7 Killer Digital Marketing Predictions for 2025 (And They’re NOT Just AI!) Part - 1

Summary

Perpetual Traffic: Episode Summary Title: 7 Killer Digital Marketing Predictions for 2025 (And They’re NOT Just AI!) Part - 1
Hosts: Ralph Burns and Lauren Petrullo
Release Date: December 31, 2024

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Introduction to 2025 Predictions

In this episode of Perpetual Traffic, hosts Ralph Burns and Lauren Petrullo delve into their top digital marketing predictions for 2025. Drawing from their extensive experience managing over $200 million in annual ad spend, they offer insightful projections based on current trends and real-world applications. The discussion is enriched by their guest, Kevin, founder of Mongoose Media, who brings additional perspectives on the evolving landscape of digital marketing.

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1. The Evolution of AI and Automation in Marketing

Lauren begins by addressing the pervasive role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in digital marketing. While AI is a common topic, Lauren emphasizes that it’s integrated across all predictions rather than standing alone.

Lauren Petrullo [13:05]: "AI is not in my 2025 predictions because AI is fused throughout. I think all these predictions include AI, but I'm not going to say it as a category is one of the predictions."

Kevin concurs, highlighting the incremental advancements necessary for AI agents to become truly autonomous.

Kevin [13:39]: "I don't think [AI agents] will be useful by the end of Q1. The technology isn't progressing fast enough for actual AI agents within a year."

AI Agents and Their Limitations

The hosts debate the practicality of AI agents—systems that can reason, deduce tasks, and autonomously execute multiple steps based on data inputs. Lauren doubts their widespread utility by the end of 2025, while Kevin believes initial implementations will emerge within the year.

Kevin [14:35]: "AI agents will use reasoning to deduce what to do based on data and create tasks autonomously... but they can't publish back into platforms like Meta without human intervention."

Automation Enhancing Productivity

Lauren emphasizes the critical role of automation in boosting marketing productivity. By leveraging tools that eliminate repetitive tasks, marketing teams can handle significantly more work without increasing headcount.

Lauren Petrullo [19:30]: "Automation and productivity tools are essential. We're looking to have our staff handle 2-3x their current workload by year-end through automation."

Kevin expands on this by predicting that automation, especially when combined with AI, will become non-negotiable for marketing operations by mid-2025.

Kevin [23:55]: "AI combined with automation will become a non-negotiable standard by Q3, allowing for 6 to 7x productivity increases."

2. The Rise of AI-Generated Influencers

One of the standout predictions is the emergence of AI-generated influencers. Kevin argues that AI avatars will soon surpass human influencers in personalization and scalability.

Kevin [26:13]: "AI-generated influencers will offer extreme personalization and won't face the risks humans do, like being canceled. This makes them highly effective for marketing."

Lauren, while acknowledging the trend, believes that micro and nano influencers will continue to hold significant value due to their strong community connections.

Lauren Petrulo [28:56]: "Micro and nano influencers will maintain their importance, though AI influencers will grow, especially in personalized interactions."

3. Multicultural and Multilingual Marketing Expansion

The hosts discuss the growing importance of multicultural and multilingual marketing, facilitated by AI tools that enable seamless content creation across different languages and cultures.

Kevin [32:00]: "With AI tools, we can now create content in multiple languages effortlessly, allowing for broader market reach and more inclusive campaigns."

Lauren adds that this trend will see more macro influencers from diverse backgrounds entering the US market, enhancing the effectiveness of targeted campaigns.

Lauren Petrulo [31:52]: "Multicultural and multilingual marketing will become more prominent, with AI enabling content creation that resonates across various demographics."

4. Ethical Considerations and AI Content Watermarking

Kevin highlights the importance of ethical AI usage, predicting that major platforms will enforce watermarking on AI-generated content to maintain transparency and trust.

Kevin [34:08]: "Companies like YouTube and Meta will demand watermarking for AI-created content to ensure ethical standards and prevent misuse."

This move aims to prevent deceptive practices and ensure that audiences are aware of content origins, thereby fostering a more trustworthy digital environment.

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Conclusion and Future Outlook

As the episode wraps up, Ralph and Lauren reiterate the significance of adapting to these emerging trends. They encourage listeners to embrace automation and AI tools to stay competitive in the rapidly evolving digital marketing landscape. The hosts also tease further discussions in future episodes, promising to explore additional predictions and strategies to help businesses thrive in 2025 and beyond.

Lauren Petrullo [39:53]: "We'll leave our wrapped if, if you don't listen to Spotify. There’s a lot of to-dos this year. Make sure to subscribe and leave comments for us to engage with."

