---
title: We’re Making the Same Mistake With AI That We Made With Digital Marketing
description: Twenty-five years ago, companies bolted websites, email, and paid search onto an old marketing model. Many GTM teams are doing the same thing with AI today.
image: https://www.jesuisprestconsulting.com/hubfs/Mad%20Men%20Gif%20(3)-1.gif
---

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AI Readiness

# We’re Making the Same Mistake With AI That We Made With Digital Marketing

![Christina Kori](https://app.hubspot.com/settings/avatar/b6b2440132a28c63d8f525cd8e67468d)

 Christina Kori

September 24, 2026

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**I have seen this marketing transformation movie before. We called the last one digital marketing.**

About 25 years ago, HOLY COW, it wasn't clear whether a website was just a digital brochure or could actually drive sales. Playbooks did not exist for what digital marketing would eventually become.

Most companies reacted to digital marketing as they usually do with new technology. They treated it as additive rather than structural.

##  We treated digital as additive before we understood it was structural 

And at first, websites became another form of collateral, email became another campaign channel, and paid search became another media buy. Companies adopted the new tools without first reconsidering the marketing model around them.

But digital did more than create new channels. It changed how buyers researched, how marketers reached them, what companies could measure, how quickly teams could respond, and eventually how the entire function had to operate.

## The technology arrived first. The operating model changed later.

I think we risk making the same mistake with AI.

We are treating AI as a collection of tools to add to the existing GTM model when the more important question is how AI is changing the model itself.

One of the biggest changes digital marketing introduced was a much tighter connection between customer behavior, data, and decision-making.

Companies could suddenly see what people searched for, what they clicked, where they converted, and where they dropped out. Marketing no longer had to rely exclusively on broad assumptions and post-campaign analysis. In fact, teams could observe behavior, learn from it, and adjust much faster.

Over time, leveraging digital channels stopped being an advantage and turned into table stakes for the new marketing function. The advantage increasingly came from how well a company could connect customer signals to data, decisions, and execution.

That required marketing to develop entirely new capabilities. It also pulled marketing, sales, technology, and data into much closer coordination. What began as a marketing transformation eventually changed a much larger part of the revenue system.

## AI May Be Compressing That Loop Again

That is where I think the AI parallel becomes interesting.

Digital marketing shortened the distance between customer behavior and what companies could know about it. AI has the potential to shorten the distance between what companies know, the decisions they make, and the actions that follow.

That is a different level of change.

Right now, most of the conversation is still focused on where to use AI, what to automate, which tools to buy, and which tasks can be completed faster. Those are reasonable questions, but they assume the existing GTM system remains largely intact.

That is the mistake from the last transformation.

If AI becomes embedded in how GTM teams interpret information and make decisions, then the question is no longer how much faster the existing process becomes. We have to ask whether the existing process still makes sense.

## Effective GTM Strategy Starts with Decisions, Not Tasks

That is why I think GTM leaders should start with the decisions that drive the business rather than the operational tasks surrounding them.

Which customer signals actually matter? Which decisions depend on those signals? Who makes those decisions today? Where are those decisions slowed by handoffs, incomplete information, or outdated processes? Which decisions require human judgment, and which could be improved by better data, faster analysis, or machine assistance?

Looking at AI this way forces leaders to understand how their GTM system actually works before they begin automating pieces of it.

The companies that navigate this transition well will not simply be the ones that deploy the most AI. They will be the ones that understand where AI changes the connection between customer signals, business decisions, and execution, and then redesign the parts of GTM that no longer make sense as a result.

The advantage will not come from automating more of the old model. It will come from recognizing when it is time to build a new one.

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## Keep reading

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