Marketers are spending significant amounts of time and money on generative AI, but are failing to see the results, according to research from Hootsuite.
The survey of 500 social media managers (SMMs) and 500 senior marketing leaders across the UK and US found that nearly 80% of SMMs are using AI tools up to 20 times a day, with 83% of marketing leaders doing the same.
Despite this, higher use and spend haven’t translated into stronger results or greater confidence. And much of this is down to misconceptions around the data being leveraged by AI technologies.
While 64% of senior marketing leaders believe their teams are using AI tools powered by up-to-the-minute data, only 39% of SMMs agree. According to Hootsuite, this disconnect stems from the fact that most generative AI tools draw from static web-sourced data rather than real-time audience behaviour.
As a result, even with the use of AI in place, many are experiencing inefficiencies. The research found that 40% of SMMs regularly verify AI-generated outputs, with 47% spending between 11 and 24 hours each week manually scanning social platforms to find relevant trends and insights. This is estimated to be costing businesses nearly £25,000 per employee annually.
This is also hurting performance, with 59% of senior marketers saying their social campaigns underperform because the trend has moved on by the time the content is ready to go live. And, as a result, businesses are experiencing mounting media wastage.
81% of senior marketers admit to wasting budget on AI that didn’t deliver. Nearly a quarter (24%) say they’ve lost up to 20% of their marketing budget on AI, while 20% report wasting more than a fifth on underperforming AI solutions. This comes at a time when half of marketing leaders are under pressure to prove the value of social and marketing spend, while nearly a third face budget freezes (28%), job insecurity (27%), or heightened C-suite scrutiny (27%).
“This should be a wakeup call to all marketers: traditional AI isn’t as sophisticated as you think it is,” said Irina Novoselsky, Hootsuite CEO. “With five billion people spending up to five hours a day online, social is one of the richest sources of real-time data sources available and yet, traditional AI tools still can’t harness it, leaving the insights marketers truly need hiding in plain sight.”
In response to its findings, Hootsuite has launched OwlyGPT, a generative AI assistant built for social media. The social media management company claims that the tool understands trends, brand tone, and performance data, surfacing its insights from real-time conversations across social.
