Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of AI is that it feels both revolutionary and familiar. In marketing, AI is undeniably a fresh arrival, bringing a host of new challenges, yet its impact may not be as massive as the headlines suggest. In last year’s CMO Survey from the American Marketing Association, conducted with Duke and Deloitte, only 17.2% of marketers said they were using AI to optimize or automate their marketing efforts. That figure may jump significantly this year, but even marketers’ own three-year forecast was just 44.2%. Still, AI is rapidly gaining ground. It is a new force that must be addressed. At the same time, in many respects, AI represents the same fundamental reckoning marketers have always faced. This article appears in Branding Strategy Insider’s FREE newsletter. Join the world’s smartest marketers and subscribe here to get actionable insights delivered straight to your inbox. In fact, this pattern is typical of marketing innovations: they are usually just new methods for tackling long-standing problems. AI is no exception. Consider search. Eight Oh Two, an SEO and PPC agency, reported this year that 37% of brand-related searches now begin with AI tools rather than traditional search engines. That’s a significant change, but it’s not entirely unprecedented. There was a wave of headlines when Amazon emerged as a serious rival to Google for initial product searches. Then, as now, the core marketing challenge was how to realign strategy and investment to follow consumers…