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Notable Quotes:

• Lauren Petrullo [19:30]: "Automation and productivity tools are essential. We're looking to have our staff handle 2-3x their current workload by year-end through automation."
• Kevin [26:13]: "AI-generated influencers will offer extreme personalization and won't face the risks humans do, like being canceled. This makes them highly effective for marketing."
• Kevin [34:08]: "Companies like YouTube and Meta will demand watermarking for AI-created content to ensure ethical standards and prevent misuse."

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Key Takeaways:

1. AI Integration: AI continues to permeate all aspects of digital marketing, enhancing automation and productivity but still facing limitations in autonomous task execution.
2. AI Influencers: The rise of AI-generated influencers presents new opportunities for personalized and scalable marketing campaigns.
3. Multicultural Marketing: Leveraging AI tools for multilingual content creation will expand market reach and improve campaign effectiveness.
4. Ethical AI Practices: Ensuring transparency through watermarking and ethical AI usage will be crucial in maintaining trust and integrity in digital marketing.

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For more insights and actionable strategies, subscribe to Perpetual Traffic on your preferred podcast platform and stay tuned for Part 2 of this episode, where Ralph and Lauren continue to explore the future of digital marketing in 2025.

Transcript

[Ralph Burns]

Hey, folks, Ralph here with something that could seriously upgrade your Top of Funnel ad game. If you've been a PT listener for any period of time, you know that we talk about top of Funnel all the time and how challenging it is for you to get quality Top of Funnel clients or leads or customers and then convert them typically at bottom of funnel. Well, TV advertising is one of those areas that we haven't discussed here on PT all that much. But our friends over at Ad Critter have figured this stuff out. They do connected TV ads so you can be everywhere without spending millions on super bowl ads. But they pair it with display retargeting. So you're hitting the audiences with a complete approach. You reach them, then you remind them, and then you collect the revenue. It's a strategy designed to deliver, and let me tell you, it really works. We're testing this at tier 11 and so far the results have been very impressive. Now with Ad Critter, creating custom audiences are so easy. You don't need to reformat files, you don't need to mess around with complex spreadsheets. You just upload any file in any format and you're ready to go. And the match rate is awesome. They make it easy to connect with the right people, the actual people that have interacted with your ads in the past and then allow them to naturally flow through your funnel so you can convert them at bottom of funnel. Now, the folks at AdCritter, we twisted their arm to get us a great deal for you, the PT listener. They are offering a special deal for y'all, and that is you can get a $500 campaign credit, meaning $500 in free money to test out the platform or dollar for dollar matching on any TV campaign up to five grand. Imagine the impact of that match spend five grand. The they'll add another five grand in display. That's a huge opportunity here. Now it's only offered to you, the PT listener. Head over to AdCritter.com PT and check it out. Hey, PT listeners, what if you could stop overpaying for your software? The software that you're using every single day to run your business or your department? What if you could never have to pay full price for software again? Or what if there was a place where you could get deals on software that would save you hundreds over what you buy for it on retail? Well, appsumo is the best place for entrepreneurs like you, for marketers like you to get deals on software. In fact, they have saved entrepreneurs and marketers over half a billion dollars on software costs since they first started back in 2010. We just did an expense analysis for 2024 and we are paying way too much for our software, which is the reason why we've now partnered with Appsumo and they are giving you, the Perpetual Traffic listener, an incredible discount. Because they don't give discounts, ladies and gentlemen, because their prices are already so low. But we got you the biggest discount available anywhere because we wanted it ourselves. You can get 13% off your first order with AppSumo with the code TRAFFIC13. That's code TRAFFIC13. To get 13% off your first order.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Over at Appsumo, don't wait.

[Ralph Burns]

This offer is not going to stick around because like I said, their prices are already so low, it's absolutely insane. Get 13% off your first order with code TRAFFIC13 [e-mail].

[Kevin]

You'Re listening to Perpetual Traffic.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Hello and welcome to the Perpetual Traffic podcast. This is your host, Ralph Burns and the founder and CEO of Tier 11 alongside my awesome co host, Lauren E.

[Kevin]

Petrulo, founder of Mongoose Media.

[Lauren Petrulo]

That's right. And she is coming up on a birthday. Do. Do you care to tell the audience how old you are?

[Kevin]

How do you.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Why is everybody so worried about their age? It's like whatever your age is, your age is. It's like it's not. Your age is in your head, not in your body, not in your. Wow. Wait a second, let me reverse that. What's that?

[Kevin]

I went to a Korean church for three years. Okay. The whole service was in Korean, everything. And you want to talk about why age matters? Have you met anyone from Korea? It's the first question out of their mouth. Because there's a different way that you greet someone and how you end your verbs based on if you are older or not. So it's a. A thing.

[Lauren Petrulo]

It's a thing meaning what? Like older is more respectful.

