AI in Marketing Statistics (2026)

A data analysis of how marketers actually use AI in 2026, what it returns once you look past the productivity claims, where budgets are moving, and why consumers and search engines are changing the rules at the same time.

AI is now a funded line item in marketing, not an experiment. CMOs allocate 15.3% of their marketing budgets to AI initiatives, per Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey (MarTech, corroborated by the ANA). Yet only 30% of those CMOs say their organization is ready to scale AI. The statistics below show where the money goes, what it returns, and why a few well-chosen AI writing tools beat a stack of unused add-ons.

Key takeaways

• 15.3% of marketing budgets now go to AI, while total marketing spend sits flat at 7.8% of company revenue, per Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey (MarTech)
• Only 30% of CMOs report mature AI readiness, even though 70% call AI leadership a critical 2026 goal (Gartner via MarTech)
• 41% of marketers can prove AI ROI, down from 49% a year earlier, per Jasper’s 2026 State of AI in Marketing
• 39% of AI content users say content performance improved, against 87% who say productivity improved (Content Marketing Institute)
• 82% of ad executives think young consumers like AI ads; 45% actually do, a gap that widened to 37 points in 2026 (IAB)
• 49% of US consumers say GenAI has made content quality worse (Gartner, via Business Wire)
• 58% lower click-through rate for the top organic result when an AI Overview appears (Ahrefs); Pew found clicks fall from 15% to 8% of visits
• Only 13% of marketers have moved to agentic AI, per Salesforce’s State of Marketing
• 70% of marketers have hit at least one AI incident in their advertising, from hallucinations to off-brand content (IAB, 2025)

How many marketers use AI in 2026?

Between 75% and 98% of marketers use AI, depending on the survey. Salesforce’s State of Marketing puts adoption at 75% across 4,450 marketing decision makers surveyed in late 2025. HubSpot’s State of AI in Marketing puts it at 98%. The spread comes from how each survey defines “use.”

1. 86.4% of marketing teams use AI in at least a few marketing areas, and only 1.7% neither use it nor plan to, per HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing. Non-adoption is now a rounding error.
2. 98% of marketing teams use AI in some form, according to HubSpot’s State of AI in Marketing, a survey of 1,700+ marketers. “Some form” includes anyone who has opened a chatbot once.
3. 95% of B2B marketers say their organizations use AI-powered applications, per the Content Marketing Institute, which surveyed 1,015 B2B marketers in mid-2025.
4. 91% of marketers actively use AI in their work, up from 63% a year earlier, per Jasper’s survey of 1,400 marketers. Adoption jumped in a single year.
5. 68% of B2B marketers are still exploring or developing their AI approach (20% exploratory, 48% developing), per CMI. Usage is near universal. Maturity is not.
6. 68.2% of marketers say they understand how to use AI in marketing, up from 47% in 2025, per HubSpot. Skills are catching up with the tools.

Sources: Salesforce, HubSpot, Jasper, CMI, HubSpot AI report. Definitions of “use” differ by survey.

The adoption question is settled. The useful question is what teams do with it. For the automation side of the stack, see our marketing automation statistics; for writing tools specifically, see AI writing statistics.

What do marketers use AI for?

Content production dominates. Among B2B marketers, 89% use AI content creation tools for copy, 53% use AI for images and video, and 41% use AI SEO tools, per the Content Marketing Institute. Data-heavy uses like personalization (14%) and predictive analytics (12%) trail far behind.

7. Content creation leads at 89%, followed by creative assets (53%), SEO (41%), social media (38%), and email (36%), per CMI. AI sits mostly at the top of the production funnel.
8. Only 14% use AI personalization tools and 12% use predictive analytics, per CMI. These are the uses vendors pitch hardest and buyers adopt least.
9. 42.5% use AI extensively for content creation, 37.2% for media creation, and 35.6% for admin automation, per HubSpot. Admin work is a quiet third use case.
10. 80% of marketers use AI for content creation and 75% use it for media production, per HubSpot’s State of Marketing report page. Two surveys, same pattern.
11. 83% of ad executives say their company has deployed AI in the creative process, up from 60% in 2024, per the IAB. AI moved into ad production within two years.
12. Advertisers use AI most for social ads (85%) and display (73%), then TV (56%) and audio (42%), per the IAB. Lower-cost, high-volume formats come first.

