AI Is Reshaping Advertising, But Human Sales Roles Remain Secure.

Artificial intelligence is rapidly becoming part of the advertising business, helping marketers write copy, analyze campaigns and identify where budgets might perform best. But despite growing speculation that AI could eventually replace ad salespeople, data from Borrell Associates suggests that reality remains a long way off.

“I don’t think sales organizations will go away,” IAB Tech Lab CEO Anthony Katsur predicts on Borrell’s latest “Local Marketing Trends” podcast. While Katsur acknowledges AI will create efficiencies and reduce some labor needs over time, he stops short of predicting the demise of sales teams.

Borrell’s latest SMB Survey shows AI adoption among local businesses has surged. Roughly two-thirds of small and medium-sized businesses now report using AI tools in some capacity, a remarkable increase from just a few years ago when many business owners had little awareness of the technology.

Yet the survey reveals a critical distinction. Most businesses are using AI for content creation, social media analytics and administrative tasks — not for making advertising decisions.

Content creation remains the most common use, with 36% of SMBs currently using AI for that purpose. Social media analytics ranks second at 26%. But the numbers fall sharply when it comes to activities traditionally associated with media planning and ad sales. Just 9% currently use AI for ad optimization, 8% for ad planning and 7% for ad targeting. Those figures suggest that while business owners may be embracing AI tools, relatively few are relying on them to determine where advertising dollars should be spent.

“The underpinning of AI, better known as large language models, are really good at parsing and making sense of unstructured data,” Katsur says. “But the quality of an AI recommendation to a marketer, whether that is a small business owner to a massive global marketer like Coca Cola, is only going to be good as the quality of the underlying data.”

The limitation for making advertising decisions is that those models are error prone.

“AI does hallucinate, which is a nice way of saying AI does make mistakes,” Katsur says. “But I think now’s a good time to start testing where to place those ads, understanding where it’s driving the greatest return on your advertising investment.”

AI’s limitations have become increasingly apparent as businesses gain more experience with the technology. While ad optimization was the leading category among businesses that say they “might use” AI in the future, adoption of advertising-related applications remains modest overall. Many companies appear willing to let AI help create content or summarize information while stopping short of handing over budget allocation and media buying decisions.

That reality runs counter to fears that AI will soon automate away the need for human sales reps. They instead point to a future where AI may eventually automate portions of campaign planning, reporting and analysis. It may also allow sales organizations to operate more efficiently.

Katsur encourages businesses to experiment with AI, particularly as tools become more sophisticated. But he expects humans to remain involved throughout the advertising process for years to come, and he doesn’t envision an industry where AI independently plans, negotiates, buys and reconciles advertising campaigns anytime soon.

“You may need a smaller sales organization,” Katsur says. “But by no means do I see any time in the next five years where the industry is just going to let AI run rampant from the point of planning, negotiating, buying, and reconciling a campaign. There needs to be a human in the loop across multiple steps of how advertising dollars are lit up in the industry. So humans are in the loop, I think, for quite some time.”