What Is Performance Marketing – and How Is AI Changing It?

I have been working in performance marketing since 2017, and over the years, I have realized that its essence lies in having a clearly defined goal and choosing the best way to achieve it. The key is to see the available ways to achieve it. And behind every possibility, we must evaluate two fundamental aspects – its difficulty and its positive impact on reaching the goal.

It’s like picking fruit. We go for the low-hanging ones first. If we have multiple options with the same impact, we start with the one that takes seconds (for example, increasing the budget on a high-potential campaign), then move to those that take minutes, and only after that do we tackle the tasks that require hours or days (such as shooting and editing brand-new professional videos for ads). It’s about having a goal-driven mindset, common sense, and smart resource management.

Learning from Mistakes and Continuous Growth

Even though I constantly remind my colleagues of this principle, include it in company marketing guidelines, and look for it in job candidates, I am not perfect either. Everyone occasionally makes a suboptimal decision. In the past, I have underestimated the importance of small tweaks that could have brought quick results or overlooked details that, if fixed, could have had a significant impact. That’s a mistake. As I’ve written before, I consider every suboptimal decision a mistake, regardless of whether we ultimately achieved the set goal. If a mistake happened along the way, it’s essential to acknowledge it.

This is the foundation for learning. It’s a crucial skill not just for performance marketers but for anyone striving to move forward. I’ve written more about mistakes in my previous posts.

So, performance marketing isn’t just about ads, data, and analytics. It’s about identifying weak spots, recognizing potential, and making the most of it. It’s a continuous process of learning, testing, and optimization. Those who can effectively prioritize, quickly adapt, and learn from their mistakes will always stay one step ahead.

The Future of Performance Marketing in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Asking what performance marketing is and what it will become in the era of AI actually means asking two different things. One question is about its core essence. The other is about the tools and processes we use.

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