Does AI in marketing deliver ROI?

Fewer marketers can prove it than a year ago. Only 41% of marketers can measure the ROI of their AI investments, down from 49% the year before, per Jasper’s 2026 State of AI in Marketing. Jasper says productivity gains alone no longer satisfy the people signing the budget.

13. 87% of AI content users say productivity improved, but only 39% say content performance improved, per CMI. In between: 80% report better efficiency, 65% better creative capability, and 58% better content quality. Another 12% say quality decreased.
14. 60% of teams that adapted how they measure AI report returns of 2-3x or higher, per Jasper. Measurement design, not the model, separates those who can show a return.
15. 45% of AI users have lowered operating costs and 50% bring work to market faster, per Jasper. Cost and speed are the easiest wins to document.
16. 71% of marketers say AI makes it easier to meet MQL targets, per HubSpot’s State of AI in Marketing. This is self-reported, from a vendor that sells AI marketing tools.
17. Salesforce cites a 20% average bump in ROI for marketers using agentic AI, per its tenth State of Marketing. Treat it as a vendor figure, not an audited benchmark.
18. Google says advertisers who turn on AI Max in Search campaigns see 14% more conversions or conversion value at a similar CPA or ROAS, based on Google internal data from 2025. Platform-reported lifts need your own holdout test.
19. 67.5% of marketers know how to measure AI impact, up from 48% in 2025, per HubSpot. Still, measuring marketing ROI is the top challenge overall, cited by 33%.

The pattern holds across sources: the closer a metric sits to revenue, the fewer marketers report a gain. Most ROI claims in this category are self-reported or vendor-reported. Run your own before-and-after test on one workflow before you scale a tool.

How much time does AI save marketers?

Time savings are large and widely reported. About one-third of marketers say AI saves their team 10 to 14 hours per week, and another third say it saves over 15 hours, per HubSpot’s 2026 State of Marketing. Most of those hours get spent on producing more content.

20. 26.5% say AI has significantly increased productivity, and 66.2% say it increased slightly or moderately, per HubSpot. Most teams see a moderate gain, not a transformation.
21. Marketers expect to reclaim roughly eight hours per week by using AI agents for content variation and data analysis, per Salesforce. Note the word “expect”: this is a forecast, not a measurement.
22. 83.5% of marketers say they are expected to produce more content because of AI, and 35.7% say much more, per HubSpot. The saved hours get absorbed by higher volume targets.

This is the core tension. AI saves time, then the organization raises the output quota. If you do not decide in advance where saved hours go, they turn into more of the same content.

How much of the marketing budget goes to AI?

CMOs allocate 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives, per Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey of 401 marketing leaders (MarTech; also reported by the ANA). Total budgets did not grow to pay for it, so AI money comes out of other lines.

23. Marketing budgets moved from 7.7% of company revenue in 2025 to 7.8% in 2026, per Gartner via MarTech. Flat budgets mean AI spending is a reallocation, not new money.
24. AI-mature organizations allocate 21.3% of marketing budgets to AI, and their total marketing budgets average 8.9% of revenue, per Gartner via MarTech. The ready teams spend more on AI and more overall.
25. 56% of CMOs say they do not have enough budget to execute their strategy, per Gartner via MarTech. AI is being funded inside a budget most CMOs already call too small.
26. Labor rose to 24.5% of marketing budgets in 2026, up from 21.9% in 2025, per Gartner via Marketing Dive. AI has not shrunk headcount costs yet.
27. 45% of B2B marketers plan to increase investment in AI-powered marketing tools in 2026, the top category, while human resources ranks last at 9%, per CMI. Tools are getting funded ahead of training.
28. AI chatbots like ChatGPT and Claude top the list of planned investment increases at 37.7%, per HubSpot. At the same time, 73% say their budget gets more scrutiny than in the past.