[Kevin]

Has. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you have a different ending. Like even how you say thank you. Like, it's just there's so many different ways eat that you have yo and then you just have it as like hello. So you could say like anyang if someone's younger than you and you can like almost say colloquially or like disrespectful. If they're older versus like onion, I say oh. And then if you have like you're meeting political dignitaries and you haven't even another version, it's like lot. So anyways, long story short, yeah, I'm getting older, but we're going to pretend that. That doesn't change.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Well, that's all right. I'm sure you get lots of respect when you go into church. No matter how old you are. You're probably the only. You know, I say you're, like, 6 foot 2, but you're not really 6 foot 2. You're with 6 foot 2. Like, with heels and a shock of blonde air. You're probably the only one in the church that looks like the way that you do. I have to assume.

[Kevin]

Oh, my gosh. Wait, Ralph, you know what just happened? I did my standup routine, like, literally just the other day.

[Lauren Petrulo]

We haven't even recorded since then, so there's so much to talk about in your personal life here. Today's show.

[Kevin]

Oh, my gosh. You know, I have uploaded onto YouTube.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Really?

[Kevin]

So it's there, and I talk about what I look like when I attend church.

[Lauren Petrulo]

God. All right, well, that is definitely a link that we're going to leave in the show. Notes over perpetual traffic. Kevin, make sure if I forget, we put that one in. Is it searchable or did you, like, unlist it? You unlisted it. All right, we'll get the link for you anyway. That'll be great. I didn't even know. Sorry. I did know, but they all wanted to, like, crash the party. Was it December 15th? There's the 20th of the 20th. Okay. Wow. So it has been a while since we've talked.

[Kevin]

No, wait, no. It was the 15th.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Yeah, see, I remember these things.

[Kevin]

You were better at this than I was. I just, like. I kind of, like, blacked out. So I don't know.

[Lauren Petrulo]

It's a bottom line. Did you get any, like, you know, produce thrown at you because you were so bad? Or was it a standing ovation? Or was it somewhere in between?

[Kevin]

Oh, I. I talk about a specific sexual act related to produce.

[Lauren Petrulo]

That's good. And you had the five minutes to do that?

[Kevin]

It was five minutes. I took my time. You did it in eight.

[Ralph Burns]

Really?

[Lauren Petrulo]

You didn't get kicked off. So was it a good reception?

[Kevin]

Like, overall, I got positive feedback when I had gone out in the lobby to grab some candy and celebrate. There were several people that walked out because they saw I had stepped out to say, great job.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Really?

[Kevin]

And I didn't know who these humans were. What?

[Lauren Petrulo]

That's pretty cool. Oh, my God. We so have to put that in the show notes. You've got to show people need to see this. I think it's just. No, first off, I congratulate you for doing it, because I think that is the Most challenging thing to do. You have no props, you have no musical instrument. You have nothing. It's just you and a microphone, like a chair and a glass of water. And that's it. You're totally bare. And it's hard to be funny. It really is, like, because everyone has a different sense of humor too. So it's really, it's really, really challenging. You know what I mean?

[Kevin]

I mean, I definitely know what you mean. I was like, I'm ready to throw up and I should stop because, Ralph, I'll say private things to you, like privately, not on this podcast of what was happening before I actually walked on stage. But I will say this. I was given the chance to choose the music.

[Lauren Petrulo]

What you're like your walk up stage kind of thing as you walk up on stage. Yeah.

[Kevin]

Yes. I chose WAP.

[Lauren Petrulo]

WAP? Why WAP?

[Kevin]

Because I was asked like 20 minutes before the show, what do you want as your theme song? And that was what I had just been listening to. So it's like, there's some holes in this house. I was like, that's what I walked onto stage.

[Lauren Petrulo]

All right, we're going to. If you don't know what that song is. So we're going to leave a link to that over to Spotify, which really loves us now. We just got a Spotify wrapped. Did you see that?

[Kevin]

Yeah. And you know, people can leave comments now on our Spotify episodes that we can respond to. So if someone like, I mean we get good comments in the telegram group and like occasionally someone will send me an email or a text or like especially on LinkedIn, feedback on certain episodes. But now with Spotify, you can engage and have a conversation about an episode.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Yeah. And they do video podcasts now as well, which is very cool. So we're gonna leave that over there because that's one of our least trafficked channel. Like we're 90 some odd percent Apple. And then Spotify is only like 5% maybe of our downloads. And then iHeartRadio, which apparently I heard this the other day and plus I got like a pitch on email for like iheartradio to like, you know, to advertise tier 11 on iheart. It's like more people listen to podcasts than everyone who listens on Spotify. I'm like, wait a second, don't people on Spotify listen to podcast too? Like, that can't possibly be right. But anyway, so it's an interesting channel. So we're going to leave our, our wrapped if, if you don't listen to Spotify. Like, there's still people that listen to itunes, which I find amazing because, like, you listen to Spotify, I have to.

