Artificial Intelligence (AI)
What Marketers Need to Know
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing the marketing landscape, offering unprecedented opportunities for personalization, efficiency and data-driven decision-making. With these opportunities come new responsibilities and ethical considerations.
The CMA is here to make sure you're ready. Whether you're exploring AI for the first time or scaling its use across your organization, you can count on our tools, frameworks and expert guidance to move forward responsibly and with confidence.
Resources and Initiatives
Our suite of resources is designed specifically for Canadian marketers. From a foundational primer to practical playbooks, our resources are organized to support you wherever you are in your journey.
Our materials address:
- Emerging AI technologies and their applications in marketing
- Ethical considerations and best practices for AI implementation
- Regulatory developments and compliance requirements
- Strategies for maintaining consumer trust while leveraging AI capabilities
Setting the stage: A CMA primer on AI for marketers
Developed in collaboration with the globally renowned Vector Institute, Toronto-based leaders in responsible AI research and adoption, this accessible primer introduces core AI concepts and their real-world applications in marketing. It's the ideal starting point.
CMA Guide on AI for Marketers
The definitive resource for Canadian marketers navigating AI. Also developed with the Vector Institute, this comprehensive guide covers:
- How AI is transforming core marketing functions
- Practical frameworks for ethical and effective AI implementation
- Regulatory developments and compliance considerations
Strategies for maintaining consumer trust while leveraging AI capabilities
AI Mastery Series: Playbooks for every stage of your journey
The CMA's AI Mastery Series equips marketers with the knowledge and skills to navigate the opportunities and the challenges that AI presents. Each playbook delivers strategic insights and practical applications to guide you through the complexities of AI in marketing. Whether you're just starting out or well along in your journey, the series is your roadmap to mastering the technology across every area of marketing.
What the playbooks cover:
- AI literacy and responsible adoption: Core AI concepts, applications across marketing, the regulatory landscape and what ethical, trust-first implementation looks like in practice.
- Practical implementation and real-world use cases: Hands-on guidance for getting started including readiness assessments, tool selection, structured objectives and specific use cases with timelines and instructions.
- Content creation and human-AI collaboration: How to refine AI-generated outputs into market-ready work and how to effectively co-create with AI while keeping human expertise at the centre.
- Strategy, scaling and ROI: Frameworks for auditing your AI opportunities, mapping solutions to business tasks, calculating ROI and scaling AI use across content, analytics and demand generation.
- Governance, risk and future-readiness: Guardrails, decision authority frameworks and ethical guidelines for managing AI risk, plus a forward-looking look at the shift from traditional SEO to Generative Engine Optimization (GEO).
CMA Accountability Checklists for AI in Marketing
In a landscape where responsibilities often overlap or remain unclear, the checklists provide a structured framework that clearly delineates who is responsible for what in the AI marketing ecosystem by introducing the concept of Key Accountable Stakeholders.
In addition to providing tools and best practices, the CMA is at the forefront of advocacy on AI as part of its commitment to futureproofing the profession. As AI evolves, we are at the forefront, ensuring that the voices of marketers are heard and that the profession is future-proofed for what's ahead. Learn more about our advocacy work.
AI Principles for Responsible Marketing
The CMA has established a set of core AI principles to guide response use of AI in marketing. These principles have been incorporated into the Canadian Marketing Code of Ethics and Standards.
The key principles are:
- human oversight,
- transparency,
- bias and fairness,
- explainability,
- data privacy and security,
- ethical consideration,
- performance monitoring; and
- accountability.
