George Mathew’s remark at AI Trailblazers—“The data substrate matters”—is a timely reminder that for AI and machine learning to achieve their full potential in marketing, data integrity must be nonnegotiable.

This collaborative ecosystem will yield greater efficiency and deepen connections with audiences. When AI frees marketers from manual drudgery, they can devote themselves to persuasion, empathy, and innovation the core tenets of their craft.

As generative AI reshapes advertising at breakneck speed and optimization algorithms become pervasive, the fundamentals of marketing are shifting beneath our feet.