Source: Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey, 401 CMOs and senior marketing leaders, January to March 2026, via MarTech.

Is AI making marketing more personal?

Not yet at scale. 78% of marketers say they need more personalized content than they can produce, and 75% are turning to AI to close the gap, per Salesforce’s State of Marketing. But 98% hit barriers to personalization, and data problems are the most common cause.

29. Using AI to create personalized content is the top marketing trend for 2026, cited by 48.57% of marketers, per HubSpot. It is the most-planned AI use case.
30. Only 12.6% of brands use hyper-personalization such as behavior-based messaging or product recommendations, per HubSpot. Yet 93.2% say personalized or segmented experiences led to more leads and purchases.
31. Only 2% of marketers running account-based marketing use AI-driven personalization, per CMI. Most stop at industry, company size, or job title.
32. Only 26% of marketers are completely satisfied with their data unification, per Salesforce. Fragmented data is the ceiling on AI personalization.
33. 75% of marketers with AI are satisfied with their ability to connect touchpoints, versus 60% without AI, per Salesforce. AI helps, but only on top of connected data.
34. 61% of companies worry that inaccurate data is undermining AI-driven personalization, per Twilio Segment’s 2024 State of Personalization report. The concern predates the current wave of AI tools.

Personalization is a data problem first and an AI problem second. A connected CRM such as HubSpot or a well-run email marketing platform does more for personalization than a standalone AI add-on.

How do consumers feel about AI-generated marketing?

Worse than marketers think. 82% of ad executives believe Gen Z and Millennial consumers feel positive about AI-generated ads, but only 45% of those consumers actually do, per the IAB’s 2026 AI Ad Gap study. The gap widened from 32 points in 2024 to 37 points in 2026.

35. 39% of Gen Z consumers feel negative about AI ads, nearly double the 20% of Millennials, per the IAB. The youngest audience is the most skeptical.
36. Consumers are twice as likely as ad executives to call AI-using brands “manipulative” (20% vs. 10%) and more than twice as likely to call them “unethical” (16% vs. 7%), per the IAB.
37. 71% of young consumers believe they have seen an AI-created ad, up from 54% in 2024, per the IAB. People notice AI creative more often now.
38. 49% of US consumers say GenAI has made the quality of content worse, rising to 57% among Gen Z and millennials, per a Gartner survey of 307 US consumers from March 2026.
39. 76% of Americans say it is extremely or very important to tell whether content was made by AI or people, but 53% are not confident they can, per Pew Research Center (2025).
40. 50% of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI in daily life, up from 37% in 2021, per Pew. Brand AI use lands with an audience that is already wary.
41. Almost 90% of consumers want to know whether an image was created using AI, per a 2024 Getty Images report based on surveys run from 2022 to 2023.
42. 89% of advertisers who use generative AI at least sometimes disclose it, but less than half always do, per the IAB. Meanwhile, 73% of young consumers say knowing an ad was made with AI would increase or not change their likelihood to buy.

Disclosure looks cheaper than the trust it protects. The IAB data suggests that telling people an ad used AI rarely hurts purchase intent, while hiding it feeds the “manipulative” label.

How is AI search changing marketing?

AI answers are taking clicks from organic results. Google users clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits when an AI summary appeared, versus 15% without one, per Pew Research Center (2025). Marketers are reacting: 85% say AI is reshaping their SEO strategy, per Salesforce.