[Kevin]

Assume I, I pay for Apple music and Spotify.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Like, I, I always thought that Apple music was, was the best, but it's like as soon as my kids turn me on to Spotify, I'm like, oh, my God.

[Kevin]

Well, their Spotify wrapped hooks you. It's like, I need to know where do I fit in? Which of my artists am I in the top 4% of listeners?

[Lauren Petrulo]

It's fabulous. And now they do like an AI version. Like they did an AI version, like for us. We'll leave a link in the show notes for what they did for us. And it's, it's smaller numbers, but it's really cool. It gets all AI generated, but they actually do a radio broadcast for your. What you listen to for the entire year. It's so good. It was like amazing. You wouldn't even know it was actually AI, you know, bots or whatever they are, as opposed to humans. It was really, really good. So anyway, Spotify, if you're listening over there, definitely leave us a review and a rating and then you can. Well now, as of right now, you can leave comments, which is very, very cool. So. And we should figure out a way to get our video stuff over there. So that's a to do. That's another to do list this year for perpetual traffic. Got a lot of to dos this year.

[Kevin]

We'll put it on for next year. It'll be a 2025 to do list, maybe.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Yeah, exactly, exactly. So, you know, weeks away. It's so far away. Something like a week away. So anyway, so today we'd like to go back through what we've thought about and learn in 2024. But also we really want to give you an idea of what we think is going to happen in 2025. So 2025 is based upon the experience that we've had in 2024. So it's a little bit of a retrospective to a certain degree, but it's also what do we feel is coming on down the line. So everybody does their projections and you can AI your projections on Google and find out what Gemini thinks. But I just actually did it and they're really crappy. So we're going to use the ones that we actually thought up because we just think stuff up. And we're also seeing a lot. We're doing like over $200 million a year right now in spend. Like, we're doing so much in advertising. So it's like we see a lot, we understand a lot. So as a result of that, I think we're in a fairly good position to be able to say, hey, these are the predictions because these are the trends that we're starting to see rise. And that's the beauty of doing the show every single week, is that this is actual stuff that works. So whether we're right, whether we're wrong would actually be a funny episode at the year end to say how wrong were we in 2024, as we predicted in 2025.

[Kevin]

Yeah, we'll keep a scorecard and just be like points, points, points. And then whoever was who had the more right answers gets a free time.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Absolutely. So, and we don't necessarily agree on these, so there's a couple here that we've sort of done pre record, we've talked through. I'm going to start off with the first one. First one, I think, I mean everyone's going to say AI.

[Kevin]

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. If it's AI is not in your 2025.

[Lauren Petrulo]

AI is not in my 2025 predictions because AI is fused throughout. I think all these predictions, but I'm not going to say it as a category is one of the predictions. Everyone knows it's going to be more. I actually think if we just talk about AI in general, let's not talk about that as a prediction. But I don't think AI will evolve quite as fast as you think it's going to evolve in 2025.

[Kevin]

Correct.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Do you think there's actually going to be AI agents by the end of 25? I don't think, no, I think it'll.

[Kevin]

Be AI agents by the end of Q1.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Really? I don't think so. I think it'll be, it'll be year end, year end before they're any useful. Because like so much of it is just cobbled together tools at this point. So I don't know as if the technology is progressing fast enough for it to be within a year, like actual AI agents. So like let's CL clarify what AI agents are. We've done a number of shows on this obviously this past year. So when you say AI agent, what exactly do you mean? If people. This is the first time they've heard.

[Kevin]

This for me, it's a second or tertiary, secondary or tertiary task that's being handled by the AI agent. So it's not generating AI copy or creative. It's not taking generated AI copy and creative and posting it. It's using reasoning to Deduct. Deduce. Deduct. Generate ideas. Deduce. Thanks. See, I knew there was a word.

[Lauren Petrulo]

There's a word in there. There's something with a D and a deuce. Deduct.

[Kevin]

To do. Yeah, to. To deduce what to do based off of the data that has been provided and then like using that type of predictive behavior and reasoning to then create tasks. So it's not just executing a task, it's been told. It's generating tasks based off of the story and the data information that it's been built upon to then do the tasks in and of themselves. So not an if this, then that. If this, then this, this and why, and then if this, then that, and then.

[Lauren Petrulo]

So it's basically two tasks. You'll give it one task and because of the result of that one task, then therefore it will do another task.

[Kevin]

Yes. And more and more. It's just the, and then in perpetuity to an extent. Like, I don't think it's going to go to the full on. It can do everything and anything. But I imagine that software engineers are going to be like entry level software engineers are going to be without a job within the next year and a half.

