{"id":10540,"date":"2025-11-05T16:44:19","date_gmt":"2025-11-05T22:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10540"},"modified":"2025-11-05T16:44:19","modified_gmt":"2025-11-05T22:44:19","slug":"if-the-ai-bubble-bursts-marketing-could-take-the-first-hit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/?p=10540","title":{"rendered":"If the AI bubble bursts, marketing could take the first hit"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\u201cHow do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u2014 Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chair, December 5, 1996<\/p>\n

When Greenspan asked that question, the iPhone didn\u2019t exist, and \u201cdot-com\u201d was as overused as AI is today. Four years later, the exuberance gave way to a rational collapse. Today, the same question hangs over artificial intelligence \u2014 only this time, the stakes are bigger and the debt exposure is deeper.\u00a0<\/p>\n

For digital marketers, whose tools, strategies and even customer experiences increasingly depend on AI systems, the fallout from a potential correction would be more than financial \u2014 it could be operationally crippling.<\/p>\n

According to JPMorgan Chase, $1.2 trillion of debt is now tied to AI-related companies, making it the largest single segment of the investment-grade market. Never before has so much corporate debt been tied to such a speculative story about future productivity gains.<\/p>\n

That debt is also masking deeper economic problems. Harvard economist Jason Furman recently calculated that GDP growth outside of data centers was just 0.1% in the first half of 2025. Remove AI infrastructure, and the U.S. economy is barely treading water.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u2018Everybody\u2019s going to do super well\u2019<\/h2>\n

And yet, here\u2019s OpenAI CEO Sam Altman earlier this month:<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are in a phase of the build-out where the entire industry\u2019s got to come together and everybody\u2019s going to do super well. You\u2019ll see this on chips. You\u2019ll see this on data centers. You\u2019ll see this lower down the supply chain.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\u201cThe entire industry\u2019s got to come together and everybody\u2019s going to do super well.\u201d<\/em> That sentence is gibberish. Only an AI hallucination could connect it to how business operates. It isn\u2019t meant to make sense, though. It\u2019s meant to boost morale and keep everyone on the same page. Unfortunately, the \u201cYou\u2019ll see\u201d in the following three sentences has a whiff of desperation about it. They\u2019re like Wile E. Coyote realizing the edge of the cliff is far behind him and not realizing that was the only reason he could defy gravity.<\/p>\n

Dig deeper: You\u2019re paying your sales and marketing teams to sabotage each other<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

There\u2019s more than a little of Willy Loman in Altman. Loman is the central character in the play \u201cDeath of a Salesman,\u201d Arthur Miller\u2019s dissection of American optimism turned fatal. Charley, the pragmatic neighbor, sums up Willy Loman\u2019s decline this way:<\/p>\n

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\u201cHe\u2019s a man way out there in the blue, riding on a smile and a shoeshine. And when they start not smiling back \u2014 that\u2019s an earthquake.\u201d<\/p>\n

When does self-belief become delusion?<\/h2>\n<\/blockquote>\n

That quote came to mind when I read what Sam Altman wrote in a 2019 blog post:<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe most successful people I know believe in themselves almost to the point of delusion. Self-belief alone is not sufficient \u2014 you also have to be able to convince other people of what you believe.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

In the play, Charley also says of Loman, \u201cThe only thing you\u2019ve got in this world is what you can sell.\u201d Right now, Altman is selling optimism, but what happens when he runs out of it?<\/p>\n

So far, the optimism has been quite contagious. Unfortunately, AI\u2019s trillion-dollar market is sustained by a web of \u201ccircular\u201d mega-deals<\/a>, in which companies buy from one another to inflate demand and justify valuations. The result is a self-reinforcing loop of capital, contracts and confidence \u2014 an economy feeding on its own expectations. That is the same behavior that pumped up the dot-com bubble.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The circularity of the AI economy means that many tools are simply wrappers around the same handful of foundational models. This creates a brittle ecosystem with little redundancy or actual competition (the tech industry\u2019s ability to ignore Chinese LLMs \u2014 which are less expensive and as good as everyone else\u2019s \u2014 is awe-inspiring and an insult to capitalism).<\/p>\n

Why marketers should be concerned<\/h2>\n

If access to those foundational systems becomes restricted \u2014 due to API pricing changes, legal challenges or platform instability \u2014 entire marketing operations could grind to a halt. The risk isn\u2019t just financial; it\u2019s strategic and systemic.<\/p>\n

In addition to direct economic damage, marketers should also be concerned because a decline in the AI sector could expose profound structural weaknesses across the martech ecosystem. Much of it relies on AI-powered services \u2014 from predictive analytics and media targeting to content generation and customer personalization. <\/p>\n

Dig deeper: Are marketers trusting AI too much? How to avoid the strategic pitfall<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Suppose overleveraged vendors begin to consolidate or collapse? Then, marketers may be left with broken tech stacks, unsupported platforms or escalating costs for services that were artificially priced low during the boom.<\/p>\n

Marketers already have too much on their plates to be planning for doomsday. But maybe you should ask ChatGPT to put something together, just to be on the safe side. Because when the money dries up, your campaigns, workflows, maybe even your entire operation, could go with it.<\/p>\n

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Fuel up with free marketing insights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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The post If the AI bubble bursts, marketing could take the first hit<\/a> appeared first on MarTech<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cHow do we know when irrational exuberance has unduly escalated asset values?\u201d \u2014 Alan Greenspan, Federal Reserve Chair, December 5, 1996 When Greenspan asked that question, the iPhone didn\u2019t exist, and \u201cdot-com\u201d was as overused as AI is today. Four years later, the exuberance gave way to a rational collapse. Today, the same question hangs … <\/p>\n

Read more “If the AI bubble bursts, marketing could take the first hit”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10540","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"featured_media_urls":{"thumbnail":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"medium":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"medium_large":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"large":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-featured-image":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-loop":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"inspiro-loop@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-masonry":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-masonry@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_cinema":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_portrait":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_portrait@2x":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false],"portfolio_item-thumbnail_square":["https:\/\/martech.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/stock-chart-goes-into-a-question-mark-800x452.png",0,0,false]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10540\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/attentionmedia.io\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}