It’s Fall 2026, i.e., the peak of the annual ad industry events cycle, when the term “AI…” will, predictably, echo from conference centers across the U.S., Western Europe, and further afield.
In the early days of the AI era, most on-stage pitches centered on innovation and efficiency, but as the latter has given way to mounting job losses in adland and a resulting drop in standards, a weariness has crept in.
Amid these dynamics, marketers and their advertising teams are seeking to implement new standards and build a talent base fit for the challenges of the contemporary era.
Declining standards
The term “change management” was a recurring theme at the inaugural AI Marketing Strategies event co-hosted on Sept. 24 by Digiday and sister titles Glossy and Modern Retail.
In a town hall session held under the Chatham House Rules, brand-side marketers discussed implementing standards across their digital supply chains, as many companies default to automated workflows amid AI-driven job cuts.
Participants discussed the risks of using AI to increase content output at the expense of brand standards, with multiple participants claiming such a reliance on automation threatens the brand equity of premium offerings.
There’s a growing acceptance of ‘good enough — go.’
AI Marketing Strategies participant
“The quality control is so bad,” said one participant representing a premium beauty brand, ”establishing brand standards into [AI-driven ad] platforms is challenging all of us.”
The town hall participant added, “I treat the creative output of anything that AIA does as a rough draft, and it has to be a 10/80/10 formula… 10% of my time is upfront prompting it in the right direction; it does the 80% in the middle, and then I have to spend that 10% to get good work.”
However, multiple brand-side marketers complained that their agency partners aren’t as motivated to safeguard brand standards, with many relying on junior employees to oversee platforms. This is particularly concerning for premium brands in verticals such as the beauty sector, as using AI-generated content can damage brand credibility among audiences.
“It’s like there’s a growing acceptance of ‘good enough — go.’ I’ve seen lots of creative executions from our agencies, and our logo isn’t right,” said a separate brand-side participant, adding they had to insist on human oversight of specific implementations before campaign executions are allowed to run.
Change management
In a separate session, where participants were similarly offered anonymity in return for candor, several participants observed the need for leadership to delicately navigate change management.
Instead of just measuring numbers, we need to measure gaps.
Isabel Perry, DEPT
In particular, leaders at brands, agencies and tech vendors must better appreciate “the human element” when implementing automation.
One source added, “With AI, you can get to where you need to [in terms of campaign implementation] within weeks,” added one small agency chief. “But with AI, you can get there within hours… so, you have to ask yourself what value do your employees have on top of that? People are going to feel very threatened. But we can help them work out how we fit in that world,” added the agency boss, comparing the transition to the AI-first to the marketing industry’s challenges of the 2000s and early 2010s.
In a separate keynote session, Isabel Perry, global evp of strategy, DEPT, discussed adapting marketing techniques from the “digital-first” era to one where bot- or agent-driven internet traffic starts to outweigh human internet traffic.
“We are drowning in measurement… instead of just measuring numbers, we need to measure gaps,” she added. “If you’re measuring the gap, you can start actually allocating budgets to the pieces that really matter, instead of just chasing semi-generic industry metrics, which are useful but not actually strategic.”
In this context, marketing budgets must be reallocated based on which parts of the consumer journey remain human versus those handled by AI, she further argued. Meanwhile, in a separate session, Rajiv Ragu, vp of digital, Thorne, discussed product discovery in a “zero-click world,” noting how this migration to the AI-first era, or the internet of two audiences, i.e., agentic and human audiences, required curation of legacy content online.
“You need to see what content is still being picked up,” he said, answering questions from the AI Marketing Strategies crowd. Keeping content libraries relevant takes investment, such as updating the authorship and the content itself, but it shouldn’t be overlooked, as there’s potential riask for brand damaging if neglected, he added.
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