'Demand For Clear, Practical Guidance Has Never Been Greater': ADMA Launches AI Governance Toolkit For Marketers
The Association for Data-Driven Marketing and Advertising (ADMA) has released an Artificial Intelligence Governance Toolkit for members-built to give marketers clear, practical guidance as AI becomes part of everyday work.
Adoption is moving fast, while governance lags. This toolkit is a step toward consistent, safe and compliant use of AI across the sector.
Why this matters now
Marketers are embracing AI, but shared standards are thin. In ADMA's State of AI in Marketing Survey of more than 1,000 participants, 84% said they want a best-practice framework to guide responsible use.
The toolkit provides an accessible foundation to apply AI inside marketing workflows and reduce risk across privacy, compliance, transparency and brand safety. It's built for every level-from first-time users to experienced teams.
Leadership perspective
Andrea Martens, CEO of ADMA, said: "Marketers are integrating AI into their workflows at speed, but many are doing so without the standards required to use these tools responsibly. ADMA developed this toolkit because the demand for clear, practical guidance has never been greater.
"Our goal is to give every ADMA member the confidence to navigate this shift with sound judgment. Responsible adoption is not about slowing innovation. It is about ensuring creativity, compliance and trust can coexist as the role of AI continues to grow."
The toolkit is authored by Dr Sage Kelly, ADMA's regulatory and policy manager and an AI research specialist whose academic work at Queensland University of Technology examined the social, ethical and behavioural dynamics behind AI adoption.
Dr Kelly said: "The risk is not the technology itself, it is how it is used. When synthetic content is deployed without transparency, trust erodes quickly and consumers are already questioning what is real and what is being disclosed. At the same time, AI is becoming deeply embedded in marketing while the governance gap continues to widen.
"Many teams are experimenting with powerful tools without a shared understanding of how they work or the risks they carry. This toolkit is designed to bridge that gap by making the fundamentals clear and practical, helping marketers experiment safely, reduce avoidable harm and embed governance into everyday decision-making."
What marketers will find inside
- Plain-language primers on AI concepts and marketing use cases.
- A best-practice framework aligned to Australian privacy expectations and ad standards, including disclosure for synthetic content. See the Australian Privacy Principles via the OAIC for context: oaic.gov.au.
- Templates: acceptable-use policy, prompt and review protocols, disclosure guidance, vendor and model inventory, and risk assessment checklists.
- Controls for privacy, compliance, bias, accessibility and brand safety-embedded into everyday workflows.
- Practical examples across content, media, segmentation and customer service.
- Learning paths for teams new to AI and refresher materials for experienced practitioners.
How to put it to work this quarter
- Nominate an AI owner and a small steering group across marketing, legal and data.
- Audit current tools and use cases. Classify each by risk, data sensitivity and customer impact.
- Publish a one-page policy: approved tools, data handling, disclosure rules, human-in-the-loop checks and escalation paths.
- Set "red lines": no personal or confidential data in prompts, protected categories off-limits, all claims substantiated.
- Adopt prompt and review protocols. Keep a simple log of AI-assisted outputs and decisions.
- Train your team and key vendors. Require acknowledgment of the policy and disclosure standards.
- Run small pilots with clear success metrics and stop/go criteria. Expand only after passing quality and risk checks.
- Stay aligned to Australian privacy and advertising rules. Revisit controls quarterly as laws and platform policies evolve.
Questions to ask your team this week
- Where are we already using AI, and who signs off on outputs?
- What customer data touches these tools, and is it permitted under our privacy notices?
- How do we disclose synthetic content across ads, emails and support scripts?
- What is our plan for bias testing, fact-checking and claim substantiation?
- Which vendors and models are in our stack, and what are their data retention policies?
- What incidents have we logged this quarter, and what did we change because of them?
The bottom line
AI is now part of day-to-day marketing. The ADMA AI Governance Toolkit gives teams a clear starting point to use these tools with consistency and care-so creativity, compliance and trust can sit side by side.
If your team is building capability alongside governance, structured learning helps. Explore an AI certification for marketing specialists to accelerate skills development while you implement the toolkit.
Your membership also unlocks:
