In the realm of smart marketing, AI stands as a towering pillar of innovation.

Industry data reveals that the AI marketing industry has witnessed a surge, with its market size ballooning from 20.9 billion yuan in 2020 to a projected 53 billion yuan by 2024, marking a compound annual growth rate of 26.2%.

Among the elite trio leading the smart marketing industry—Alimama, ByteDance Ads, and Tencent Ads—each is relentlessly pursuing AI advancements.

Alimama is enhancing its large model capabilities to achieve AI-driven decision-making across every process and link.

ByteDance Ads, with Douyin's "omnichannel interest e-commerce" banner flying high, is setting the tone for "omnichannel interest scenarios".

Tencent Ads, leveraging its extensive commercial product matrix, integrates product lines and embeds AI capabilities into intelligent delivery tools.

While all three giants leverage AI, their focal points differ subtly: ByteDance Ads emphasizes scenario content, Tencent focuses on resource integration, and Alimama prioritizes operations.

Content, resources, and operations are pivotal for brand business growth. As national subsidy funds gradually materialize, brands and merchants face the challenge of navigating growth in the third and fourth quarters. How should they strategize their advertising approaches?

This question merits deep exploration.

From being a "prominent field of study" to becoming a "winning strategy," how should AI marketing be executed?

The market presents two primary approaches for leveraging AI to address business growth challenges:

1. Generating incremental growth.

Incremental growth involves either enlarging the existing pie or discovering a new one.

2. Optimizing existing resources.

Optimizing existing resources means enhancing the pie's nutritional value, maximizing every gram's worth.

ByteDance excels in generating incremental growth, adept at tapping into redundancies across short videos, live streaming, short dramas, and mini-games. This ability consistently fuels traffic growth. According to Tianyancha APP, Douyin now fully controls the most popular short drama platform.

Consequently, ByteDance Ads continuously harnesses AI to explore ByteDance's content ecosystem, relying on Douyin to uncover redundancies in short dramas and mini-games.

Recently, ByteDance Ads has also been intensifying its focus on AI and short dramas.

The approach of finding incremental growth has been proven effective and continues to be validated. Brands that first identify incremental growth can reap the benefits of redundancy. For advertisers, these benefits amplify marketing ROI.

Thus, investing in incremental growth is about maximizing the ROI of redundancy benefits.

In the past, ByteDance Ads' investments might have been effective due to enjoying traffic redundancy benefits. However, whether your product or brand can compete and whether your operational capabilities are truly robust remains to be seen.

Nevertheless, redundancy harbors a touch of "mystery".

Live streaming and short videos thrive, yet who would have anticipated the popularity of short dramas? When Mango TV surpassed iQIYI in popularity, monetization became a fresh challenge.

Since enlarging the pie isn't easy, refining the craft is equally a viable direction.

Tencent Ads embraces this approach. With WeChat, QQ, Tencent Video, and Tencent News as its core platforms, and relying on video accounts, live streaming, mini-programs, and small stores, Tencent Ads has cultivated a closed-loop marketing ecosystem.

Given the abundance of social content distribution platforms, Tencent's marketing presence cannot be overlooked.

Recently, Tencent Ads launched its 3.0 system and introduced the 2025 "Supernova" plan, aiming to tap into incremental growth within its existing ecosystem. The larger the existing resource scale, the more challenging it becomes to uncover incremental growth.

Tencent Ads' 3.0 system enhances AI capabilities, essentially aiming to refine craftsmanship and uncover new redundancy benefits.

ByteDance, an APP factory adept at tapping into content redundancy benefits, and Tencent, the godfather of social media, can both find incremental growth within existing resource scales with AI support.

Alibaba, however, follows a different path. While pursuing structural incremental growth, Alibaba also excels in optimizing existing resources.

Alimama's recent moves have been quite profound.

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference, Alimama unveiled "Wanxiang Yingzao," deeply embedding AI capabilities into business growth.

Unlike other large models, Alimama's large model's strength lies in integrating AI's world knowledge and reasoning capabilities with e-commerce expertise.

Currently, in the e-commerce industry, only Alimama can seamlessly integrate the LMA large model into the nuanced scenarios of business growth.

With AI capabilities, more precise predictions about user needs can be made.

For instance, I recently took up cycling and bought a bicycle on Taobao. Subsequently, when browsing Taobao again, I found that the platform not only accurately pushed related products like cycling clothing and sports water bottles but also proactively recommended new product categories such as protein powder and chicken breast based on my evolving needs.

What does this mean for merchants?

It suggests that investment no longer needs to worry about "redundancy benefits." Operations themselves constitute incremental growth. Future investments should maximize not just the "ROI of redundancy benefits" but also the "ROI of operations".

For brand merchants, truly valuable investments transcend simple, brute-force growth through advertising flows, emphasizing long-term, sustainable growth through operations. This underscores the genuine significance of deeply exploring Taobao's operating ecosystem and leveraging AIGC to bolster operational capabilities.

