The Next 24 Months in Marketing: How AI Will Reshape the Landscape and Threaten Traditional Practices

The marketing world is on the brink of transformation, with AI technologies set to fundamentally alter how businesses reach and engage their audiences.

The next 24 months will bring sweeping changes, and businesses that fail to adapt may quickly find their old strategies ineffective and outdated. From automated content creation to hyper-targeted advertising, let’s dive into what marketing will look like in the near future and identify which current practices are at the highest risk of disruption.

1. Content Creation and Copywriting Will Be Overhauled

Current Practice: Content creation has traditionally relied on human copywriters and content marketers to produce blogs, social media posts, emails, and more. These pieces are crafted based on keyword research, SEO strategies, and brand voice guidelines.

AI Disruption: AI-powered content generation tools like ChatGPT, Jasper, and other advanced large language models are making it easier for businesses to produce high-quality, relevant content at scale. In the next 24 months, expect content creation to become highly automated, with AI handling everything from ideation to execution for routine copy needs. AI will generate blog posts, social media captions, ad copy, and even personalized emails in real-time based on audience insights.

Impacted Practices:

• SEO Copywriting: AI’s capacity to create optimized content rapidly will decrease the need for traditional SEO copywriters. Tools will generate keyword-rich content at scale, lessening reliance on human writers.
• Content Calendars: The need for pre-planned content calendars may diminish as AI enables brands to create and publish timely content on-demand based on real-time audience engagement data.

2. Customer Service Will Transition to AI-Driven Chatbots and Virtual Assistants

Current Practice: Customer service today is often a combination of human support and basic AI chatbots, with live agents handling more complex queries.

AI Disruption: As AI chatbots and virtual assistants become more sophisticated, they will be capable of managing complex customer service inquiries, delivering personalized solutions, and even handling transactions. Over the next 24 months, businesses will increasingly rely on advanced chatbots that can understand context, process natural language, and learn from previous interactions to deliver a highly personalized customer experience.

Impacted Practices:

• Human Customer Support Teams: The need for large customer support teams will decrease as AI-powered assistants handle a growing volume of inquiries with accuracy and efficiency.
• Email and Social Media Responses: Automated AI tools will be able to respond instantly to common queries on social media and email, reducing the need for manual oversight.

3. Traditional PPC and Paid Search Advertising Will Face Decline

Current Practice: Google Ads and other paid search platforms are central to digital marketing strategies, allowing businesses to bid on keywords to drive traffic and conversions.

AI Disruption: As AI-powered platforms like ChatGPT and Perplexity provide users with direct answers instead of search results, traditional paid search advertising may face a decline. These AI platforms are expected to introduce their own native advertising models, allowing businesses to place contextually relevant ads directly into AI-driven responses, bypassing the need for keyword bidding.

Impacted Practices:

• Keyword-Driven PPC Campaigns: With AI providing direct answers, users will have less need to click on ads, reducing the effectiveness of traditional PPC campaigns.
• SEO-Driven Landing Pages: The need to create extensive landing pages optimized for Google Ads may diminish as AI delivers answers that bypass traditional search altogether.

4. Audience Targeting Will Become Hyper-Personalized and Predictive

Current Practice: Marketers currently use data from Google Analytics, social media insights, and CRMs to target audiences based on general demographics and past behaviors.

AI Disruption: In the near future, AI will be able to predict consumer behavior with far greater accuracy by analyzing real-time data, such as browsing habits, purchase patterns, and even sentiment analysis from social media. Predictive AI models will create hyper-targeted campaigns that can adapt instantly based on the individual’s preferences, buying intent, and recent interactions.

Impacted Practices:

• Segmentation-Based Targeting: Current segmentation models based on demographics and interest categories will give way to AI-driven models that personalize marketing at the individual level.
• Retargeting Ads: Instead of relying on static retargeting ads, AI will dynamically adjust messaging based on where the customer is in their journey, optimizing the ad content in real-time.

5. Content Marketing Strategies Will Shift Toward AI-Powered Search Optimization

Current Practice: SEO and content marketing have focused heavily on creating keyword-optimized content to rank on search engines like Google.

