AI Marketing Weekly: The Rise of Autonomous Agents, AI-Generated Ads Outperform Traditional, and Adobe's $1.9B Semrush Bet

November 23, 2025

Welcome to this week's edition of AI Marketing Weekly. This week, the industry is buzzing with the tangible rise of autonomous AI agents, moving from theoretical concepts to practical applications that are reshaping e-commerce and marketing workflows. We're seeing major players like Google and AppsFlyer roll out agentic capabilities that can execute multi-step tasks, from calling stores to verify inventory to automating complex marketing analysis. This shift signals a move beyond simple AI assistance to a future of autonomous growth, where AI doesn't just provide insights but takes action on them.

Beyond the agentic revolution, new data provides compelling evidence that AI-generated creative is not just a faster, cheaper alternative, but a more effective one. A landmark study this week revealed that AI-produced ads are outperforming their traditionally made counterparts in emotional resonance and brand growth potential, challenging long-held assumptions about the limits of AI in creative endeavors. This, coupled with major platform consolidation, including Adobe's significant $1.9 billion acquisition of Semrush and Accenture's investment in causal AI measurement, paints a picture of an industry rapidly maturing and restructuring around the power of artificial intelligence.

This Week's Top Stories

• Adobe Acquires Semrush for $1.9 Billion to Bolster AI Marketing Tools
• The Future of Marketing Looks a Lot Like Engineering and AI Roles
• Later Study: AI Transforming Creator and Brand Influence with Measurable ROI
• 'Agentic' AI: Marketing Buzzword or the Real Deal?
• 10 AI Tools Marketers Are Using Right Now
• Google Delivers New AI Shopping Tools for the Holidays, Including Agentic Checkout
• AI Ads Are Winning in Creative Effectiveness Testing, New Study Finds
• Google Ads Begin Surfacing Inside AI Mode as Tests Expand
• Accenture Invests in Alembic to Reinvent Marketing Measurement with Causal AI
• AppsFlyer Launches AI-Ready Marketing Cloud with Agentic AI Suite
• AI Tools Are Transforming Market Research with Synthetic Personas and Digital Twins

1. Adobe Acquires Semrush for $1.9 Billion to Bolster AI Marketing Tools

Adobe will pay $12 per share in cash for Semrush, a significant 77.5% premium on its last closing price. The deal, expected to close in the first half of 2026, integrates Semrush's AI-driven tools for SEO, social media, and digital advertising into Adobe's ecosystem. This strategic move is designed to help marketers analyze and optimize their brand's visibility across search engines and emerging generative AI platforms like ChatGPT and Gemini. The acquisition comes as Adobe faces investor pressure to monetize its AI features more effectively, with its stock having fallen over 27% year-to-date.

Why It Matters: This acquisition signals a major consolidation in the marketing technology landscape, with a clear focus on integrating AI for a more holistic view of the customer journey. By combining Adobe's creative and experience platforms with Semrush's deep search and competitive intelligence data, marketers will be better equipped to measure the impact of their efforts and adapt their strategies in real-time. It underscores the growing importance of understanding brand performance not just on traditional websites, but within the new conversational interfaces of AI agents.

2. The Future of Marketing Looks a Lot Like Engineering and AI Roles

The article argues that marketing teams must now think like "learning software engineers." This shift is propelled by several factors: data becoming the core raw material for every experience; the use of modular, reusable content assets similar to software libraries; the adoption of agile, sprint-based workflows; the management of customer journeys as dynamic, living architectures; and the integration of AI and automation as the core toolchain. The author predicts a future of "agent-to-agent" marketing, where intelligent agents work together to execute marketing tasks, and the marketer's workstation will resemble a developer's IDE.

Why It Matters: This piece provides a strategic framework for understanding the deep, structural changes AI is bringing to the marketing profession. It's no longer about just using AI tools; it's about adopting an entirely new operating model. For marketing leaders, this means hiring for new skills, restructuring teams around agility, and investing in technology that supports a continuous, systems-based approach to customer engagement.

