All Things Insights discussed this issue and more with Idil Cakim, founder of Iris Flex, an insights and strategy firm, and author of the upcoming book AI for Marketing: The Consumer Perspective (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis). Cakim reveals the significant trust gap between businesses rapidly adopting AI and consumers who remain skeptical of AI-generated content.
The conversation explores Cakim’s new book and how marketers can bridge this gap by understanding their audience’s proximity to AI, plus measuring factors like comfort level and willingness to delegate tasks. Cakim emphasizes the importance of transparency, authenticity, and pretesting when implementing AI in marketing campaigns. She also advocates for keeping human researchers in the loop.
The Trust Paradox
Cakim’s new book provides a window into the consumer perspective on AI and marketing. What inspired AI for Marketing: The Consumer Perspective and what gap does it address?
“The impetus for the book was this gap that I perceived between the business of AI and consumers of AI,” says Cakim. “There were so many initiatives forging ahead, technology advancing at incredible speed. But I was noticing that people were not as open to it or feared it. Attitudes vary dramatically depending on context—whether at home or work—and how deeply people engage with it. I felt that it was necessary to really understand the audience and see how we could bridge that gap, if at all. And I conducted a national study, and it revealed this gap.”
She adds, “The study revealed just how big that wedge was and where the pockets of opportunity were and how we could bridge that distance between AI technology and end users. Just because we’re using AI doesn’t mean we’re truly adopting it or integrating it into our lives. There’s a whole range of applications and attitudes towards AI. Of course, the book doesn’t just stop at my study. It delves into several studies across the world that speak to these issues and goes broader on the application and also includes in-depth interviews with practitioners to bring additional perspectives. It’s not just a singular researcher’s view.”
Exploring Consumer Emotions
This is a pivotal moment for AI. This will only be heightened by the recent developments of agentic AI, driving consumers to shop more with AI and use it in their lives, e-commerce and beyond. AI adoption continues to accelerate. But there’s this AI trust gap. What do marketers believe versus what consumers are actually feeling?
“It depends,” says Cakim. “People are aware of these issues because they are not seeing the expected ROI. But then they have their eyes sometimes on the wrong metrics. It’s not just about efficiency and time savings, it’s about what you do with that saved time and how you leave your audience feeling. Emotions are also important in terms of motivation to buy. There is a rush towards innovation. And for the sake of innovation, sometimes marketers can lose sight of the essence of their brand and create a trust issue.”
She continues, “My study found that four in five U.S. adults currently do not trust AI-generated advertising, AI-driven brands, products, and services. So that’s the state of the market I’m talking about on average. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) also released a study with Sonata Insights that puts a really stark number out there. Eighty-three percent of ad executives are using AI in the creative process. We’re pushing AI-generated content, and some of it is so great that you can’t even understand that it was AI generated. But if the marketer is not transparent with their initiative or brings up AI in a way that will alienate their audience, then there’s trouble.”
Bridging the Gap
Speaking of that trouble, how can a brand or marketer recalibrate their approach? Can they close the gap?
“Absolutely,” advises Cakim. “But you must understand your audience. You have to bridge the gap between technology and the audience. Start by understanding your audience and their proximity to AI. As part of my analysis following the book, I did a follow-up study on how close people will let AI into their decisions. My initial study showed that people are comfortable with AI from a distance. If you ask people whether AI is good for society, more than half will say yes despite concerns about energy use, job displacement, and related disruptions.”
“But generally speaking, it’s something that moves us forward. It’s innovative. People accept AI when it helps from a distance, such as assisting scientists in a lab or handling emotionally distant tasks like airport customer service. But they’re hesitant about AI in education and reticent about AI-powered home care. These are different scenarios. There are multiple studies that back this up. There’s the idea of this proximity to AI.”
She continues, “My follow-up research identified four critical factors. Frequency of AI exposure, comfort level with AI, willingness to delegate tasks (the most critical metric), and context-shifting—how broadly AI is integrated across different life areas. What is the context of AI and the breadth of that context? If you’re using AI just on your phone to make little videos yourself, but not adding anything else to your life, that’s one thing. But if you’re using it extensively at work and also adding smart home devices to your apartment, that’s entirely different. All of these preferences have to be probed into and analyzed, and then you can have a full profile of your audience.”
“It’s really important to understand your audience and the whole arc of the market accordingly. People who are skeptical of AI would be responding differently to your communications than people who are power users. As marketers and insights professionals, we have to be aware of that and advise communications and media touch points accordingly,” says Cakim.
