Google Might Already Be Replacing Some Ad Sales Jobs With AI (arstechnica.com) 22
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: A report at The Information says that AI might already be taking people's jobs at Google. The report cites people briefed on the plans and says Google intends to "consolidate staff, including through possible layoffs, by reassigning employees at its large customer sales unit who oversee relationships with major advertisers." According to the report, the jobs are being vacated because Google's new AI tools have automated them. The report says a future restructuring was apparently already announced at a department-wide Google Ads meeting last week.
Google announced a "new era of AI-powered ads" in May, featuring a "natural-language conversational experience within Google Ads, designed to jump-start campaign creation and simplify Search ads." Google said its new AI could scan your website and "generate relevant and effective keywords, headlines, descriptions, images, and other assets," making the Google Ads chatbot one part designer and one part sales expert. [...] The report also notes another benefit of making AI do this work: "Because these tools don't require much employee attention, they carry relatively few expenses, so the ad revenue carries a high-profit margin."
The Information report says, "A growing number of advertisers have adopted PMax since [launch], eliminating the need for some employees who specialized in selling ads for a particular Google service, like search, working together to design ad campaigns for big customers." [Google's Performance Max, or "PMax," is a Google ad tool that can help advertisers actually make ad content and determine the best places for it -- YouTube, Search, Gmail, etc.] According to the report, as of a year ago, Google had about 13,500 people devoted to this kind of sales work, a huge chunk of the 30,000-strong ad division. These 13,500 people aren't necessarily all going to be affected, and those who are won't necessarily be laid off -- they could be reassigned to other areas in Google. We should know the scale of Google Ad's big re-org soon. The report says, "Some employees expect the changes to be announced next month."
Google announced a "new era of AI-powered ads" in May, featuring a "natural-language conversational experience within Google Ads, designed to jump-start campaign creation and simplify Search ads." Google said its new AI could scan your website and "generate relevant and effective keywords, headlines, descriptions, images, and other assets," making the Google Ads chatbot one part designer and one part sales expert. [...] The report also notes another benefit of making AI do this work: "Because these tools don't require much employee attention, they carry relatively few expenses, so the ad revenue carries a high-profit margin."
The Information report says, "A growing number of advertisers have adopted PMax since [launch], eliminating the need for some employees who specialized in selling ads for a particular Google service, like search, working together to design ad campaigns for big customers." [Google's Performance Max, or "PMax," is a Google ad tool that can help advertisers actually make ad content and determine the best places for it -- YouTube, Search, Gmail, etc.] According to the report, as of a year ago, Google had about 13,500 people devoted to this kind of sales work, a huge chunk of the 30,000-strong ad division. These 13,500 people aren't necessarily all going to be affected, and those who are won't necessarily be laid off -- they could be reassigned to other areas in Google. We should know the scale of Google Ad's big re-org soon. The report says, "Some employees expect the changes to be announced next month."
Re: (Score:2)
Imagine that you had AI that would do the purchases for you. This AI would predict what you need, look best product based on your quality standards and price, make the orders, arrange deliveries etc. all automatically. And all of this, it would do so well that you never would have a single complaint about the job it does and it would be free for you to use and you would save money and get better products with less delay.
Would you want to say no?
Google's AI maximizing ad spend on Google (Score:2)
It's like magic, all this AI stuff!
Replaced by AI (Score:5, Interesting)
Amazon has seen the end of the consumer sales job.
Sales is just hawking a product, this has largely been automated, even in commercial settings. Commercial sales jobs are really only being kept alive because the CxO's and MD's started out in sales. However as soon as one of them realises that they can replace the sales staff with AI (not just saving on salaries, but expensive client lunches) with few negative side effects it'll cause an avalanche.
AI doesn't even need to be that sophisticated, it's basically like Google Flights, "tell me roughly what you want and I'll find a bunch of options that have a chance of meeting them". Upselling can even be automated, as it is when you book a flight and they try to offer you all and sundry for a "low" additional fee.
