Being a marketing agency, we frequently hear questions like, “Is AI going to replace everything your company does?”
The easy answer is to puff out our chests and say, “AI will never be able to replace our human touch!” While there’s certainly a lot of truth to that (which is why we sometimes say it), it definitely doesn’t paint the full picture. AI is changing the way people communicate, gather information, and make decisions. Of course, it is going to fundamentally disrupt the work we do as marketers.
Let’s take a look at one of the biggest revenue generators in the modern marketing world, digital advertising, and ask, “Does it still work?”
The current state of digital advertising
Digital advertising, performance marketing, lead generation, media buying, or whatever you prefer to call it, is one of our core services. We have a dedicated performance marketing team and years of experience generating millions of dollars through paid advertising.
But running a successful digital advertising campaign is definitely harder than it used to be. We have noticed that paid search campaigns across multiple industries have seen a decline in clicks. Conversely, bot traffic has steadily increased. Email marketing campaigns are seeing fewer opens as they compete with AI-automated cold emails, but that’s a topic for another post.
AI-powered search and automations are causing disruption after disruption to the performance marketing industry. Google, the pioneer of search advertising, has made it clear that it is investing heavily in conversational, AI search, and they aren’t the only search engine doing so. Advertising features have recently been added to ChatGPT and Google’s AI Mode, but the mechanics are still evolving.
As a business owner, where should you go from here?
Digital advertising strategies we recommend avoiding
There are some performance marketing techniques that we think should be flat-out avoided. Our experience has shown that these tactics rarely yield a positive return.
Google Display
We are not against display (a.k.a. banner) advertising. We find it to be an effective way to generate brand awareness or remarket to past website visitors, especially in this era of less reliable search results. However, display advertising is only a good investment when your ad placements, or the websites that feature your display ad, actually attract your ideal visitors. In our experience, ad placements in the Google Display Network are not ideal for most B2B companies, which is why we prefer to use StackAdapt's programmatic platform for all display advertising.
Digital advertising strategies we recommend pursuing with caution
Paid search
Even though paid search has borne the brunt of the AI disruption, we still think it has a place for certain businesses. In particular, both B2B and B2C eCommerce still benefit from targeted search campaigns, as well as other high-specificity, high-intent, or location-based cases. Where things start to get questionable is with more-generalized searches for broader goods and services.
Paid search advertising is still a way to quickly get in front of potential buyers; however, it cannot replace an inbound content strategy. As AI search captures more of the market, it will be important to both diligently watch search ad performance while also publishing content that is citable by AI.
Google Performance Max (PMax)
In the years since its inception, we’ve experimented with PMax quite a bit. We’ve spent thousands of our own dollars on PMax ad spend, and we’ve “run” PMax campaigns for many clients as well. We put “run” in quotation marks because PMax is a black box; its AI-powered targeting doesn’t leave marketers with too many levers to pull. While some of our clients see significant success with PMax, that isn’t the case for everyone. We have seen the best PMax results with eCommerce clients, along with some lead generation-focused B2B businesses. If you fit either of those categories, PMax could be worth a try, but as with paid search advertising, its results should be carefully watched, and it shouldn’t replace an inbound content strategy.
ChatGPT Advertising
With ChatGPT’s prominence as a trusted answer engine, its advertising platform shows a lot of promise. That said, at the time of writing, the ChatGPT ad platform is only a few months old, so it will undoubtedly change a lot as it matures. We are optimistic about ChatGPT ads and are running some experiments ourselves, but we will be keeping a close eye on its results before broadly recommending it. A full write-up on our findings will likely be published in the coming months.
We once again stress that these ads cannot replace organic content. While they do appear as a part of query results, they don’t make it into ChatGPT’s highly personalized recommendations and instead appear as a callout at the very bottom of the response. To be cited in Chat’s recommendations, you must feed it the right content.
Digital advertising strategies we recommend for 2026
We recommend the following strategies with a few caveats:
- These won’t work for everyone. Which ones you choose should depend heavily on your industry, your audience, and your goals.
- These strategies should only be done in tandem with an organic content strategy
Paid social ads (Meta, LinkedIn, and others)
Paid social ads have always been a way to get in front of buyers while they are “locked in.” Rather than billboards or TV commercials that rarely capture someone’s full attention, social ads run in front of a highly targeted audience that is actively scrolling through content. Paid social ads can be effective for all types of companies. For most B2B companies, paid social is most effective for brand awareness and remarketing. If you are trying to generate more impressions for your product and service, don’t write off paid social.
YouTube
Similar to paid social, YouTube advertising is an effective (and relatively cheap) way to grow your reach and amplify your organic content strategy. With a YouTube TrueView campaign, you promote your videos to audiences with specific interests. If someone skips your ad before the 30-second mark, you pay nothing, making these campaigns the perfect opportunity to build brand awareness on a budget. These campaigns pair well with a content strategy that involves video; if you have been investing in organic video content, you can easily amplify it with YouTube advertising.
What should you do? Our bottom line:
Don’t give up on digital advertising, but don’t put too much stock in it, either. Smart content marketing is the most future-proof tactic. If you aren’t writing and creating, now is the time to start. If you don’t know where to begin, we have plenty of advice available.
While content marketing is effective, it doesn’t produce results at scale nearly as quickly as digital advertising. If you are looking to generate leads quickly, consider digital advertising, but keep our advice in mind.