3. Later Study: AI Transforming Creator and Brand Influence with Measurable ROI

The research, which surveyed 120 creators and 189 CPG brands, found that AI is deeply embedded in creator workflows, with 76% using it for ideation and over half cutting their editing time in half. For brands, AI is driving strategic growth and efficiency, with 46% citing it as a key growth driver. The study also highlights the rise of virtual influencers, with brands showing increased willingness to invest in AI-generated personas compared to 2023. Later's CEO, Scott Sutton, emphasizes that "AI isn't replacing human creativity, it's amplifying it."

Why It Matters: This study moves the conversation about AI in influencer marketing from anecdotal to data-backed. The high adoption rates and reported improvements in both content quality and campaign ROI provide a strong business case for integrating AI into creator collaborations. It also validates the idea that AI can handle the more mechanical aspects of content creation, freeing up human creators to focus on strategy and authenticity.

4. 'Agentic' AI: Marketing Buzzword or the Real Deal?

Unlike chatbots that just provide information, AI agents are designed to take action. A new MIT and Boston Consulting Group report describes them as a "new class of systems" that behave like autonomous teammates. Google searches for the term have skyrocketed, and companies like Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and OpenAI are all developing agentic capabilities. Use cases range from AI agents that can book travel and buy products to more complex tasks like managing medical bills or acting as a personal shield against spam.

Why It Matters: For marketers, agentic AI represents a paradigm shift from reaching customers to serving them through automated proxies. This will have profound implications for e-commerce, customer service, and search. As consumers begin to delegate tasks to AI agents, brands will need to figure out how to market *to* these agents, not just the people who use them. Understanding this trend is crucial for future-proofing marketing strategies.

5. 10 AI Tools Marketers Are Using Right Now

The list highlights a mix of well-known and emerging platforms. Unsurprisingly, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are go-to LLMs for tasks ranging from copywriting to strategy. For video, Descript and OpusClip are popular for making editing faster and repurposing long-form content into social clips. Perplexity is the tool of choice for research, while Gamma is replacing PowerPoint for AI-powered presentations. The list also includes AirOps for AI-driven SEO and Lovable for no-code website and app prototyping.

Why It Matters: This article provides a practical, real-world look at the current AI marketing stack. It shows that marketers are moving beyond single-tool solutions to a more sophisticated, multi-tool approach, selecting the best platform for each specific task. The examples, such as a CMO training a custom GPT to act as a chief of staff, demonstrate the increasing maturity and specialization of AI applications in marketing.

6. Google Delivers New AI Shopping Tools for the Holidays, Including Agentic Checkout

The new features turn Google's AI into a personal shopping assistant. Users of the Gemini app can now use conversational search queries to get shoppable recommendations and comparison tables. A new "Let Google Call" feature has the AI phone local stores to verify product availability and pricing. Most significantly, Google is beginning to roll out agentic AI checkout with select merchants like Wayfair, Chewy, and some Shopify stores, with more to come. This is powered by a database of over 50 billion product listings.

Why It Matters: This is one of the most concrete examples of agentic AI being deployed at scale to consumers. The move from search and discovery to autonomous action and transaction has massive implications for retail and e-commerce. Marketers will need to ensure their product data is structured and optimized for these AI agents, as the agents will increasingly become the final decision-makers in the purchasing process.

7. AI Ads Are Winning in Creative Effectiveness Testing, New Study Finds

The research tested 18 AI-assisted ads and found they achieved an average System1 star rating of 3.4, compared to the database average of 2.3. The outperformance was even more pronounced for UK-produced AI ads, which scored a 4.6-star average. Notably, ads that were recognized by viewers as being made with AI actually tested better, and Coca-Cola's 2025 AI-generated "Holidays are Coming" ad scored a maximum 5.9 stars. The study suggests AI allows brands with smaller budgets to achieve spectacular production values that evoke powerful emotions.

