AI Agents: What are They & How Could They Benefit Marketers?

Business adoption of Generative AI has come a long way in a short span of time. So much so that it is now embedded in many frequently used tools used by organizations in everything from coding to copywriting. McKinsey estimates that use cases of Generative AI have the potential to yield up to $4.4 trillion annually in value across all business domains with sales and marketing critical to unlocking this potential. 

Particularly when you consider the latest development in Generative AI - AI Agents. This topic was the main keynote at Google Cloud Next, which took place in April and where we saw live demonstrations of AI Agent use cases going from pilot to production.

But, first things first: what is an AI Agent?

What is an AI Agent?

AI Agents are autonomous, intelligent systems performing specific tasks without human intervention. An AI Agent can take information from its surroundings and make decisions based on that data - performing complex tasks from prompt to action.

Right now, large language models (LLMs), such as Google’s Gemini, operate on a command-response basis. It does not iterate on the response or consult other LLMs. AI Agents are different. They use tools like search or scraping to obtain relevant information and are designed to continuously learn and adapt, ensuring that their performance improves over time. In his Next keynote, Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian said, “AI Agents take action to help you achieve specific goals" and "connect with other Agents" to get work done.

Three ways AI Agents will benefit marketers

AI Agents have the potential to revolutionize marketing organizations in several areas in the future. For example:

• Audience Agents: With access to structured (CRM, transactions, surveys, etc...) and unstructured (social media, product reviews, etc...) data about consumers, AI Agents can help you understand what products consumers are interested in and how and where to reach those consumers with different channels. They can create audience segments and push those segments to relevant communication channels.
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• Effectiveness Agents: Effectiveness Agents have access to massive volumes of media performance data from digital media platforms and effectiveness outputs from econometrics, attribution models, etc. They use insights from the data to dynamically optimize media spend across different investment opportunities like channels, tactics, and geographies.‍
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• Creative Agents: At Google Cloud Next, Google demonstrated an AI Agent that helps marketers create and personalize content with generative AI across design and production teams. That is the first iteration of a Content AI Agent. In the future, they could predict how a piece of content will perform and dynamically optimize the content based on live feedback from consumers. Human creative teams define a starting point and guardrails, and Content Agents optimize the content within that context.

Explore the possibilities of AI Agents

Despite their early-stage status, there’s already talk in the industry about the potential impact of creating networks of AI Agents with each focused on a different task. From a marketing perspective, this could involve an Agent for multiple disciplines. Like those mentioned above, working collaboratively to deliver large-scale improvements, and freeing up human resources to focus on more strategic work. 

Whether it’s individual AI Agents or networks of AI Agents, it’s important for marketers to be aware of the increasingly influential role of AI Agents. AI Agents have potential to drive the future of marketing organizations and forward thinking marketers are already trying to get ahead of the opportunity. We’re here to help marketers navigate this opportunity and guide their journey. Whether it’s exploring how AI Agents can bring unique advantage to client businesses or building the technical foundations needed to capitalize on game-changing AI opportunities like AI Agents, we’re hard at work helping clients adopt AI in their organizations in meaningful ways.

Stay tuned for more insights on how AI Agents could revolutionize your business.