Trends in Digital Marketing: The Growing Sophistication of Artificial Intelligence

The field of marketing is quite varied, with a plethora of different topics and subtopics. For the purposes of this blog (and to keep it within a readable format!), I’d love to hone in on marketing automation (which is also the subject of a course I teach here at Vancouver Community College (VCC)). I’ve researched a few different articles for this post, focusing on some industry-leading publications, to understand what experts were deeming to be trends within marketing automation. 

First, Forbes predicts that artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) will become “more prominent, further optimizing everything from customer segmentation to content creation”, and emphasizing that “chatbots and virtual assistants will continue to evolve, providing more human-like interactions” (Bansal, 2024). As someone who’s worked within the digital marketing and e-commerce industry for the majority of my career, I would argue that chatbots and virtual assistants have been, within the last few years, aiding in these specific areas, especially in customer service - how many of us have called into our credit card companies or telecommunications companies and the first voice is a digital assistant, asking us for our identification information? But while this is not necessarily the newest development or innovation, which has been a noticeable trend is the growing sophistication in chatbots and virtual assistants in conducting rotary tasks. 

As Forbes reported, chatbots are now engaging in sentiment analysis and natural language processing (SLP) features, recognizing, for example, when the human is upset, frustrated, or happy, and being able to collect reactions, or, at its most sophisticated, react with feigned empathy (Bansal, 2024). This has massive implications for instructors, like myself, teaching hands-on and practical applications with marketing technology: in my Marketing Automation class, I teach my students how to design no-code chatbots, thanks to a partnership with HubSpot, and I can imagine that these growing advancements, such as what Forbes report, will encourage me to update my content to include mentions of NLP and sentiment analysis, topics I had typically opted out of discussing in great detail. I also believe that in the Law and Ethics for Marketing course I teach, I would want to incorporate more on the topic of ethics in the use of artificial intelligence, e.g. should we condition artificial intelligence to feign empathy in situations of genuine frustration, or the environmental implications of relying on artificial intelligence for tasks that could be done by humans. I would like to dedicate more time to teaching students about the unseen consequences of artificial intelligence, that is then typically borne by those in the Global South (de Weert, 2025).

Image Source: https://dribbble.com/shots/2886534-Chatbots-Illustration-finished

The continued use of artificial intelligence in content creation was also reported by EngageBay as a trend to observe and draw on by digital marketers (Malczan, 2025). Images, copywriting, and social media content will, in many instances, be primarily done by artificial intelligence. The use of generative AI for these purposes, as EngageBay reports and confirmed through my own interactions, can save time for many digital marketers; generative AI have also grown sophisticated enough to recognize brand voices, branding, tone, through analyzing past materials, and create reactions that’d mimic what’s on-trend. I believe wholeheartedly that no student will be able to restrain themselves from engaging with artificial intelligence to develop content in some form or matter, be it through coursework, research, or editing. Therefore, I believe that, as an instructor, I need to teach students to develop content alongside the use of tools and to be aware of the implications. For example, asking students to rely on themselves to create “natural” sounding social media posts would not align well with what employers expect marketers to do. Instead, in my Digital Advertising class, I’d like to encourage students to understand how to edit, to critique, and to analyze social media content generated by AI. While ethics is the topic of another class of mine, I’d want to dedicate time to also talk about ethical implications of using AI-generated content, such as the stereotypes found in their images or even the generation of images with diverse subjects or including diversity when inappropriate (Baum & Villasenor, 2024). The use of AI to generate images in a Studio Ghibli-style, while niche and engaging for a generation of users who were brought up on Studio Ghibli films, also had resounding negative impact for artists, who typically gained commission from making anime-inspired art, and the studio itself (Horvath, 2025). I’d love to engage students in asking what are the possible ethical and legal implications of replicating these trends; what are potential consequences they’d face as digital marketers, on behalf of their organizations and companies? How can brands maintain an authentic voice, while still partaking in temporary crazes and movements in culture? 

Preparing myself to teach this content involves more education on my own; I recognize that the more time I spend away from private industry and working as a digital marketer, the greater risk I face in teaching obsolete information to my students. Artificial intelligence has impacted many industries, and digital marketing is one that seems especially affected, through (as mentioned here) technology such as chatbots and virtual assistants growing more sophisticated in nature and tasks, and in content creation, areas that as of five years ago, had not seemed prolific enough to warrant dramatic concern. I understand and will commit to attending more industry talks and events held in Vancouver (and potentially elsewhere), networking with professionals in the marketing industry, and pushing myself through coursework to engage with artificial intelligence. Even through courses in the Professional Instructional Diploma Program, I have seen various instructors in the School of Instructor Education engage with artificial intelligence in numerous manners that I can employ in my own teaching career. 

References

Bansal, D. (2024, November 13). Digital Marketing Trends for 2025 and Beyond. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2024/11/13/digital-marketing-trends-for-2025-and-beyond/ 

Baum, J., & Villasenor, J. (2024, April 18). Rendering misrepresentation: Diversity failures in AI Image Generation. Brookings. https://www.brookings.edu/articles/rendering-misrepresentation-diversity-failures-in-ai-image-generation/ 

de Weert, D. (2025, April 29). The AI-sustainability paradox and the Global South: Regulation for Sustainable Innovation. ORF Middle East. https://orfme.org/expert-speak/the-ai-sustainability-paradox-and-the-global-south-regulation-for-sustainable-innovation/ 

Horvath, B. (2025, April 18). Viral AI-made art trends are making artists even more worried about their futures. NBCNews.com. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/viral-ai-made-art-trends-artists-concerns-rcna201448 

Malczan, N. (2025, April 24). The Future of Marketing Automation: 12 trends for 2025. EngageBay. https://www.engagebay.com/blog/future-of-marketing-automation/