Why It Matters: This data provides strong evidence that AI is not just an efficiency play for creative production, but an effectiveness one. The findings debunk the myth that AI can't produce emotionally resonant creative. For brands and agencies, this should accelerate the adoption of AI in the creative process, not just for mockups, but for final production, democratizing access to high-quality, effective advertising.

8. Google Ads Begin Surfacing Inside AI Mode as Tests Expand

While Google confirmed it began testing ads in AI Mode back in May, industry observers have reported a significant increase in sightings recently. Screenshots show sponsored results appearing within the AI-generated answers for queries like HVAC repair. This move indicates that Google is normalizing the presence of ads within its AI-powered search experience, likely ahead of a broader rollout. The change could reshape click-through rates and overall visibility for advertisers.

Why It Matters: The integration of ads into AI-generated answers is a critical development for the future of search advertising. As more user queries are answered directly by AI, the traditional blue-link SERP will become less prominent. Advertisers need to prepare for this new reality, where getting visibility within the AI's response will be paramount. Early adopters may benefit from less competition and the opportunity to shape best practices on this new ad frontier.

9. Accenture Invests in Alembic to Reinvent Marketing Measurement with Causal AI

Alembic's platform analyzes data across multiple marketing channels—including traditionally hard-to-track areas like brand campaigns, sponsorships, and organic social—and connects it to sales data to identify cause-and-effect relationships. According to Gartner, two-thirds of marketing leaders struggle to prove the impact of their campaigns, a problem Alembic aims to solve. Accenture's CEO, Julie Sweet, highlighted that causal AI provides the "verifiable, cause-and-effect insights leaders need to act with decisive speed." Accenture is also piloting Alembic's technology for its own campaigns.

Why It Matters: This investment highlights a major shift in marketing analytics towards more sophisticated, AI-driven measurement. For years, marketers have relied on correlation-based models like marketing mix modeling, which can be imprecise. Causal AI promises a more accurate understanding of what's actually driving results, allowing for more confident budget allocation and strategic decisions. This move by a major consultancy like Accenture signals that causal AI is poised to become a new standard in marketing measurement.

10. AppsFlyer Launches AI-Ready Marketing Cloud with Agentic AI Suite

The new Agentic AI Suite provides an execution layer for marketing intelligence, featuring pre-configured AI agents and a Model Context Protocol (MCP) that allows brands to build their own custom autonomous agents using LLMs like Claude and ChatGPT. Other new products include tools for incrementality measurement, cross-platform journey and LTV analysis, and a privacy-safe data collaboration platform called Signal Hub. The company's CEO stated the goal is to empower marketers to "achieve truly autonomous growth."

Why It Matters: AppsFlyer's announcement is a strong indicator of where the marketing technology industry is headed. The focus is no longer just on measurement and attribution, but on creating an autonomous system where AI can analyze data, surface insights, and execute actions. The introduction of a protocol for building custom marketing agents is particularly noteworthy, as it opens the door for a new level of automation and specialization in marketing operations.

11. AI Tools Are Transforming Market Research with Synthetic Personas and Digital Twins

The piece outlines two key AI-generated tools: synthetic personas, which represent a composite of a customer segment, and digital twins, which are AI proxies for real individuals based on their data. Researchers can query these AI personas and twins to simulate responses to surveys and experiments. A Columbia Business School initiative has already created over 2,000 digital twins with 88% relative accuracy compared to their human counterparts. While limitations exist—the twins replicated only about half of the effects in behavioral experiments—the potential to accelerate insight generation is immense.

Why It Matters: The ability to generate reliable consumer insights without the time and cost of traditional market research is a game-changer. While still in the early stages, this technology could allow marketers to test product concepts, messaging, and pricing strategies at an unprecedented scale and speed. It represents a fundamental shift from surveying populations to simulating them, which will require a new set of skills and ethical considerations for marketing and research professionals.

This week's developments show an industry in rapid transition. The rise of autonomous agents, the validation of AI's creative power, and the consolidation of major platforms all point to a future where AI is not just a tool, but the central operating system for marketing. As always, we'll be here to track the changes and help you stay ahead of the curve.