Decoding AI for Marketing

Wade Foster, CEO and cofounder of Zapier, says the next frontier for marketers isn’t just shiny AI agents, but practical AI workflows. By weaving automation and intelligence into the systems teams already use, marketers can reduce manual tasks, accelerate lead management, and unlock new personalization at scale. Wade explains how Zapier has moved beyond basic integrations to become an orchestration layer for AI, and why this shift ...

Sandeep Menon, cofounder at Auxia, says AI is quickly enabling the marketing industry to enter the age of “supermarketers” - where individuals can do the jobs of all different kinds of specialized marketers with the help of AI tools. He unpacks how agentic AI is changing the game by creating tools to compress roles, accelerate experimentation, and drive deeper personalization at scale. From lifecycle decisioning to AI-powered analy...

Paul Yacoubian, founder and CEO at Copy.ai, is on a mission to cut down go-to-market bloat. One big way that AI can help marketers, especially at larger organizations, is in creating standardized content creation processes - and integrating those outputs into existing companies at the organization. It can mean efficiency and scale that saves thousands of employees time, and can increase the satisfaction of thousands of customers. P...

Steve Erbentraut, Managing Director at Marketbridge, works with clients every day in highly regulated industries who are caught in a tug of war: innovate with AI enough to beat out the competition, but minimize risks so as not to break down the trust of customers. It’s a delicate dance, and Erbentraut spells out what it means for implementing AI solutions in the marketing arms of organizations in the financial services, healthcare,...

Vikrant Batra, cofounder of Maximon.ai and former CMO at HP, says that if you aren’t already well on your way in your AI journey, your marketing organization is in serious trouble. He details why he left his former corporate employer to strike out in an AI business, how fast change is coming, and why the financial side of companies will be coming for the marketing department - if they haven’t already. And he shares why traditional ...

Mark Polyak, Chief Product and Technology Officer at MINT.ai, says that embedding agents is transforming every step of the advertising resource management process. He explains how his background in counterterrorism helps shape his approach to AI and data integration today. Plus, he shares how MINT.ai is using multi-agent systems, synthetic data, and emerging protocols like MCP to help marketers do their jobs better. 

For Further Rea...

Doug McColgin, Director of Marketing Strategy at UScellular, says that AI tools aren't enough to build an effective marketing strategy. As more and more companies adopt AI, the playing field will be leveled when it comes to productivity gains. But McColgin thinks AI can be used in more creative ways to differentiate from your competitors. He explains the tests his organization has done, and how two foundational frameworks—Clay Chri...

Jen Kattula, CMO at Microsoft Advertising, has been testing out ways to improve the jobs of marketers through AI - while at the same time trying to improve organizational effectiveness. She shares use cases from Microsoft, how she thinks about agents and human intervention, and the hurdles around getting people trained up and in the habit of using AI. 

For Further Reading:

More about the AI Agents Hackathon from Microsoft: https://mi...

Paul Roetzer, founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute and Smarter X, left his agency world behind and now spends his days training marketers on how to better use AI to move their organization forward. When it comes to AI adoption at marketing organizations, there’s still a wide range of adoption - and Roetzer shares what he’s seen in terms of what trips people up, and where they should be putting their resources. Plus, how the ag...

Sadie Thoma, director of US B2B marketing at Google, and Derek Rodenhausen, managing director and partner at Boston Consulting Group, say that artificial intelligence is having a major impact on marketing - especially when it comes to the consumer journey. They partnered on new research that shows that the four main consumer behaviors today are streaming, scrolling, searching, and shopping - and that they are often done in tandem. ...

Michael Lacorazza, CMO of US Bank, and Mike Barrett, Founder and CSO at Supernatural AI, set out to break the mold: to partner together on an advertising campaign for the large financial institution using innovative AI methods and achieving fast results. If you’re interested in how to partner with AI agencies to take your work to the next level, listen to this case study about “The Power of Us” campaign, and walk away with lessons ...

Shiv Singh, co-founder of AI Trailblazers and the author of Marketing with AI For Dummies, knows that there’s still a huge range of adoption in the marketing space when it comes to artificial intelligence. He shares tips for those still early in their journey, and predictions for 2025 when it comes to how the marketing industry will be further upended by the technology. 

For Further Reading:

Check out Shiv’s substack

2025 AI Predictio...

Abhay Parasnis, founder of Typeface, is making a big bet on where artificial intelligence will truly reshape the marketing industry. After experience at Adobe and other large organizations, Parasnis ventured out on his own in 2022 to work on a tool to solve the fundamental problem in marketing today, the “content paradox.” He explains why there’s a gap between data and cloud technologies, and the ability to use those to effectively...

Shelly Palmer, Professor at the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and CEO of The Palmer Group, reports on the AI marketing trends he is most excited about coming out of this year’s Consumer Electronic Show in Vegas. He talks about what’s over and underhyped - from superautomation and agents to content creation and beyond. And we’ll hear predictions as to how AI in marketing is evolving in 2025. 

For Fur...

Ashok Kalidas, Chief AI Scientist at Kantar, helps Fortune 500 companies think about the cutting-edge technologies they need now and the best ways to implement new AI and ML tools into their organizations to take their marketing strategies to the next level. He explains the technology behind some of Kantar’s latest use cases and where he thinks the industry is going next. 

For Further Reading: 

Learn more about Ashok: https://www.lin...

Jacqueline Woods is the Chief Marketing Officer at the software company Teradata. She has a unique vantage point as both a CMO herself and as someone who works with other companies every day to better leverage technology, data, and artificial intelligence. She explains how companies can think more strategically about their AI implementation, where personalization is heading next, and the most effective use cases for impacting custo...

Jeremy Fain, CEO and Co-founder at Cognitiv, is on a mission to better predict consumer behavior with the help of artificial intelligence. The deep-learning advertising platform was founded in 2015 and has since built tools to help brands connect with their customers in a more precise way - a necessary capability for marketers now and into the future. He walks us through the use cases that are most effective for them now and what t...

Omar Rodriguez-Vilá is a professor of marketing at Emory University and a partner at MarCaps, and was previously a practitioner at Coca-Cola. He’s looked at the ways some of the best marketing organizations out there have changed their structure and habits in the wake of the AI revolution, and he has data to share. He argues that great marketing leaders in today’s environment need to both explore and exploit for strategic advantage...

Adam Brotman, co-founder and co-CEO at Forum3, an AI lab, has spent his whole career helping brands embrace technologies to lead them into the future. Now, with his co-founder Andy Sack, he’s taking what he’s learned about places like Starbucks and J. Crew and building and testing tools around artificial intelligence that can help marketers at every size organization. In this episode, he talks about their AI marketer product for SM...