The recent IDC FutureScape report predicts a significant shift in traditional marketing tasks, forecasting that GenAI (Generative AI) will overtake 30% of such duties by 2027. The tasks in question include SEO, content and website optimisation, customer data analysis, segmentation, lead scoring and hyper-personalisation.
This prediction is affirmed by the 2023 Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) C-suite Tech survey, in which 37.8% of Chief Marketing Officers (CMOs) confirmed they had already begun integrating GenAI in their operations.
Moreover, 51% of the surveyed CMOs identified their primary business goal for the upcoming year as improving lead generation through enhanced content marketing.
As the marketing landscape in Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APeJ) progresses towards a more data-driven approach, the implications of emerging trends such as GenAI, content fatigue, phasing out of cookies, and shift towards an open advertising ecosystem pose significant consequences for CMOs and CIOs.
IDC issues a series of AI-driven predictions for the region, suggesting that AI will foster a heightened level of automation in marketing tasks and accordingly transform the role of marketers.
By 2028, IDC predicts that the A2000 will leverage data and AI to automate 30% of buyer journey actions across marketing and sales, dynamically catering to the buyer's chosen 'adventure'.
Concurrently, they foresee a rise in consumer reliance on AI for product discovery, evaluation, and purchasing, predicting that over 50% of consumers will be employing AI in this capacity by 2026.
Further predictions suggest that sentiment and intent AI will fuel a mainstream shift towards conversational marketing by 2026, leading to a 40% increase in leads to purchase conversions.
Ultimately, IDC surmises that by 2027, 50% of CMOs will primarily be evaluated on their ability to drive customer value, pushing 30% to evolve into orchestrators of customer value. These shifts run parallel with changes in the longer term, which IDC sees as the automation of traditional marketing tasks and the expansion of marketers' skillsets.
Another prediction involves trust-based marketing, with 55% of A1000 companies expected to implement trust-based marketing programs by 2026. Quantum sensing marketing, where businesses use quantum sensing to understand customers' emotions, perceptions and intentions, is also predicted to be utilized by 10% of A1000 companies by 2029.
"There will be a clear shift towards marketers expanding their skillets to include storytelling, data analytics and greater cross-functional collaboration with teams such as IT, sales and operations, with Generative AI aiding through greater automation of manual tasks," confirms Lavanya Jindal, a Research Analyst at IDC.
IDC produces global, regional, and country-level predictions annually to help shape strategies and business objectives within the fast-changing IT industry.