More marketers than ever before are using AI to assist with, augment and automate their work. Sixty percent of marketing teams are now piloting the use of AI or scaling out AI projects, according to the 2025 State of Marketing AI Report by the Marketing AI Institute.
Based on responses from more than 1,800 marketing professionals, primarily in the US, this year’s report reveals that marketers have never been more enthusiastic about AI adoption – 74% believe the technology is very or critically important to marketing success in the near term. But their enthusiasm for AI has not extinguished their concerns about its misuse or its potential to replace human workers.
So what do marketers hope to achieve with AI? What’s standing in the way of wider adoption? And how are marketing leaders addressing skills shortages, training and education shortfalls, governance gaps and other obstacles to AI integration?
The vast majority of marketing leaders are using AI to save time on repetitive or data-driven tasks. This is perhaps unsurprising, as such efficiency is the low-hanging fruit for automation. A slightly smaller majority hope to use AI tools to achieve more strategic goals, such as gaining better business insights through data or unlocking greater value from marketing technologies.
Although marketing leaders are racing ahead with AI adoption, several factors continue to frustrate their efforts to fully integrate the technology in their team‘s operations.
Most firms have no internal committee to consider AI’s impact on their organisation or to develop policies or best practices for its use. More than half have no policies at all to guide or restrict employees‘ use of AI at work. And nearly two in three marketing leaders have no strategy for using the technology in the near term.
But the most significant barrier to greater AI adoption is a lack of training and education. Of course, this problem is by no means unique to marketing. Business leaders across industries and functions are under pressure to upskill their staff in AI to prepare for the future of work. Meanwhile, government-backed skills initiatives have raised the stakes for AI upskilling in the UK.
Only 32% of firms provide their marketing teams with AI-specific training. This figure is six percentage points higher than in last year’s survey, but there‘s clearly much room for improvement. Two-thirds of organisations provide no such training; however, one in five is working to develop an AI training programme for marketing staff.
The need to do so is urgent, given senior leaders‘ expectations of AI’s impact on marketing jobs. A majority of business leaders (53%) now believe that AI will eliminate more marketing jobs in the next three years than it will create. That’s a 13-percentage-point increase from 2023. Commenting on the report, Paul Roetzer, the founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, claimed to have already witnessed many “quiet AI layoffs“, where companies use AI to replace human workers or refrain from hiring new staff.
Still, 33% of industry professionals, even in junior roles, are neutral about the use of AI in their function, believing that it creates both risks and opportunities. What’s more, 46% are not at all concerned that AI will replace them at work. That leaves only one in five marketing professionals who are somewhat or very concerned about AI taking their job.
Marketers are finding many reasons to worry about AI adoption. Job loss or disruption is the top concern for 15% of marketing professionals. But 13% believe the potential for misuse is the greatest risk and 9% worry most about the lack of governance. Little wonder, considering most marketers are not provided with AI training, nor are their employers establishing clear guardrails or ethical standards to guide the use of AI.
There is greater agreement about the benefits of using the technology, however. For more than a third of marketers, the most exciting aspect of AI is its potential to increase efficiency and save time on repetitive work. Whether marketing leaders will ever use it for more strategic purposes remains to be seen.
More marketers than ever before are using AI to assist with, augment and automate their work. Sixty percent of marketing teams are now piloting the use of AI or scaling out AI projects, according to the 2025 State of Marketing AI Report by the Marketing AI Institute.
Based on responses from more than 1,800 marketing professionals, primarily in the US, this year’s report reveals that marketers have never been more enthusiastic about AI adoption – 74% believe the technology is very or critically important to marketing success in the near term. But their enthusiasm for AI has not extinguished their concerns about its misuse or its potential to replace human workers.
So what do marketers hope to achieve with AI? What’s standing in the way of wider adoption? And how are marketing leaders addressing skills shortages, training and education shortfalls, governance gaps and other obstacles to AI integration?
The vast majority of marketing leaders are using AI to save time on repetitive or data-driven tasks. This is perhaps unsurprising, as such efficiency is the low-hanging fruit for automation. A slightly smaller majority hope to use AI tools to achieve more strategic goals, such as gaining better business insights through data or unlocking greater value from marketing technologies.
Although marketing leaders are racing ahead with AI adoption, several factors continue to frustrate their efforts to fully integrate the technology in their team‘s operations.
Most firms have no internal committee to consider AI’s impact on their organisation or to develop policies or best practices for its use. More than half have no policies at all to guide or restrict employees‘ use of AI at work. And nearly two in three marketing leaders have no strategy for using the technology in the near term.
But the most significant barrier to greater AI adoption is a lack of training and education. Of course, this problem is by no means unique to marketing. Business leaders across industries and functions are under pressure to upskill their staff in AI to prepare for the future of work. Meanwhile, government-backed skills initiatives have raised the stakes for AI upskilling in the UK.
Only 32% of firms provide their marketing teams with AI-specific training. This figure is six percentage points higher than in last year’s survey, but there‘s clearly much room for improvement. Two-thirds of organisations provide no such training; however, one in five is working to develop an AI training programme for marketing staff.
The need to do so is urgent, given senior leaders‘ expectations of AI’s impact on marketing jobs. A majority of business leaders (53%) now believe that AI will eliminate more marketing jobs in the next three years than it will create. That’s a 13-percentage-point increase from 2023. Commenting on the report, Paul Roetzer, the founder and CEO of the Marketing AI Institute, claimed to have already witnessed many “quiet AI layoffs“, where companies use AI to replace human workers or refrain from hiring new staff.
Still, 33% of industry professionals, even in junior roles, are neutral about the use of AI in their function, believing that it creates both risks and opportunities. What’s more, 46% are not at all concerned that AI will replace them at work. That leaves only one in five marketing professionals who are somewhat or very concerned about AI taking their job.
Marketers are finding many reasons to worry about AI adoption. Job loss or disruption is the top concern for 15% of marketing professionals. But 13% believe the potential for misuse is the greatest risk and 9% worry most about the lack of governance. Little wonder, considering most marketers are not provided with AI training, nor are their employers establishing clear guardrails or ethical standards to guide the use of AI.
There is greater agreement about the benefits of using the technology, however. For more than a third of marketers, the most exciting aspect of AI is its potential to increase efficiency and save time on repetitive work. Whether marketing leaders will ever use it for more strategic purposes remains to be seen.
