Management&Business: The State of AI in Marketing. Part 1.

The intelligence era has arrived.

Explore the latest data from 1,700+ marketers on where AI is helping them outmarket their competitors.

· Foreword

AI in the loop will help marketers outlearn, outmarket, and outgrow their competitors

As a marketing leader, the most valuable asset your business has today is your raw marketing intelligence. That marketing intelligence lives inside the minds of your employees, in the experiments you run, the data you get back, and the insights you get from customers.

If you’re not thinking ahead, that intelligence will leave with your best employees or, worse still, be outsourced to AI models.

As part of HubSpot's annual "State of AI" studies, we surveyed over 1,700 marketers from individual contributors to CMOs to understand how, why, when, and where they’re using AI in the marketing process. Our recent data shows that there are still massive gaps between those adopting AI at a transformational level, and those still experimenting. And many still don’t even have their data meaningfully connected to their AI tools.

In this report, we’ll break down the data. But we’ll also teach you how you can take action. Plus, you’ll find a customizable plan you can tailor to your brand. We’re here on the journey, too, and sharing results from our experiments as things evolve by the minute.

· Introduction

Most teams are in the AI game, but few are winning it

To get started, we asked marketing respondents using AI to rate their company and department's level of AI adoption on a scale from "Early" to "Transformational."

Here’s how we defined each of these stages:

Early

AI use is still taking shape at our company. It is mostly experimental, limited to a small number of tasks or use cases, and outcomes are not yet consistent.

Emerging

AI is being used in real workflows at our company and is delivering value, but usage, processes, and outcomes are still evolving.

Established

AI is used reliably in repeatable workflows where it delivers consistent value. Teams know where it fits, how it should be used, and what outcomes to expect.

Transformational

AI is a foundational part of how the company operates and is materially reshaping workflows, decisions, and business outcomes.

In some summaries below, "advanced" AI usage or adoption refers to respondents who mapped their team's AI maturity level as "established" or "transformational."

Most marketing teams are using AI in some way, whether in the emerging, established, or transformational stage of adoption. However, only 10% of the marketers whose teams do use it say they are at the transformational level. There’s room to grow, and many marketing teams are widening their perspective on what AI can do for them.

Though 10% seems small, marketing is the #1 GTM function for advanced AI adoption — with maturity stages far ahead of service and sales professionals. When comparing marketing results to that of 4,000 global sales and service professionals surveyed concurrently, 42% of marketers reported advanced AI use (transformational and established) compared to 23% of service, and 27% of sales professionals.

Marketing is the #1 GTM team for advanced AI adoption.

Marketing teams are also more likely than sales or service teams to say AI is making revenue targets easier to hit. In fact, marketing leads every major AI metric, including: highest advanced AI use, highest active agent use, highest time savings, highest budget growth, strongest reported AI impact on company revenue.

· Key Findings

How is AI actually changing marketing right now?

1. There’s still room to grow AI acumen

98% of marketing teams are using AI in some way, but only 10% have reached a transformational level.

2. AI helps with speed to market

Speed and agility is the #1 area where AI has improved performance.

3. Teams are employing AI agents

86% of marketing departments now use AI agents, and 76% of those say agent usage increased in the past 6 months.

4. Marketers feel threatened by AI, but it’s linked with career growth

53% of marketers are concerned AI could automate their role. But 1 in 5 transformational adopters credit AI for career trajectory gains.

5. AI skills are expected, but not required

35% of marketers say informal AI expectations already factor into hiring, performance reviews, and compensation.

6. Companies are increasing bets on marketing AI

67% of marketers say their departments have increased AI investments in the past 6-12 months.

Opportunity

AI is working, but are you working it?

AI is helping marketing teams hit their goals, but where it supports most depends heavily on role and level of organization-wide AI adoption. Smaller companies lean on AI for individual output, but enterprise teams use it for communication and strategic impact. Early adopters are able to move faster, but advanced adopters are able to move up in their careers.