[Lauren Petrulo]

That's a tough field to be in. One of my youngest son's best friends was a software engineer in college and he's like, I'm thinking about going into marketing now.

[Kevin]

Yeah, well, it's like that and those with like language skills. I mean, that's really hard because you used to hire translators. Like, you're not going to need a translator in 2026. Like, you don't, you don't hire a translator for your emails. You don't hire a translator for a lot of your components. You have translators for like medical knowledge and for legal stuff. But that's going to be going away as reasoning and hallucination becomes more and more efficient. So we don't have it with AI, but I think, I think AI agents are going to be in use this quarter.

[Lauren Petrulo]

So when I think of AI agents.

[Kevin]

I don't think it's going to be commonly used.

[Lauren Petrulo]

So when I think of AI, it's a definition of terms, I think. So when I think of AI agents, I think, okay, an agency owner, all right, I need to create ads for Facebook and they're in this demographic. And then you need to post them on all my socials, including Meta. And like it's, and, and, and, and, and it's like a series. Like we wrote out 17 steps and how we use AI and every single step involved a human. Between step one, step two, step three, step four.

[Kevin]

Sure, yeah, yeah.

[Lauren Petrulo]

When I think about agents, I think about them doing the entire thing and that's like an agent for me. Now you're breaking it down saying, all right, if, and you know, it's if this, then that, that is an agent.

[Kevin]

If the ads are underperforming on meta, then create copy and creative based off of the top performing ads while identifying what your competitors are currently doing. Upload that and then based off of the behavior, can we beat the original test? And then if so, create this report and tell me what you generated and its impact.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Yeah, I don't think that's going to be possible by the end of the year. I think the first part of it will. I think there is. So it's a matter of like difference of how long it's actually how, how complex that can be and then what.

[Kevin]

But where's the complexity? Is it in the like building the scenario? Because you can build a scenario where you can output a report so you can export a report on any channel and then if you can have that exported report get downloaded every single day, you could. I use make. Right. People use Zapier or Pavli. We tried that a couple years ago, I think and it just ended up being like it broke too much. But I do think it's emerging as a better webhook alternative to Zapier. Make is just like I pay nothing, so not sponsored by that. I'm not a huge fan. So when you say you have that report that's generated, so you even send it to an email, you can have that report scheduled within meta. So I'll just use meta because obviously that's the space that I love and live in. Have a report that's sent every day based off of specific parameters. You send it to an inbox, that inbox every time a new email gets done. You can have a scenario when email is read from this email address meta reports, then create a summary of action items that you would do based off of the KPIs and establish goals you set on the account based off of the report you got based off of the account. What recommendations do you make? If the recommendation is this, then you can generate possible creative. The thing that I don't think currently exists right now. And if anyone that's listening has done this, I'm making this scenario up based off of the limited knowledge that I have. So there are people way smarter than me that can come up further. But it's like hey, create like in the analysts like look at the last 90 days which ad best perform. Create for me six different alternatives that you can do and then have copy that resonates. But what you can't do is publish back into meta. So you have to have that human intervention. So for me I think the AI agent is going to be that cross publication. But you're, you're dependent on someone else's API. So without stronger open APIs you're limited with an agent's capacity to do so.

[Lauren Petrulo]

The number one thing that I have actually for trends in 2025 plays into this to a certain degree because like what you're talking about when I think about agent I think about like beginning to end all the way through. Now what you're talking about is a fragmented or a piece of that which I don't disagree with because I think the number one prediction that I have is automation and productivity for everyone in marketing. Like that is an absolute essential. So it's like we're looking at right now, like I look at our staff, I say okay, we've got X amount of people that can handle X amount of workload. I'm telling everyone on my staff it's like you should be able to handle 2-3x what you're doing right now by year end. Which means for me like a productivity tool is like what are you going to use in order to make yourself that much more productive? And a lot of it is not doing the things that are $5 work that they should be doing as a hundred dollar an hour or fifty dollars an hour employees. And that has to do with a lot of things that you're talking about. An automation using tools make them more effective, use predictive modeling as opposed to just sitting there and looking and looking at the thing all day long. Like you go into the ads manager and you're looking at it like all right, what do I do next? You know there shouldn't.

[Kevin]

But you have to source it from other resources. Like you have to understand not just living. I mean we talk about it all the time. How many times have we brought up the NPIs?

[Lauren Petrulo]

Hundreds.

[Kevin]

And the importance of not looking in only in app if you don't take external factors into consideration, you're going to be living in a bubble. I mean we're like a few weeks away from a change of leadership in the United States that is going to have drastical impact on marketing legislation. So like again those type of things, if you're just going to be living in this bubble not taking external factors. I mean I think, okay, well I have a different prediction but I won't. It's around fast marketing but you keep going on the automations. I agree with you 100%. I'm like what's coming?

