The new world of marketing is digital. And the rulers of digital are the engineers - not the persuaders.

Google search, display, Facebook, the list goes on, the media buying (the new direct mail) is all driven by engineers optimizing numbers and complicated controls.

Great copy is secondary, if needed at all. The copy they start with, all ends up getting good enough by optimizing their systems.

And new software is being developed that does it all automatically anyway – using AI. For example, Persado. 

I can't speak for all digital ad agencies, but of all the ones I've dealt with, none of them know how to write great copy. Nor do they care about it much.

They're making out just fine, without it, and without having to pay purveyors of persuasion to create it.

As for pursuing copywriting as a career – for most copywriters these days, the dream is definitely oversold.

Brian Kurtz wrote in an article recently, "Big royalty days are a thing of the past, as direct mail (volumes) are a thing of the past."

And copywriting has been totally diluted by a glut of copywriters AND the move to digital marketing.

But back to digital ad channel media buyers for a moment ...

Media buyers basically RULE the digital world!

All the top media buyers I know are ENGINEERS not PERSUASION experts - yet they create and run 95% of all ads you see on Google, Facebook, display ads across the web and so on.

They run media ad spend budgets of millions, tens of millions, and hundreds of millions.

They start with "okay" copy, and optimize it with their engineering skills. Even the creation of copy is being slowly but surely "engineered" by the AI guys.

For that matter, even the engineering process of optimizing a digital ad campaign is slowly but surely being taken over by AI ... see Albert! 

This is my random observation - the engineers are taking over marketing!

AdWords - Facebook - targeting - analytics - retargeting - testing - conversion optimization - big data - data mining - deep profiling - micro-targeting ... (keep adding buzz words)...

In the digital space - which is where we're all headed - the media buyers, savvy entrepreneurs, and Fortune 500, 100, 50 company marketers ...

... it's the ENGINEERS that are driving all the sales and profits.

Not the classically trained persuasion copywriters / marketers / sales people.

The digital marketing world – it's insanely complex – and it takes an engineering mind to
master.

Very few of these engineers understand how to write great persuasion copy – like a Eugene Schwartz. They DO understand the STRATEGY of marketing, and they do sure know how to test.

So they start with mediocre to okay copy, and let the data drive all the decisions from there.

And the bottom-line – they ARE DEFINITELY out-performing the traditional purveyors of persuasion – and RULING in the digital space.