43. 88% of marketers have already begun optimizing for AI-generated responses in tools like ChatGPT and Google’s AI Overviews, per Salesforce. Answer engine optimization is now standard practice.
44. AI Overviews correlate with a 58% lower click-through rate for the top-ranking page, per an Ahrefs study of 300,000 keywords using December 2025 data. Its April 2025 run found a 34.5% drop.
45. 18% of Google searches in Pew’s March 2025 sample produced an AI summary, per Pew. The share has room to grow.
46. 17% of US consumers rely on AI summaries to research products, and 16% use AI chatbots to find new products to buy, per a Gartner survey of 328 US consumers from February 2026. Another 20% say their searches are more specific because of AI.
47. The average AI search visitor is worth 4.4 times the average organic search visitor, based on conversion rate, per Semrush (2025). Fewer visits, but more qualified ones.
48. Nearly 40% of US shoppers now use AI when shopping, per the IAB (2025). Salesforce adds that AI and agents drove 20% of global holiday orders, or $262 billion in sales.
49. Only 40.6% of marketers rank updating SEO for search changes as a top trend, even though 70.2% believe they can adapt to AI overviews, per HubSpot. Confidence outruns action.

For the full search picture, see our SEO statistics and content marketing statistics.

How many marketers use AI agents?

It depends heavily on the definition. Only 13% of marketers have made the leap to agentic AI, per Salesforce’s tenth State of Marketing, while HubSpot reports that 86% of marketers use agents. Both can be true: one counts autonomous systems, the other counts any agent feature.

50. High performers are twice as likely as underperformers to use AI agents, per Salesforce. Correlation, not proof: strong teams adopt new tools faster.
51. 28% of B2B marketers experiment with AI agents, and just 3% say agents are core to their strategy, per CMI. Among the most mature teams, 43% experiment.
52. Among agent users, 52% report better operational efficiency, but only 19% cite better campaign performance and ROI, per CMI. The same productivity-first pattern again.
53. 76% of marketers say their use of AI agents increased in the past six months, per HubSpot. Usage is climbing quickly from a low base of serious deployments.
54. 81% of marketers would trust AI to respond to customers, per Salesforce. Willingness is ahead of readiness.

Sources: Salesforce, CMI, HubSpot.

What are the biggest risks of AI in marketing?

Brand damage from unchecked output. 70% of marketers reported at least one AI incident in their advertising, such as hallucinations, bias, or off-brand content, per the IAB’s 2025 responsible AI study. Yet fewer than 35% plan to increase investment in AI governance.

55. 40% of marketers who had an AI incident had to pause or pull ads, and over a third dealt with brand damage or PR issues, per the IAB.
56. Nearly 90% say they feel prepared to catch AI issues before launch, per the IAB. Set against a 70% incident rate, that confidence looks misplaced.
57. 14% say no one owns AI governance at their company, per the IAB. Over 60% support labeling AI-generated ads, and only 15% oppose it.
58. Brand, legal, and compliance reviews are the top challenge to scaling AI, ahead of output quality and data privacy, per Jasper. 65% of marketing teams now have designated AI roles.
59. 70% of CMOs say their internal processes are not mature enough to scale AI, and 38% cite a lack of internal AI expertise, per Gartner via Marketing Dive.
60. 19% of B2B marketers using AI agents flag data quality or compliance issues, per CMI. Bad inputs scale as fast as good ones.

What to do with this data

• Pick tools for the job that already works. Content creation is where 89% of B2B marketers use AI (CMI). One strong writing tool, such as Jasper or Copy.ai, fits that workflow better than five overlapping add-ons. Compare options in our AI writing category.
• Measure one workflow before you scale. Only 41% of marketers can prove AI ROI (Jasper). Run a before-and-after test on a single process and track performance, not just hours saved.
• Fix data before buying personalization AI. Only 26% are satisfied with their data unification (Salesforce). The AI features inside the CRM or email tool you already pay for come first.
• Decide where saved hours go. 83.5% of marketers face higher content quotas because of AI (HubSpot). Put some saved time into strategy and quality, or it disappears into volume.
• Disclose AI creative and assign a governance owner. With 70% reporting AI incidents (IAB), one named owner and a review step cost less than a pulled campaign.
• Plan for fewer, better-qualified search visits. Track citations in AI answers, not just rankings. See how we score tools on our about page, and the role-based picks for marketers and CMOs.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of marketers use AI in 2026?

Between 75% and 98%, depending on the survey. Salesforce reports 75% of marketers have adopted AI, HubSpot puts it at 86.4% of marketing teams, and Jasper found 91%, up from 63% a year earlier. Broad definitions of “use” push the figure higher.