[Lauren Petrulo]

Tools, better data lag, no longer lagging indicators like well, so many people in marketing are all about the lagging indicators. You got to figure out what your leading indicators are. What is the leading indicator that's going to predict whether or not your ad works or your copy may work? Or like look at tools like that that might be able to predict behavior or performance at a later date. I feel like that is going to be what a lot of media buyers, creatives, people that are in digital marketing are going to need to use those types of tools in 2025. And if you don't, you are screwed because you're going to be out of a job or somebody else is going to be able to do it and you won't be able to do it or you know, this is a way for you to elevate your game and look at some of those tools and to innovate and do things that maybe are a little bit riskier and try some things. Look at, there's plenty of tools. Like there's a new AI tool coming out like almost every second for crying out loud, for sure. It's like how often can you take a step back and look at how can I make myself more productive, enhance my own ability to be able to increase my productivity using automation. What we're talking about here is not necessarily, you know, an AI agent soup to nuts, beginning to end, but using an AI agent in a part of a, of a way or a job that you used to do manually or used to think and do and take more time doing. Like when's the last time I've written, it's incredible to me like that what I've saved in legal fees just based upon AI in the last six months. It's like I can't even like that is such a huge game changer for me. It's like we have revised contracts using AI and we've used individual tools. It's like that has saved me thousands of dollars. Hopefully my attorney, my business attorney doesn't listen to this but it's like that's the way to do things now. It's like how can you use any sort of tool to enhan your own productivity? Get more out of your day, stop working more, work less, use some of these tools and figure out a way to automate some of your processes and I do believe that a chunk of that is with AI agents but it's not the whole thing quite yet.

[Kevin]

No, I think on that automation I feel that the way that AI will be demanding that automations is the intersection of how you use AI with web hooks and automate those tasks. Like I think that's just going to be a non negotiable come Q3. I think there's a six month period where people are going to be like it's not the power of chat, not the power of GPT, it's where you put GPT within automation. So I agree with you 100% in that regards and I think that like by Q3 it's going to be this like dividing piece where you say 2 to 3x productivity with AI I would argue that it's like 6 to 7% is what I'm looking for because a lot of those five and $50 tasks are time consuming like looking at data, data analysis, competitive research. That's exhausting.

[Lauren Petrulo]

It used to take like two weeks.

[Kevin]

And you need to do a time.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Collapse you know for us to do like an avatar, you know, avatar research. Now it's like at least two hours maybe. I mean if you're, maybe I mean and that's what a lot of my.

[Kevin]

You say two to three. I'm, I'm challenging that number a lot. But I think what's going to be hard is that you're going to have new positions where you're one person is now doing two or I would argue six to seven times more output than before because the time that they now have given back to them through AI tools and automations which you saying automations being brought to the forefront is the highest prediction. I agree with you so much so. But I think there's going to be new positions we don't know about which will be like AI auditors. I think there's going to be a position involved where it's going to be like are your automations working? It's like the IT position of 2025 where I think someone's going to come in and be like oh my computer's broken, oh my AI isn't generating the output it's supposed to be. So I think there's going to be an evolution of that AI automation, IT.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Department entirely new job categories coming on down the line. Yeah, it's fascinating.

[Kevin]

AI janitors.

[Lauren Petrulo]

AI janitors, yeah. Clean up, clean up on aisle three with an AI bot.

[Kevin]

That was my first job ever. I was A custodial engineer.

[Lauren Petrulo]

First job, you know, I worked in a factory in the basement of Denison Paper Supplies.

[Kevin]

Oh my.

[Lauren Petrulo]

I went, went in there at 5 in the morning and left at 5 at night. I didn't see the sun all day. That was my first job. Yeah, I know, I know what it's like to be a factory worker. Actually it was quite miserable.

[Kevin]

Miserable.

[Lauren Petrulo]