AI Disruption: With the rise of AI search models that provide direct answers, traditional SEO tactics will become less effective. Instead, content strategies will need to focus on being a reliable source of factual, comprehensive information that AI models are likely to reference. This could mean a shift towards creating in-depth, high-authority content and leveraging structured data to help AI models “understand” website content.

Impacted Practices:

• Traditional SEO: Ranking for keywords alone will become less valuable as users interact with AI-driven search platforms for answers rather than browsing multiple websites.
• Link-Building Strategies: As AI moves away from relying on linked sites and instead references high-quality data sources directly, link-building may lose its relevance as a primary SEO tactic.

6. Influencer Marketing Will Become Data-Driven and AI-Optimized

Current Practice: Brands today work with influencers based on follower counts, engagement metrics, and brand alignment, with much of the strategy hinging on the influencer’s popularity and reach.

AI Disruption: AI will analyze influencer performance across platforms, audiences, and engagement levels to determine the most impactful partnerships. Advanced AI tools will help brands optimize influencer selection, campaign timing, and content strategy to maximize ROI. Within the next two years, AI-driven platforms will make it easier for brands to identify micro-influencers who deliver better conversions than larger influencers, making campaigns more cost-effective.

Impacted Practices:

• Manual Influencer Selection: Traditional methods of finding influencers will give way to AI-driven analytics that identifies the most suitable influencers based on real-time performance and demographic fit.
• Engagement-Based Payment Models: Influencer contracts may shift from general reach metrics to data-driven engagement and ROI, as AI can accurately measure which influencers drive the highest conversions.

7. Real-Time Analytics and Campaign Adjustments Will Replace Quarterly Reporting

Current Practice: Marketers rely on quarterly or monthly reports to evaluate campaign performance and make adjustments.

AI Disruption: AI-powered analytics tools will offer real-time insights, allowing businesses to make immediate adjustments based on data as campaigns run. Instead of waiting for end-of-quarter reports, AI will automatically optimize campaigns for maximum effectiveness, whether adjusting budgets, switching creative assets, or reallocating audience segments.

Impacted Practices:

• Scheduled Reporting: Quarterly and monthly reporting cycles will be supplemented (or replaced) by real-time dashboards that continuously analyze and adjust campaigns.
• Manual A/B Testing: Traditional A/B testing will evolve as AI autonomously identifies the best-performing variations, optimizing campaigns in real-time without requiring manual intervention.

8. Traditional MarTech Stacks Will Consolidate with AI-Driven Solutions

Current Practice: Many businesses rely on a combination of marketing tech (MarTech) solutions—like CRMs, email marketing tools, social media managers, and analytics platforms—that operate independently but integrate where possible.

AI Disruption: In the next 24 months, expect to see AI-driven platforms that consolidate multiple MarTech functions into a single, integrated solution. AI-powered MarTech platforms will automate workflows, analyze data across channels, and optimize entire marketing ecosystems without requiring separate tools for each function. This will streamline marketing operations and reduce the need for multiple subscriptions.

Impacted Practices:

• Independent MarTech Solutions: The reliance on separate tools for email, social media, and analytics will decrease as comprehensive AI-driven platforms handle all marketing tasks in one place.
• Manual Data Integration: With a consolidated platform, data integration between tools will no longer be necessary, as the AI platform will already have access to all customer touchpoints and marketing data.

Conclusion: Preparing for the AI-Driven Future of Marketing

Over the next two years, AI will redefine the marketing landscape by automating repetitive tasks, hyper-personalizing campaigns, and shifting focus from keyword-based SEO to high-authority content optimized for AI-driven platforms. Businesses will need to adopt new strategies to stay relevant, such as creating AI-compatible content, investing in predictive analytics, and consolidating MarTech tools.

For businesses that embrace these changes, AI represents an opportunity to increase efficiency, boost personalization, and stay competitive. But for those clinging to traditional methods, the future may bring diminishing returns and increased competition from AI-savvy competitors. Now is the time to adapt, realign marketing strategies, and prepare for an AI-driven revolution that will forever change the way we connect with audiences.