177: Chris O’Neill: GrowthLoop CEO on how AI agent swarms and reinforcement learning boost velocity

What’s up everyone, today we have the pleasure of sitting down with Chris O'Neill, CEO at GrowthLoop.

Summary: Chris explains how leading marketing teams are deploying swarms of AI agents to automate campaign workflows with speed and precision. By assigning agents to tasks like segmentation, testing, and feedback collection, marketers build fast-moving loops that adapt in real time. Chris also breaks down how reinforcement learning helps avoid a sea of sameness by letting campaigns evolve mid-flight based on live data. To support velocity without sacrificing control, top teams are running red team drills, assigning clear data ownership, and introducing internal AI regulation roles that manage risk while unlocking scale.

The 2025 AI and Marketing Performance Index

The 2025 AI and Marketing Performance Index that GrowthLoop put together is excellent, we’re honored to have gotten our hands on it before it went live and getting to unpack that with Chris in this episode. The report answers timely questions a lot of teams are are wrestling with:

Are top performers ahead of the AI curve or just focused on solid foundations? Are top performers focused on speed and quantity or does quality still win in a sea of sameness?

We’ve chatted with plenty of folks that are betting on patience and polish. But GrowthLoop’s data shows the opposite.

🤖🏃 Top performerming marketing teams are already scaling with AI and their focus on speed is driving growth.

For some, this might be a wake-up call. But for others, it’s confirmation and might seem obvious: Teams that are using AI and working fast are growing faster. We all get the why. But the big mystery is the how.

So let’s dig into the how teams can implement AI to grow faster and how to prepare marketers and marketing ops folks for the next 5 years.

Reframing AI in Marketing Around Outcomes and Velocity

Marketing teams love speed. AI vendors promise it. Founders crave it. The problem is most people chasing speed have no idea where they’re going. Chris prefers velocity. Velocity means you are moving fast in a defined direction. That requires clarity. Not hype. Not generic goals. Clarity.

AI belongs in your toolkit once you know exactly which metric needs to move. Chris puts it plainly: revenue, lifetime value, or cost. Pick one. Write it down. Then explain how AI helps you get there. Not in vague marketing terms. In business terms. If you cannot describe the outcome in a sentence your CFO would nod at, you are wasting everyone’s time.

“Being able to articulate with precision how AI is going to drive and improve your profit and loss statement, that’s where it starts.”

Too many teams start with tools. They get caught up in features and launch pilots with no destination. Chris sees this constantly. The projects that actually work begin with a clearly defined business problem. Only after that do they start choosing systems that will accelerate execution. AI helps when it fits into a system that already knows where it’s going.

Velocity also forces prioritization. If your AI project can't show directional impact on a core business metric, it does not deserve resources. That way you can protect your time, your budget, and your credibility. Chris doesn’t get excited by experiments. He gets excited when someone shows him how AI will raise net revenue by half a percent this quarter. That’s the work.

Key takeaway: Start with a business problem. Choose one outcome: revenue, lifetime value, or cost reduction. Define how AI contributes to that outcome in concrete terms. Use speed only when you know the direction. That way you can build systems that deliver velocity, not chaos.

How to Use Agentic AI for Marketing Campaign Execution

Many marketing teams still rely on AI to summarize campaign data, but stop there. They generate charts, read the output, and then return to the same manual workflows they have used for years. Chris sees this pattern everywhere. Teams label themselves as “data-driven,” while depending on outdated methods like list pulls, rigid segmentation, and one-off blasts that treat everyone in the same group the same way.

Chris calls this “waterfall marketing.” A marketer decides on a goal like improving retention or increasing lifetime value. Then they wait in line for the data team to write SQL, generate lists, and pass it back. That process often takes days or weeks, and the result is usually too narrow or too broad. The entire workflow is slow, disconnected, and full of friction.

Teams that are ahead have moved to agent-based execution. These systems no longer depend on one-off requests or isolated tools. AI agents access a shared semantic layer, interpret past outcomes, and suggest actions that align with business goals. These actions include:

Identifying the best-fit audience based on past conversions
Suggesting campaign timing and sequencing
Launching experiments automatically
Feeding all results back into a single data source

“You don’t wait in line for a data pull anymore,” Chris said. “The agent already knows what audience will likely move the needle, based on what’s worked in the past.”

Marketing teams using this model no longer debate which list to use or when to launch. They build continuous loops where agents suggest, execute, and learn at every stage. These agents now handle tasks better than most humans, especially when volume and speed matter. Marketers remain in the loop for creative decisions and audience understanding, but the manual overhead is no longer the cost of doing business.

Key takeaway: AI agents become effective when they handle specific steps across your marketing workflow. By assigning agents to segmentation, timing, testing, and feedback collection, you can move faster and operate with more precision. That way you can replace the long list of disconnected tasks with a tight loop of execution that adapts in real time.

How Reinforcement Learning Optimizes GenAI Content

Reinforcement learning gives marketers a way to optimize AI-generated content without falling into repetition. Chris has seen firsthand how most outbound sequences feel eerily similar. Templates dominate, personalization tags glitch, and every message sounds like it was assembled by the same spreadsheet. The problem does not stem from the idea of automation but from its poor execution. Teams copy tactics without refining their inputs or measuring what actually works.

Chris points to reinforcement learning as the fix for this stagnation. He contrasts it with more rigid machine learning models, which make predictions but often lack adaptability. Reinforcement learning works differently. It learns by doing. It tracks real-world feedback and updates decision-making logic in motion. That gives marketers an edge in adjusting timing, sequencing, and delivery based on signals from actual behavior.

“It would be silly to ignore all the data from previous experiments,” Chris said. “Reinforcement learning gives us a way to build on it without starting over each time.”

Chris believes this creates space for creative work rather than replacing it. Agents should own the tedious tasks. That includes segmenting lists, building reports, and managing repetitive logic. Human teams can then focus on storytelling, taste, and trend awareness. Chris referenced a conversation with a senior designer at Gap who shared a similar view. This designer believes AI lets him expand his creative range by clearing room for deep work. Chris sees the same opportunity in marketing. The system works best when agents handle the mechanical layers, and humans bring energy, weirdness, and originality.

Many leaders are still caught in operational quicksand. Their teams wrestle with bl...