The marketing industry faces ongoing concerns that artificial intelligence (AI) will eliminate jobs. However, a 19th-century economic concept known as the Jevons paradox, introduced by English economist William Stanley Jevons in 1865, suggests these fears may be unfounded. This paradox explains how efficiency improvements, like those AI offers, can paradoxically increase demand for marketing work rather than reduce it. Box CEO Aaron Levie elaborated on this in a December 26, 2025 analysis, proposing that making knowledge work far cheaper through AI could dramatically expand its volume. Levie wrote, "We're ultimately going to be doing far more, " noting AI will enable projects and campaigns that previously wouldn’t have been viable—shifting AI use toward entirely new applications beyond current human tasks. Jevons first observed this with coal during England’s Industrial Revolution, where steam engine innovations made coal use more efficient but total consumption soared as new industrial applications emerged. Similar patterns occurred throughout computing history: from mainframes limited to large corporations, to personal computers available widely, to the cloud democratizing sophisticated enterprise software. This process broadened access to marketing automation, analytics, CRM, and advertising platforms previously restricted to major firms. The current wave of AI agents extends this democratization to non-deterministic knowledge work. A July 2025 IAB Europe whitepaper reported firms adopting AI enjoy up to 3. 1 percentage-point faster productivity growth, with 70% of GroupM’s advertising revenue already AI-powered and projections of 94% by 2027. AI applications include campaign optimization, creative content generation, and audience targeting—exemplified by Google’s Performance Max and Amazon’s Ads Agent, both launched in late 2025 to automate complex marketing tasks via natural language instructions. Levie highlighted AI’s transformative impact on business economics, reducing the scarcity of resources that force trade-offs between marketing, product development, support, finance, and distribution. Now, small teams can access capabilities once exclusive to Fortune 500 companies, enabling faster innovation and growth. Over four million advertisers use Meta’s generative AI tools, which cut demand-side platform (DSP) task time by 75%, leveling the playing field for smaller businesses lacking sophisticated marketing departments. Despite task automation, Levie insisted humans remain essential to manage workflows, apply judgment, and maintain quality. AI handles discrete tasks like research, coding, and media creation, but full value production requires human oversight. Rather than reducing jobs, AI shifts roles toward higher-value planning and relationship management. Historical data supports this: U. S. marketing employment grew five-fold from the 1970s to today as technology made marketing more efficient and accessible, expanding beyond large corporations to many businesses. Tools like Figma and Google Ads consolidated multiple past roles but ultimately increased marketing participation, reflecting the paradox’s three mechanisms—increased efficiency lowers costs, raising demand directly; efficiency boosts incomes and economic growth, further increasing demand; and cheaper tasks enable new, previously uneconomical applications. For instance, agencies now manage nearly double the client load per account manager due to automation, with campaign setup and budget pacing times drastically cut.

McKinsey’s 2025 Technology Trends Outlook identified agentic AI as a key transformative force, promoting new human-AI collaboration models via natural interfaces and adaptive intelligence. Supporting infrastructure advanced as well: Adverity’s September 2025 Intelligence platform integrates AI-powered analytics with conversational data interfaces; Google Analytics and Microsoft Clarity introduced AI-driven features; Google Cloud’s November 2025 framework anticipates a $1 trillion agentic AI market by 2035-2040, with 88% of AI adopters reporting positive ROI. Whether the Jevons paradox fully applies depends on technological progress, deployment effectiveness, emergence of new marketing applications, and competitive dynamics allowing price reductions to stimulate demand. Early signs from platform usage suggest these conditions are forming in digital marketing globally, presenting opportunities reminiscent of early cloud computing—dramatic cost reductions coupled with expanded creative and strategic accessibility. However, challenges remain. Surveys from late 2025 show media professionals excited about AI-generated content yet cautious about quality and content adjacencies. Education efforts are growing, with many companies seeking AI usage guidelines to manage risks. Psychological pitfalls in AI marketing—such as misplaced blame and skepticism around AI failures—pose brand risks exceeding those of human errors. The paradox’s application varies by specialization: roles involving strategy, creativity, and client engagement likely grow, whereas purely tactical jobs may evolve or diminish. This contrasts with sectors like agriculture, where productivity gains led to employment declines due to inelastic demand. Marketing’s more elastic demand suggests overall employment growth in the AI era. Skeptics fearing full AI autonomy overlook rising quality expectations and sophistication needs, similar to how professional photographers adapted rather than disappeared after smartphones emerged. Market dynamics and human oversight will continue shaping AI’s impact. In sum, the Jevons paradox warns that AI-driven marketing efficiency gains are likely to expand—not contract—the total demand for marketing expertise by enabling more work at lower costs and opening new applications. As Levie concluded, "We're ultimately going to be doing far more. " --- **Timeline Highlights:** - 1865: Jevons publishes “The Coal Question, ” identifying the efficiency paradox. - 1970s: Marketing-related U. S. jobs number in the hundreds of thousands. - 2000s: Cloud computing democratizes enterprise marketing tools. - 2024: Marketing employment in the U. S. reaches several million, a five-fold increase over 50 years. - 2025: Major AI marketing tool launches and industry reports validate AI’s growing role. - December 26, 2025: Levie publishes analysis applying the Jevons paradox to AI and marketing. --- **Summary:** Aaron Levie’s 2025 analysis applies the Jevons paradox to AI in marketing, arguing that increased efficiency lowers costs and expands the total market for marketing work. Historical and current data from digital advertising platforms worldwide support this view, showing that AI-driven automation shifts roles rather than eliminates them and broadens accessibility for small and medium businesses. While challenges and uncertainties remain, early evidence suggests AI efficiency gains will increase marketing employment overall, paralleling past technology-driven expansions across computing and advertising.