Now that AI has moved past the experimental stage, the biggest barriers holding marketing teams back from advancement are related to trust, security, and compliance concerns. This holds steady from 2025, when data privacy concerns were the biggest barrier to adopting new AI tools.

What can AI do for you?

27%

of marketers report speed and agility as AI's #1 performance gain

22%

who are transformational adopters credit AI for career trajectory gains — vs. 5% at early stage

For transformational AI adopters, team communication depth is almost 2x higher than all respondents. Individual contributors see gains in speed, volume, and productivity, while directors report improvements in strategic areas like business impact and team motivation.

“In just a few months, I went from barely using AI to building a personal brand strategy that drove over 3 million impressions on LinkedIn, landing paid partnerships, and consulting with other founders. And, I did it with the help of ChatGPT. What started as a tool to help me brainstorm quickly became a career accelerator. It changed how I work, how I show up, and how I earn.”

Valerie Chapman, Co-founder and CMO of INFRM

AI maturity and goal attainment move together

The further along a company is in its AI journey, the more likely it is to be hitting its marketing targets, and by a much wider margin. 96% of transformational adopters are at or above marketing qualified lead (MQL) targets, compared to 74% at the early stage. Nearly half of transformational adopters (44%) say AI made customer acquisition cost (CAC) goals much easier to hit, versus just 12% at early stage.

There’s a pattern here, but companies further along in their AI maturity may simply have more budget, headcount, and room to experiment — the kind of resources that make it easier to hit targets with or without AI.

The barriers holding AI adoption back

53% of respondents are at least moderately concerned that AI could automate their role, and 40% report that job security concerns have led them to use AI somewhat more. Looking by level of seniority, 48% of manager-level marketers and below use AI somewhat more due to concerns about job security, versus 57% of directors and above.

· Strategy

Your AI strategy is only as strong as your intelligence layer

Most respondents we've polled across GTM say their companies want to be at an "established" AI maturity level by 2027. But notably, 1 in 5 marketers say their companies are aiming for transformational adoption.

Across regions, companies in Latin America are more likely to anticipate reaching a transformational level of AI, while those in Europe are most likely to have a goal of an established AI strategy.

What’s driving adoption?

60% of respondents say their organizations expect some level of AI proficiency among their employees, but only 15% say meeting a specific AI skill level is a formal requirement.

Even if AI proficiency isn't required, marketers still say these skills are important for role trajectory.

Companies pursuing transformational AI should establish more documented expectations for AI proficiency, provide training, and benchmark performance.

AI is leading to marketing team reorgs

74% of respondents believe they are proficient or fluent at using AI.

Marketing leaders report higher levels of personal AI adoption at an “established” level than managers or below. And they may be more effective in using AI, too.

Recent research found that senior-level professionals are more skilled in using AI because they push back on AI responses, whereas those who are more junior accept AI responses and “let AI think for them,” which erodes their confidence in its outputs. AI isn't making us dumber, but those who engage with it rather than trusting it blindly feel more confident in their AI-assisted work.

Most marketers say their role has changed because of AI, and only 7% say it hasn't changed at all. Even titles are changing, as companies hire or redeploy employees to certain roles.

AI is transforming marketing budgets and hiring decisions

More and more teams are experimenting with AI, and the majority are meaningfully investing in it.

As marketers work against “AI slop,” governance and data become more important, and they're top of mind for many teams, especially mid-market and enterprise teams where there are more cooks in the kitchen.

Companies are documenting AI policies and guidelines, and consistently updating them as new information comes in. In 2025, 18% of organizations had no stated policy on AI usage. In 2026, only 8% either have no AI policies at all or plan to create them. And at most companies, AI has some access to business context, but there are important gaps.

For 1 in 4 teams, data access is excellent — it's accurate, complete, reliable and easy to access. For most teams (53%), it's good. It's mostly reliable, with occasional gaps. And for 1 in 5 teams, data is either fair, with noticeable gaps, inconsistencies, or access issues, or poor, regularly hindering AI use.