AI in Marketing: Most Businesses Are Already Using It. Very Few Are Getting Value From It.
Part 1 of 5 — AI in Marketing: From Experimentation to Commercial Advantage
There is a version of the AI in marketing conversation happening in every boardroom right now. It sounds like this: "We're using ChatGPT for content. The team tried a few tools. We're exploring it."
And in most organisations, that is being quietly accepted as progress.
It is not progress. It is activity.
The research tells a far more useful story — one that separates the businesses moving fast from the businesses moving forward.
Why Are So Many Businesses Using AI But Seeing So Little Commercial Return?
McKinsey's 2025 State of AI research puts it plainly: nearly nine in ten organisations now report regular AI use across at least one business function. Marketing and sales sit consistently among the most active.
Yet the same research shows only 39% of organisations report AI having a measurable impact on EBIT. Most companies remain in pilot or partial-use mode. Around a third have started to scale.
That is the gap worth paying attention to. Not whether your team is using AI — most are. Whether AI is doing anything meaningful for the business.
Gartner's picture is similarly honest. CMOs are directing 15.3% of marketing budgets toward AI initiatives. But only 30% report mature AI readiness capabilities. The tools are being bought faster than the infrastructure to use them properly is being built.
This is where most businesses are right now: heavy on AI activity, light on AI impact.
What Is AI in Marketing Actually Being Used For Today?
The highest adoption sits in content creation, creative production, campaign reporting and basic personalisation. These are the places where friction was most visible and the application most straightforward.
Generating first drafts, repurposing long-form content, summarising data, creating campaign variations — this is where most marketing teams started, and where many have stayed.
For smaller or leaner teams, this productivity gain is real and meaningful. A founder-led business that previously had no capacity to run research synthesis or test messaging at scale now has options it did not have before.
But producing more is not the same as producing better. That distinction matters enormously once you move beyond the first wave.
BCG's 2025 CMO research is clear: 42% of marketing leaders are still using AI primarily to assist individuals with isolated tasks. The gap between what CMOs believe AI will eventually do — 83% are optimistic — and what their teams are doing day to day is still very wide.
What Are the Businesses Getting Real Value From AI Doing Differently?
The organisations seeing stronger commercial impact from AI are not simply using more tools. They have redesigned how work happens around the technology.
In practice, that means defining which workflow steps should be automated, which should be AI-supported but human-led, and which require human sign-off. It means senior leaders being directly involved — not delegating AI to the technology team or leaving it to individual initiative.
It means measuring the right things: not how much AI the team is using, but whether AI is improving the quality of decisions, and the commercial outcomes, like cost savings and revenue increment, behind them.
McKinsey's The state of AI in 2025 research reported 49% cost savings and 67% in revenue increase from AI in Marketing and Sales. It is an encouraging result, which shows real value was generated through AI adoption. AI high performers - representing about 6 percent of respondents in McKinsey's report were pushing for transformative innovation via AI, redesigning workflows, scaling faster, implementing best practices for transformation, and investing more. They are bringing transformative change to their business, i.e. three times more likely than other businesses.
What Questions Should a CEO Be Asking About AI in Marketing?
The wrong question is: "Are we using AI in marketing?" Almost certainly yes.
The more useful questions are these.
Where is AI improving the quality of marketing decisions, not just the speed of production?
Speed creates the illusion of progress without any of the commercial substance.
Where are the real bottlenecks in the marketing function?
The best AI use cases are almost always close to a real operational problem — not adjacent to a trend. Manual reporting, shallow customer insight, misaligned sales and marketing conversations: these are where genuine time value lives.
What does good output look like, and who is reviewing it?
AI can accelerate production dramatically. It cannot replace the commercial judgement that determines whether what gets produced is actually good.
What data are we working with?
Poor data does not become better data because AI is involved. It becomes faster noise. Before expecting AI to improve personalisation or campaign optimisation, the business must know whether its customer, campaign and CRM data is in a usable state.
Where This Series Goes
This is the first article in a five-part series looking at AI in marketing through a commercial and leadership lens — not through the lens of tools, hype or fear.
The series covers:
- Part 2 — How CMOs Are Planning to Use AI (and What CEOs Should Be Asking Them)
- Part 3 — AI Will Not Fix a Weak Marketing System. It Will Expose It.
- Part 4 — There Is No Universal AI Marketing Playbook. Here Is How to Find Yours.
- Part 5 — The Blueprint: How to Build an AI-Enhanced Marketing Function That Actually Delivers
The premise running through all five:AI will not fix a weak marketing system. It will expose it
The businesses that benefit will be the ones that apply AI to real commercial problems, with clear priorities, clean data, and enough human judgement to know when the machine is helping and when it is simply making weak thinking faster.