Tracking the Right Metrics
AI really strikes a chord in terms of consumers’ thoughts about trust, privacy, and control, and it shifts differently across different audiences. For marketers, what behavioral indicators should they be tracking in terms of their brands?
“One factor to check is attitudes toward authenticity and authority,” says Cakim. “For example, customers of luxury bespoke jewelry brands would score high on valuing authenticity. The audience or the customer for that would be scoring pretty high on emphasis on authenticity and would value it as art and may not respond as well and not align with the brand if they feel the content that’s coming at them is AI generated. Know your brand, know your audience. In terms of marketing accordingly, you just have to pivot and speak to them from the angle that they really need to hear from. Delegation is another factor that I would look at. That’s a key indicator of their readiness to hear from you with AI or including AI messaging. If someone is not willing to delegate to AI, that means they’re not trusting it and they’re not going to trust your message if it’s packaged with AI.”
“But if they have applied it in various facets of their lives and they feel comfortable giving over tasks to AI, behavioral and attitudinal questions can reveal a lot. Then you can take a risk in terms of using AI in the marketing process. Then you know what the creative process might be.”
The Transparency Equation
Trust. Authenticity. Transparency. There’s a mindset emerging with the use of AI in advertising.
“There’s a delicate balance,” she observes. “Stating outright that an ad was AI-generated can feel jarring. Transparency is key because of trust issues. A lot of groups will value privacy and data use guidelines above everything else. That’s a really important factor. The way you communicate it becomes the art part of it. But it’s just how you relay the information.”
“One of my favorite studies is an experimental one from a university. They did a test where they pushed an ad that didn’t indicate AI to a group of customers and on the other side, for the control one, they did indicate AI about this product and showed that ad to a group of respondents. The ad without AI disclosure generated higher purchase intent—despite being identical to the version that mentioned AI. AI was such a deterrent in that factor. They’re not alone in that experiment. They’re not alone with that kind of emotional response. You have to bear that in mind and move forward accordingly.”
Cakim reiterates: Test your messaging. Test your creative. Understand your audience.
Testing and More Testing
Ten other practitioners are interviewed in the book. Were there any trends in that context about bridging the consumer acceptance gap? Whether a case study or a best practice, was there a common thread throughout these interviews?
“The common thread was the need to test carefully,” says Cakim. “Obviously, these people are very forward in their thinking because they were all different types of experts on AI, chief AI officers, trainers, people who were experts in governance and privacy, health care data experts, from different walks of life or different industries, but they were all responsible for being at the forefront of innovation and moving their organizations forward with AI.”
Cakim observes, “All of them have the challenge of moving either their employees or their clients forward. Not everybody was coming on board quickly. They had different tactics in doing so. One was trial and error a little bit. There was a case study that, a chief AI officer mentioned, from an agency where they tested their AI driven approach with their traditional approach. They made some investments, and that showed the results to the client and then brought the client along that way.”
“But the contributors were all cognizant of this pushback to AI that might come from their audience. There was a lot of thoughtful recommendations as to how you can move your people along, whether it’s your audience, your employees, or your team members.”
Understanding Your Audience
Considering the study and the theme of the book, and where consumers mindsets are today, what recommendations should insights leaders prioritize going forward? What should they stop doing or do differently for their respective brand or client?
Cakim relates, “Best practices are all the more important right now. Pretesting, understanding your audience, and investing is critical. Because there are lot of context voids. It also depends based on brand, audience, context, the creative that you’re planning to push to the market if we’re thinking about it that way. Research is important, but we’re also going through a major change as an industry. Think of all the AI-driven tools that make things more practical and faster. But doesn’t mean the quality of my work has to drop. That doesn’t mean I dedicate the interpretation of the data completely to an AI bot. I still feel responsible as an expert, as someone with years of research experience, to go through that data and to interpret it for our clients. Keeping the human researcher in the loop is really important.”
Insights professionals must emphasize their expertise in interpreting the data rather than getting lost in the tools themselves, Cakim adds. Use any tool to support your initiatives, but the need for measurement is more critical than ever.
Cakim does note that there are some bright spots in the study on the AI trust gap among consumers, adding that enthusiastic adopters are also present.
“The book also identifies the drivers and propellers of AI,” she says. “Going back to the need for understanding our audience, there will be people who will move your project forward. There will be pockets of people, IoT wearable users, optimists, multilingual flexible thinkers, for example, different types of audiences who actually embrace AI fully and are not afraid to fail with it and move your initiative forward. There are some positives out there. The goal is to find those people to help you move your project forward.”