In reality, neither deeply tapping into structural redundancy benefits nor refining craftsmanship offers a one-size-fits-all solution. After all, in today's market, incremental growth isn't the primary theme. Advertising flow conversion isn't merely about acing the "last mile".

From collectibles to cycling, from collectible consumption to live streaming sales, various redundancy benefits have been experienced. Ultimately, it's realized that sustainable business growth hinges on long-term operations.

AI marketing isn't about a single advertising flow but about compound business growth.

According to QuestMobile data, as of June 2025, the monthly active user base of the entire mobile internet increased by a mere 2.5%, with the average daily usage frequency rising by 2.6%.

What does this signify?

The incremental attention in the market is extremely limited.

Short dramas have gained popularity, yet long videos have declined. Mini-games have surged, but online games have waned. The market constantly fluctuates, with total user time remaining stagnant; only attention shifts.

Therefore, in an era of oversupply, so-called structural redundancy benefits are actually "small blessings" in short cycles, lacking replicability.

For example, if you create a popular scented candle, within a month, a plethora of similar products will flood the market, all utilizing the same industrial assembly line. Everyone learns from the same master, offering no new tricks.

Consequently, they can only compete by escalating budgets, eventually leading to intense intra-category competition and no profitability.

Thus, while increasing investment for growth, brands and merchants must seriously consider: Will the next wave of redundancy benefits materialize after this wave of budget investment?

This explains why brand and e-commerce business operators complain that achieving growth through buying traffic is becoming increasingly difficult.

The reason lies in the ineffectiveness of traditional traffic-buying growth methods.

As traffic-buying growth methods become obsolete, AI marketing is increasingly becoming a "hot cake".

If you observe peers, it's evident that more brands are allocating a dedicated "AI marketing budget." According to think tank statistics, 30% of advertisers now use AI to generate images and texts, 20% use AI for video creation, and AI advertising creativity usage has reached 25%.

These data indicate that marketing in the AI era isn't just about a single advertising flow for buying traffic but about compound business growth.

On one hand, utilizing AI for omnichannel advertising flows can yield quick results and explosive sales.

Structural redundancy benefits are rare, and when they arise, players from various fields rush in, resulting in short growth lifespans. For instance, when live streaming shows growth, everyone jumps on the live streaming bandwagon; when short dramas gain popularity, everyone scrambles to produce them.

Therefore, efficiency remains key.

Take Alimama as an example. Last August, Alimama launched the performance advertising platform "Wanxiangtai Wujie Version" and the brand advertising platform "Alimama Bailing," further integrating the traffic field.

Through AI algorithms, brand merchants can devise advertising strategies from more refined dimensions such as demographics and products, leading to higher sales volumes.

In simple terms, with AI, manual monitoring isn't necessary. Based on data-driven decisions, advertising becomes more efficient, thus facilitating easier explosive sales.

On the other hand, long-term advertising flows should empower operations, ideally reducing costs.

Truly effective marketing shouldn't increase operational costs but decrease them.

Many business owners harbor a misconception that more advertising equates to heavier operational costs. The fundamental reason stems from the wrong approach.

When a single product shows promising data, they mistakenly believe they've discovered a "redundancy benefit" and subsequently invest heavily, flooding the market with resources, eventually leading to cost spirals and no profit.

In fact, in the AI era, advertising necessitates more operational thinking. Long-term, cost-effective "omnichannel advertising" must also consider "omnichannel operations".

The core purpose of today's marketing platforms isn't to "sell attention" but to "sell operational capabilities".

AI tools are abundant and deeply embedded in every facet of advertising and operations. The platform possesses the technology, resources, and expertise to teach brand merchants more "methodologies".

Simultaneously, business growth across various industries has long surpassed the traffic stage, entering the operations stage.

Why is omnichannel marketing popular now? When facing diverse scenarios, it's essential to set budgets, keyword settings, bidding, audience targeting, and there are various "advertising flow" methods from content platforms to e-commerce platforms.

Essentially, marketing and operations are becoming increasingly intertwined.

Achieving business growth isn't actually easy.

I've witnessed numerous cases where initial growth through advertising flows is followed by continuous investment increases, eventually leading to cost spirals.

Each industry harbors numerous explicit and implicit knowledge that's difficult to replicate. Taking e-commerce as an example, from material production to customer acquisition, from retention and conversion to repeat purchases, every detail of each link must be precise and accurate.

With AI, the possibility of solving cost issues emerges.

The crux here remains how to utilize AI tools and, with AI decision-making assistance, effectively use every budget.

From the TV era to the e-commerce era, from internet celebrities promoting products to AI marketing, historically, every transformation in the people, goods, and venues landscape has ushered in new growth.

Now, as the wheel of AI marketing change continues to turn, who will daringly stand at the forefront of the next era?