Is AI in marketing worth investing in for a mid-sized business?
Yes — but the return depends on starting with the right use cases. Content production, sales enablement and customer insight synthesis tend to deliver the fastest, most measurable value for businesses that do not yet have large marketing teams.
Why are so many companies using AI in marketing but not seeing results?
The most common reason is that AI has been added on top of existing processes rather than built into redesigned workflows. The businesses seeing the strongest commercial return have redesigned how work happens — not just which tools they use.
What is the biggest mistake CEOs make with AI in marketing?
Approving AI tool investment before assessing data readiness. AI cannot improve personalisation or campaign effectiveness if the underlying customer data is fragmented, outdated or unreliable.
How do we measure whether AI is working in our marketing function?
Not by volume of content produced or time saved — but by whether marketing decisions are improving in quality, and whether commercial outcomes (pipeline, conversion, retention, revenue) are moving in the right direction.
By Catherine Mak is Founder of ZILU Consultancy. She works as a Fractional CMO with growth-stage businesses, scaleups and organisations navigating AI adoption in their marketing functions. Her background spans financial services, B2B SaaS, events and professional services, with senior marketing leadership positions held at Citibank, Bupa Global and PEI Group.
Reference
This series draws on 2025–2026 research from McKinsey, Gartner, BCG, Deloitte, Salesforce, The CMO Survey, HubSpot, DMA UK, CIM and the Bank of England / FCA.
McKinsey The State of AI: Global Survey 2025 https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai
2025 CMO Spend Survey Reveals Marketing Budgets Have Flatlined at 7.7% of Overall Company Revenue https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2025-05-12-gartner-2025-cmo-spend-survey-reveals-marketing-budgets-have-flatlined-at-seven-percent-of-overall-company-revenue
Advances in AI Will Dramatically Change Their Role in the Next Two Years https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2024-11-17-gartner-survey-finds-65-percent-of-cmos-say-advances-in-ai-will-dramatically-change-their-role-in-the-next-two-years
2026 CMO Spend Survey Finds CMOs Allocate 15.3% of Marketing Budgets to AI, but Only 30% Are Ready to Scale AI Capabilities https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-11-gartner-2026-cmo-spend-survey-finds-cmos-allocate-15-point-3-percent-of-marketing-budgets-to-ai-but-only-30-percent-are-ready-to-scale-ai-capabilities
The Marketing Gap: Most CMOs Say AI Is Transforming Marketing, but Few Have Transformed the Function https://www.bcg.com/press/15june2026-cmos-ai-transforming-marketing-transform-function
The Agentic Marketing Transformation a Reality https://www.bcg.com/publications/2026/making-the-agentic-marketing-transformation-a-reality
For CMOs: From Experimentation to Enrichment https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/programs/chief-marketing-officer/articles/ai-cmos-experimentation-adoption.html
Deloitte The State of AI in the Enterprise https://www.deloitte.com/us/en/what-we-do/capabilities/applied-artificial-intelligence/content/state-of-ai-in-the-enterprise.html
Salesforce Tenth Edition State of Marketing Report Https://www.salesforce.com/eu/marketing/resources/state-of-marketing-report/
The Campaign Is Dead: 5 Hard Truths From the Tenth Edition State of Marketing https://www.salesforce.com/blog/tenth-state-of-marketing/Salesforce
75% of Marketers Have Adopted AI, Yet Still Use It to Send Messages the Old Way https://www.salesforce.com/news/stories/state-of-marketing-2026/
The CMO Survey: Marketers Claim a Broader Role and Increased Influence Amid Pressures https://cmosurvey.org/marketers-claim-a-broader-role-and-increased-influence-amid-pressures/Duke Fuqua /
The CMO Survey: Marketing’s Strategic Influence Expands, As Does Scrutiny https://www.fuqua.duke.edu/duke-fuqua-insights/marketing-strategic-influence-expands-as-does-scrutiny
IAB State of Data 2025: The Next Evolution of AI for Media Campaigns https://www.iab.com/insights/2025-state-of-data-report/
IAB State of Data 2025: Evolution of AI for Media Campaigns https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IAB_State_of_Data_2025_March__V2.pdf
IAB State of Data 2025 Companion Guide https://www.iab.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/IAB_State_of_Data_2025_Companion_Guide_March_2025.pdf
IBM Institute for Business Value - The CMO Revolution: 5 Growth Moves to Win with AI https://www.ibm.com/thought-leadership/institute-business-value/en-us/report/2025-cmo