quality or service or anything of that nature. Excuse me. I wouldn't take this as any reason not to continue to partner with them just as strongly as you ever have. They will continue to perform, I'm quite certain. We'll see changes structurally. They may sell off a couple assets that are underperforming here or there. But they are, I had calculated a couple of years ago that something close to 40% of all sample volume on the planet flows through Dynata in some form or fashion. So I would just encourage you, don't let this influence a decision about who you partner with. They are a strong partner. They'll continue to be strong partners. Let them get through this and everything will be better on the other side.

Karen Lynch: Yeah, yeah. Well, and I think that also, you know, partnership. I'm hearing echoes of a better for worse kind of thing in my, you know, in my, in my head about what group partnership really is. And I just keep thinking, you know, you have to know when you have a partnership that's a professional partnership, you have to understand what it is you're trying to get out of it? Now, obviously, anybody who has significant financial investments right now might be shaken. But if it is to achieve certain business objectives, that can, I think is what you're talking about, that can endure this sort of thing. And I think, trust the people that you're working with to do good work. And I think that we've always, we've always had trust for that organization. So anyway, we'll be watching. It's uncomfortable to talk about because we care very deeply about a lot of people there. So, you know, and, you know, we'll wish them well as they navigate this time. Absolutely. And they'll, they'll be okay on the other end. So. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We're going to touch on two more things real quick.

Lenny Murphy: The, back to AI, the OpenAI Preferred Publisher Program. So that continues to be interesting. They need to pay for access to data. So they're doing that by paying publishers. I mean, we've looked at it, right? Do we count? Can you, you know, you want to pay Greenbook for access to our content? Yeah. You know, it really applies more to much larger platforms, New York Times, et cetera, et cetera. But the point there is, Data monetization is the name of the game. These companies are hungry for access to information because it trains their models. So if you're a publisher, especially a big publisher with lots of content, this is a viable way to be able to help pay the bills.

Karen Lynch: Yeah. And I mean, I think we're, we're also talking quite broadly right now to data companies, companies that publish reports based on large quantities of data. I'm sure this is something that they're exploring as well. You know, any of the information gathered, um, you know, you should be looking into this as well. If you're publishing large reports based on a lot of data driven research. So anyway.

Lenny Murphy: Yep. Uh, and then, yeah, that goes Google's. Another thing about Google and, and, you know, playing through all of that, this is just an ongoing thing. And we're going to keep trying, threading the needle between talking about what's Insight-specific and AI, AI from the standpoint of business and Insights as well. This is the world that we live in now, guys. It is, it is. Yep. And being that we're already at 31 minutes, excuse me, I figure let's just put in one more shameless plug before we say goodbye for our IIEX Europe event, where the conversation will continue, but this is really next up on the horizon for us.

Karen Lynch: I'm sure we will be talking about AI at this event, because that's what we do now, because we need to do it now. That's what we do. For anybody who's getting tired of the topic, sorry. It's just what matters right now. So we're not tired of the conversation. We're evolving the conversation. So we have our IIEX Europe event on the horizon. If you're listening, you can use Exchange30 to get a 30% discount on all of our events. Actually, IIEX LATAM is on the horizon. And that'll be happening in May. And actually, our agendas for both events are pretty shored up. It's going to be really exciting. I think right now all we have, we might, for IIEX LATAM, I think we are so close to only having some sponsorship opportunities left. So it's time for that conversation. If you want to get in on that event, reach out to us and let us know. But, you know, we've been sold out for IIEX Europe for quite some time now. It's going to be a great show. Absolutely. Absolutely. So good stuff. All right. Well, I have kids expecting me to go down the water slide with them, so. Good. Well, enjoy that. That is not what's happening to me. I have a cat ready to come out of the cone of pain.

Lenny Murphy: I know I may want to trade with you. Maybe, I don't know. I'm actually not a fan of water slides, but anyway, on that note, everybody have a great weekend and we'll talk to you next Friday. All right. Bye everyone. Take care. Bye everyone.

Links from the episode:

Launch of OpenAI's GPT-4o 

NBC News coverage of GPT-4o's capabilities 

Apple finalizes an agreement to incorporate OpenAI 

Meta introduces new generative AI tools for Instagram and Facebook 

Google unveils several new AI features at its I/O conference 

Anthropic's European Expansion  

AI's Impact on Search and Advertising 

System1's New Forecasting Tool 

Walmart's Launch of Walmart Luminate 

Coca-Cola's Lens Platform Evolution 

Dynata explores bankruptcy 

Controversial AI Strategies and Partnerships 

OpenAI's Preferred Publisher Program  

Google's Response to AI Disruption