So anyways, I was like, I don't want to do that. I want to go to college and make sure I don't do that. Anyway, if there's people out there that are listening that do do that, it's a noble occupation. However, not for me. All right, so automation, we agree on that more or less. But I think it is like if we could get 6 to 7x productivity, oh my God, I'd be thrilled. I'm just, I'd be happy with 2 to 3x. I'm shooting low here. But anyway, the point is, is that that's a big one. All right, the next one, which I don't think we agree on here. I still think that influencers, I think the nano and micro influencer market is still untapped, especially in the nano influencer market, which is basically those that are, if I'm not mistaken, it's between what, a thousand and ten thousand, like in the thousands. Those are the types of people I find that are some of the best advocates, the best spokespeople for the products that we use. Like we have a, we have a database, we have a, we have a, an entire following of individuals, like 2,000 people. I believe there's about 70 that we use on a regular basis depending on what type of client it is. And then they create content for our customers. The point is, is like all of them are nano to micro influencers and they obviously they promote to their lists and so they're following. But then we use that obviously for our content. We can advertise through their platforms and so forth. I still think that is an untapped area that a lot of folks, they always go for like the mid or like the mega, you know, the K or the. Yeah, the big ones. And it's just, it's those markets I believe are tapped out. So it's like going smaller on influencers is where a lot of the growth. I really see it. You don't necessarily see it that way. I think there is an evolution of this eventually going in the direction which may or may not be human created. So I can see that. I can't see it happening in 25 though.

[Kevin]

Okay, so this is where again, it's like when you, you can't see it happening. For me, like I already see it happening in the places. I just think it's going to become more pervasive. But I think where you disagree is that how pervasive? I think it's going to become much bigger deal VTubers. So for those that don't know what VTubers are, those are like faceless YouTube channels. And like there's this huge rock star from Japan that Hard Rock Japan licensed for more money than I would have been comfortable paying for their Sapporo Snow Festival several years ago. So this is in animated character that is a rock star that was licensed to be used. And so because it's an animated character, its license can show up anywhere. So you can have a, an influencer using through like R2D2 projection mapping show up in Japan and in Africa and in South America and in North America at the same time. So I think that AI created influencers, AI generated accounts will trump a lot of the influencer strategies that are worked, that worked in 2024 and will work in 2025. Because when you have an influencer created completely by AI, you have personalization to the extreme because they know it's AI. So the conversations you have are more specific and you're not held within the boundaries of a real person. And I think that there are a lot more AI generated avatars feigning as real people right now than you or I are going to be comfortable admitting to. It's extended into like the explicit, sexually explicit content category where there are now AI generated OnlyFans accounts that are producing high figures per year. I think that's just going to become more and more popular because you don't have an AI that's getting canceled the way an authentic person does. But I'll agree with you that the micro and nano influencers will have stronger community to start. I just think people are going to have higher resonating personal relationships with AI generated influencers, which will have a bigger impact. I'm thinking like Scarlett Johansson, her level of personalization for AI is what will be in 2026. But I, I'm, I'm dead convinced that AI generated influencers are going to outperform real human influencers. And then in terms of the macro and micro influencers, I agree to an extent, but I think there's going to be a stronger presence of macro foreign influencers entering the US Market as multicultural multilingual marketing is going to become more apparent because The AI tools allow us to do a lot more. Like literally having a Spanish perpetual traffic YouTube channel where you can hear me and you Ralph, speaking in super fluent.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Spanish, which we are going to do.

[Kevin]

So what is preventing those Spanish influences for 2025?

[Lauren Petrulo]

As I recalled our last strategy meeting.

[Kevin]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it is.

[Lauren Petrulo]

All right, now you, you are more exposed to the Asian market than I am. So I think you see these trends a little bit more. So in some of the stuff that you're doing right now, can you actually see a Scarlett Johansson, a video being imperceptible as Scarlett Johansson? So she's like, hey, you know, I don't have to do all these videos.

[Ralph Burns]

There's plenty of tools that will take you and.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Or I. And we'll leave those links in the show notes that will allow you to create your own avatar. But everyone knows they're not really you. I mean, they're still. They're close, they're getting close.

[Kevin]

I will argue that a big trend for me in 2025 is going to be the ethical behavior behind AI like YouTube Meta, Google Alphabet meta. A lot of these big parent companies are demanding Canva does this really well, watermarking any content that was created with AI. They are setting the trend. And I think stronger ethical behavior with AI and AI generated content is going to be a trend in 2025. Because if it's not, what's going to happen is the politicians are going to clap back in such an aggressive way that it's going to be punitive to the small business owner. But going to your aspect of. Will it be that personalized? Will it be not as obvious? I. Yes, 100%. And I can just tell you behind the scenes, stuff that we're doing with Mongoose Media is we have a course that we've been working on and the limitations of me being physically present to film three days has been too much. Now the team is literally creating it entirely without me and just using my AI avatar. So like you, what you talked about, like, that's, that's common now. So what is going to come out in three months, six months from now? I think that's why AI influencers and AI accounts where you're going to have a lot more intimate conversations with an influencer that's fake than with someone who's human.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Any tools you want to divulge that you might feel are good ones for.