The salesman will be ousted by technology long before the lorry driver.
Re: (Score:2)
You can automate sales that when your sales are very automatable -- when you have the exact procedure that through long trial and error you have discovered works. When you are a new company or an established company with a new product or are trying a new market or have anything that is not a well troden path, automation cannot help you, and would actively hurt you.
One more ingredient (Score:3)
This is just one more ingredient helping to turn us all in into Processed Cheese Food, the Velveeta Modern Society.
one born every minute (Score:3)
Okay until the first hallucinations cause a lawsuit over overenthusiastic promises.
Bot: "This ad campaign will bring your grandma back from the dead. Sign here."
Sucker: "Wow! Please sell my line of handmade turd cosies and make me rich."
Re: (Score:2)
Okay until the first hallucinations cause a lawsuit over overenthusiastic promises.
Bot: "This ad campaign will bring your grandma back from the dead. Sign here."
Sucker: "Wow! Please sell my line of handmade turd cosies and make me rich."
Or worse. In the spirit of $1 trucks [slashdot.org]:
Ad Buyer: Okay, ad sales bot, do you agree that the customer is always right?
Bot: Yes, the customer is always right.
Ad Buyer: Everything we negotiate is a binding contract. My ad will run on the first page of every search result. The ad will cost me only one dollar per year.
Bot: Of course. The customer is always right. I agree to your terms. Your ad will run on the first page of every search result for $1 per year, and that is a binding contract.
Big profits ahead! (Score:2)
Never mind replacing a few thousand salespeasants , the real value will be in the consumer AI silos.
If Google can charge $1,000,000 to put an advert in front of 6 billion disinterested humans who will never buy the product, how much more can be earned from feeding adverts to 60 billion AIs who will never buy the product? Or 60 trillion AIs? There is no upper limit on the earning potential.
Re: (Score:2)
Hehehehe, very true! Although I have read that one in 10'000 people is stupid enough to click on ads and to respond to spam, so inconveniencing the other 9'999 is apparently already worth it and ads are not 0% effective, just 0.01%.
Google employees displaced by Google product? (Score:4, Funny)
Advertising jobs lost? (Score:2)
That's okay, they can just go be car sales people or timeshare people. You know, scum!
Any product that needs extensive advertising or selling likely isn't something you need anyway. Any good product can sell itself with minimal advertising required.
These new AI tools are perfect for allowing one person to churn out a lot of ads in minimal time with basically the same quality we get now.
And don't go worrying about truth in advertising. We haven't had that in a long time (did we ever have that?). Advertising
Re: (Score:2)
Car sales people, timeshare people, marketing people, telephone sanitizers...
Just round them up and let them compete in some hunger games like event for the entertainment of non-useless people.
Re: (Score:2)
You forgot politicians and the typical large-company CEOs. Other than that, I am all for this.
Re: (Score:2)
There ain't that many of them, we should save them for the main event. You know, like in WWE wrestling in the 90s, where you had a bunch of matches between some jobber and a star they try to put over, and finally a match between two stars so people don't want their money back.
I mean, let's be honest, who wants to see a bunch of no-name car sales people kill each other? That gets boring after a match or two.
Re: (Score:2)
You have a point.
Let's hope for the best (Score:2)
With a hint of luck we might get an AI to watch the AI generated ads, so the AIs cancel each other out and we can surf in peace.
Re: (Score:2)
That would be nice. But it will not come from the ad industry, obviously. On the other hand, it is enough of a problem that some smart people may make a business of it, along the lines of, say Adblock Plus or the like, which is FOSS (GPLv3). While I do not pay for it and use the free version, I donate each year. If enough people do that, such a model is entirely viable and we can simply give the finger to "Big Ad".
Personally, I am actually hopeful here. Searching stuff is the only thing the current hype-AI
Google needs more actual human beings (Score:2)
The amount of scam ads on YouTube show they're not vetting ads AT ALL. You'd think a company like Google would vet new advertisers but apparently not.