Mental shifts for growth: How CEOs, CMOs in Africa should approach AI marketing

1. Excitement around AI is one thing. It’s time to champion real-world experimentation

Search interest for 'AI marketing' in South Africa increased by 90% from June 2024 to July 2025, and 'how to use AI' searches in Nigeria doubled in the same period. However, this excitement hasn’t necessarily led to real-world experimentation by marketing teams. This presents an opportunity for brand and agency leaders to initiate a testing phase:

You can create separate clusters for creatives, campaigns, and measurement. The 'creatives' cluster could include tasks like copywriting and video production, while 'campaign types' may focus on Search or Display campaigns. The 'measurement' cluster could cover data-driven attribution and monthly reporting.

CMOs can assign team leads to each cluster to oversee the process and scale successful parts of the pilot. This approach fosters a continuous cycle of testing, innovation, and growth in ROI.

Here’s what your AI marketing experiment could look like:

2. CFOs often label marketing as a cost centre. CMOs, can prove it as a profit driver using AI

CFOs and CMOs are both focused on growth, but they approach it differently. Since CFOs often determine marketing budgets, CMOs must advocate for their decisions by speaking the language of value. Here’s how to achieve that using AI:

• Causal proof for ROAS: Instead of using ambiguous phrases like “This ad generated a lot of clicks”, causal AI tools can show the exact path a customer took from an ad to a purchase. This allows CMOs to provide specific, cause-and-effect feedback, such as “This ad led to a 17% increase in website sales, generating R20,000 in revenue in July".

• Data-driven agility and optimisation: AI tools provide real-time campaign performance data, enabling marketers to make quick adjustments. This helps maximise budgets and demonstrate effective spending.

• Future planning: AI-driven data from past campaigns allows CMOs to justify investments for future campaigns in financial terms. They can also use Google Analytics 4 (GA4) analytics on past sales and market trends to provide more accurate ROI predictions.

3. Africa is not lagging behind. Lead by example for our continent

Africa is often subject to backward assumptions about its capabilities, but 40% of businesses have already trialled or implemented generative AI. Meanwhile, in Europe and North America, 34% of marketing leaders say AI adoption is important while just 6% are building AI capabilities. Similarly, while 82% of marketing leaders in those regions say adjusting spend based on ad performance is important, only 30% are doing so.

This suggests that marketing leaders across different regions face similar challenges with AI implementation. The opportunity for founders and marketing leaders in sub-Saharan Africa is to lead by example:

Octa, a forex trading platform, used causal AI and Brand Lift studies to understand female traders in South Africa. A creative video ad resulted in a 23% lift in brand awareness and a 25% lift in consideration among women aged 18 to 34.

Travelstart, a travel booking platform, renovated its marketing strategy with smart bidding. By switching from target cost-per-acquisition (TCPA) to return-on-ad-spend (ROAS), they saw a 50% increase in revenue per booking.

Like Octa and Travelstart, leading by example means taking chances on new AI strategies.

Get more marketing inspiration, strategies and the latest insights from across sub-Saharan Africa with Think with Google.