[Kevin]

The listeners, I can just speak to this. Like if you look at the perpetual traffic Espanol channel and stuff like that, like we're using heygen. We tested 15 different tools in trying to identify which would be the best one. Heygen was the only one that had dubbing where it controlled mouth movement. But even then, like, it's not even in like the best. What a perfect world would look like. But oh, my gosh, we tested a lot and this is not sponsored in any way, shape or form. If they'd like to provide a discounted channel platform for me, I'll take it all day long. But we test it a lot. It's definitely not the cheapest solution. But because of the dubbing with the mouth, that was just one we were using, we use 11 labs. There's a lot of common tools, there's lots of alternative ones. I. If anyone reaches out in the telegram group, I'll exclusively save this for the telegram conversations. I will give you the full list of the different tools that we tried that were more inferior to tools that we're using. But I also don't believe that the tool that will work the best in 2025 has been released yet.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Yeah, I think Synthesia IO is coming along. Like, that's the one that we've used in the past. And I think it's just since I think it came out right around the first of this year, late last year, and it was impressive, right to start. And then we actually used it and then we did do Spanish dubbing with it for one YouTube show. One actual perpetual traffic show on. On YouTube.

[Kevin]

Well, actually, yeah, I saw it with you.

[Lauren Petrulo]

I'll have to leave that for you guys because it's actually. It's kind of funny because it's the same. We didn't really. We didn't go too crazy on it because the same Spanish voices for both of us. So it's kind of confusing. But the point is, is, yeah, I can see it coming. I just. How good is it going to be?

[Kevin]

I think you need the human, though, to qualify it. So we're really lucky. I have team members in Latin America and in the US where Spanish is their first language. So we have a level of vetting.

[Lauren Petrulo]

That just to make sure that it's correct.

[Kevin]

Yeah, 100%. Because I can tell you the first time that we were testing it. So using the Shopify episode was our. Our. Like, we literally just, just launched this. And so using the Shopify one, my name, petrulo sounds like petrified in Spanish.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Really?

[Kevin]

So we have to go in and make those ads.

[Lauren Petrulo]

Isn't that the Italian definition? No, it's not.

[Kevin]

That's Funny, but yeah. So there's like small things and like you need to make sure that yeah, we're just not the space where an ideal future AI agent could be. You are someone who's qaing what was generated from that podcast to find and identify any spaces or language gaps that occur in that translation. So imagine you have an AI generated Spanish episode of perpetual traffic that an AI agent then evaluates, hey, what are the pieces in which it's correctly or incorrectly using Spanish and then it sends it back versus I have someone who has to watch each episode in entirety and catch that stuff. So that's where I see an AI agent and then it goes, it identifies the spaces and then it tells the AI to fix itself. So they're having a conversation without me being in the room. Which is what you want as a business owner for your team members. Like we've used Gather Town as a tool for our virtual office and I remember like looking, it's like a video gameplay. I could see my team members walking over to each other desks because that's how the video happens. It's not like Slack Huddle or Google. I could see them talking like you see the bubbles going over their head and I would see people meeting in our virtual office rooms having a full on conversation. And I'm just like, I'm so proud because you get that in a physical environment but in a remote international team you don't know how much they're connecting. So I know I'm going way off subject to that degree. But going back to the AI influencers, going back to the power of AI assistance, validating your automations, contradicting your micro influencer strategy because I've seen it internationally, I think it's, it's coming and it's coming hard for the US market. So I think macro influencers in the US are going to get defeated by micro influencers all day long. And then I think they're going to be more defeated by macro influencers and other demographics with small influencers locally. But they're going to come with more efficiency in their systems and then greater value of quality because they've already shown and proven their content abroad. They're just now exposing it to a different demographic.

[Lauren Petrulo]

We'll have to see by the end of 2025. So just to recap here, the big predictions, we kind of morphed a few of these. Obviously AI sort of and everything that we talked about here, but we talked about everything, everything is now spelled automation AI agents, we talked about AI influencers and the rise of micro influencers, but also nano influencers, potentially. We didn't necessarily agree on that one, but we came pretty close. All right. Well, that's good. All right, well, make sure that you subscribe and leave comments. And over on Spotify, if you're listening on Spotify, which you can now do and give us a rating, we're going to have to do a couple more shouts. We got a couple more ratings actually this past week, which is actually pretty cool. So we'll read those out here on the year.

[Kevin]

We should read the comment. The next comment we see on any Spotify episode, we will.

[Lauren Petrulo]

We will read. So comment on Spotify. I'm not sure exactly how to set up my notifications so I see the note. See them. But I will figure that out between now and the next episode, of course. All links and show notes are over@petpetual traffic.com and make sure that you subscribe to our YouTube channel channel@professional traffic.com YouTube so on behalf of my awesome co host, Lauren Petrulo, ciao and happy New Year. Until next show. See you.

[Ralph Burns]

You've been listening to Perpetual Traffic.