What is the ROI of AI in marketing?

It is hard to prove. Only 41% of marketers can measure the ROI of their AI investments, down from 49%, per Jasper. Teams that changed how they measure do better: 60% of them report returns of 2-3x or higher. Productivity gains are common; revenue gains are rarer.

How much do companies spend on AI in marketing?

CMOs allocate an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI, per Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey (MarTech). AI-mature organizations spend 21.3%. Total marketing budgets stayed flat at 7.8% of company revenue, so the AI money comes from other budget lines.

What do marketers use generative AI for most?

Writing. 89% of B2B marketers use AI content creation tools, 53% use AI for images and video, and 41% use AI for SEO, per the Content Marketing Institute. Personalization (14%) and predictive analytics (12%) are far less common, despite heavy vendor marketing.

Do consumers trust AI-generated ads?

Less than advertisers assume. Only 45% of Gen Z and Millennial consumers feel positive about AI-generated ads, while 82% of ad executives think they do, per the IAB. Separately, 49% of US consumers say GenAI has made content quality worse, per Gartner.

How much time does AI save marketers?

A lot, on paper. About one-third of marketers say AI saves their team 10 to 14 hours per week, and another third say over 15 hours, per HubSpot. But 83.5% also say they are now expected to produce more content because of AI.

Is AI search reducing website traffic from Google?

Yes, for informational queries. Pew found users clicked a result in 8% of visits with an AI summary versus 15% without. Ahrefs measured a 58% lower click-through rate for the top result when an AI Overview appears.

How we compiled these statistics

We drew on 21 sources, including vendor surveys (Salesforce, HubSpot, Jasper), independent research bodies (Pew Research Center, the IAB, the Content Marketing Institute), and Gartner survey releases. Every figure was retrieved from the publisher’s page or a syndicated copy of its press release in October 2026; Gartner figures come via its Business Wire release and trade-press coverage because Gartner’s own newsroom was not retrievable. Figures we could not trace to a source page were omitted, and ranges are shown where surveys disagree.

Sources

• Gartner (via MarTech): CMOs are buying AI that their organization isn’t ready for (2026)
• Gartner (via ANA): CMOs Allocate 15 Percent of Their Budgets to AI, but Readiness Lags (2026)
• Gartner (via Marketing Dive): Media spend on customer acquisition accelerates amid rush to AI (2026)
• Gartner (via Business Wire on Yahoo Finance): Gartner Survey Finds 49% of U.S. Consumers Say GenAI Has Made Content Quality Worse (2026)
• Salesforce: 75% of Marketers Have Adopted AI Yet Still Use It To Send One-Way, Generic Campaigns (2026)
• Salesforce: The Campaign Is Dead, 5 Hard Truths From the Tenth Edition State of Marketing (2026)
• HubSpot: 2026 State of Marketing, Data from 1,500+ Global Marketers (2026)
• HubSpot: 2026 State of Marketing Report (2026)
• HubSpot: The State of AI in Marketing (2026)
• Jasper: The State of AI in Marketing 2026 (2026)
• Content Marketing Institute: B2B Content and Marketing Trends, Insights for 2026 (2025)
• IAB: The AI Ad Gap Widens (2026)
• IAB: AI Adoption Is Surging in Advertising, but Is the Industry Prepared for Responsible AI? (2025)
• IAB: When AI Guides the Shopping Journey (2025)
• Pew Research Center: Google users are less likely to click on links when an AI summary appears in the results (2025)
• Pew Research Center: How Americans View AI and Its Impact on People and Society (2025)
• Ahrefs: Update, AI Overviews Reduce Clicks by 58% (2026)
• Semrush: We Studied the Impact of AI Search on SEO Traffic (2025)
• Google: Introducing AI Max for Search campaigns (2025)
• Getty Images: Nearly 90% of Consumers Want Transparency on AI Images (2024)
• Twilio Segment: The State of Personalization Report (2024)