The number of marketers who use AI in their roles has more than tripled since last year’s State of AI report was released. We’re talking about a year-over-year jump from 21% to 74%.
To be fair, the majority of respondents did say that most people will use an AI tool to assist them in their jobs by 2024. Turns out they were right, so we decided to run it back.
This time, we surveyed over 1,000 marketing and advertising professionals for more insights on how they’re feeling about AI, what they’re using it for at work, and when they think the AI robots will start walking among us.
(Mostly kidding on that last one.)
Table of Contents
- Key Findings: The Current State of AI
- General Attitudes Towards AI
- How Marketers Are Using AI at Work
- The Future of AI for Marketers
The State of Artificial Intelligence Report
New research into how marketers are using AI and key insights into the future of marketing.
- Marketing AI Tools
- Practical Tips
- Trends and Statistics
- And More!
Download Free
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Key Findings: The Current State of AI
1. AI helps businesses drive growth.
AI is becoming more and more accessible, and businesses are starting to see payoffs from their investments in automation.
Here are the facts:
- AI is making employees more productive — from both the employee POV and the organizational perspective.
- Marketers are saving time with AI, which allows them to focus their energy on more creative and higher-impact projects.
- Marketers are seeing a positive ROI when it comes to content creation. In all categories (i.e., email, social media, and blog), those who use it are seeing a positive yield.
By boosting employee productivity and effectiveness, AI allows companies to do more with less. And that means business leaders can capitalize on their existing resources without having to increase headcount.
2. AI knowledge and skills are becoming more valuable.
We asked marketers if they’ve used any educational resources to improve their knowledge and skills on AI-related topics, and 55% said yes.
The most common resources that marketers are using to improve their AI capabilities are educational videos (e.g., YouTube, TikTok), and social media posts (e.g., LinkedIn, Twitter).
Businesses are becoming increasingly interested in hiring employees with AI expertise. This includes content marketers, social media managers, prompt engineers, and more.
If you haven’t already, it’s a good idea to skill-up in the areas that are most relevant to your current (or dream) role.
And if you’re a business or thought leader in the AI space, take note of where people are going to seek out information about AI — and position yourself accordingly.
3. AI (still) isn’t taking over our jobs.
I know this continues to be a real concern for marketers.
However, our latest data shows that the majority of business leaders either expect their headcount to remain unchanged or increase based on their investment in AI.
This is especially true for the following business areas:
- Channel Growth and Performance Strategy (for key distribution channels including search, social, email, advertising, and link building)
- Marketing, Product, App, Resource, and Web-Page Building (focused on audience or lead-generation experience)
- Multimedia Content Creation (including video, audio, podcasts, interactive media, graphic design, and mixed-media)
Also, 62% of marketing professionals agree that people should use AI and automation in their roles, but they shouldn’t become overly reliant on it.
Why? Because AI is evolving, but it isn’t perfect.
Let’s face it, more than half of marketers (53%) are still making significant copy edits when using AI to create content. And AI-related challenges, like inconsistencies and bias, still exist today.
We haven’t lost the power of human touch.
Right now, most industry professionals are using AI to support job functions — not replace them entirely. So, you can go ahead and exhale.
The State of Artificial Intelligence Report
New research into how marketers are using AI and key insights into the future of marketing.
- Marketing AI Tools
- Practical Tips
- Trends and Statistics
- And More!
Download Free
All fields are required.
General Attitudes Towards AI
The Marketer’s Perspective
I mentioned earlier that most marketing pros believe in the benefits of AI but don’t want to rely on it 100%.
That said, they believe AI supports two core personal areas: time and productivity.
We found that 75% of marketers agree that AI and automation tools can help them spend less time on manual tasks — and over half feel strongly about that.
This includes tasks like data entry and scheduling meetings.
Similarly, 73% say AI can help them be more productive in their roles. This allows marketers to spend more time on the creative aspects of their jobs.
You know what that means? Less busy work and more time for big thinking. I’d consider that a win.
The Organizational Perspective
At the organizational level, 65% of marketing professionals say their company leadership is supportive of them using AI in their role.
However, the majority still say they or their company has not invested in AI or automation tools for employees to leverage. And many organizations do not currently have a stated policy on the use of AI at work.
This shows that non-adoption can be more attributed to lack of investment versus the absence of support from business leaders.
On the other hand, 43% of managers whose teams have invested in AI say that investment has returned a somewhat positive ROI.
In addition to productivity, marketing leaders believe AI has had the most impact on making employees more effective at their jobs and helping them make data-driven decisions.
How Marketers Are Using AI at Work
Right now, three in five marketing professionals use AI in their current role. Let’s see what they’re using and where they’re seeing the most ROI.
Most Popular AI Tools for Marketers
Chatbot tools — like ChatGPT, Copilot AI, and Google Gemini — are at the top of the list for 35% of marketers. That number jumps to 38% when you look specifically at small to medium-sized businesses.
Additionally, 25% of marketers are using AI-enhanced CRM and marketing tools including HubSpot (love that for us).
AI-enhanced productivity tools (e.g., GSuite AI suggestions) and visual AI tools (e.g., DALL-E) are tied for third and used by 23% of professionals in marketing roles.
Interestingly, the addition of AI capabilities to the tools that marketers are already using impacts AI usage pretty significantly. We found that 74% use AI more because of it.
And 69% say they see themselves using OpenAI’s new text-to-video tool, Sora, once it’s publicly available. Video is in, and this shows there’s growing demand for AI video creation tools.
ROI of AI-Powered Marketing Channels
As a blogger, it surprised me that email was the #1 channel that marketers are using AI to create for. But as a blogger, I’m also probably biased.
The majority (47%) use AI for email marketing and other newsletter platforms.
Email is closely followed by social media with 45% of marketers using AI to create social media content. This includes both text-based and video/audio social media platforms.
In third place, 38% of marketers use AI to create blog posts, articles, and other long-form content.
For all of these channels, they’re seeing a worthwhile ROI:
- Email: 82% are seeing at least a somewhat positive ROI.
- Social Media: 80% (text-based) and 79% (video/audio) are seeing at least a somewhat positive ROI.
- Blog/Long-Form: 78% are seeing at least a somewhat positive ROI.
It’s also worth noting that 85% of marketers who use AI to create search/SEO content are seeing positive returns. Even though this isn’t the most popular channel, I’d keep this in mind as you build out your AI investment strategy.
Generative AI and Marketing
Content Creation
The most common task that marketers are using generative AI for is content creation (43%). This is also popular among small to medium-sized businesses.
For marketers who use GenAI to create content, here’s what they’re doing with it:
- 47% are creating images for marketing content with AI art tools.
- 45% are writing copy for marketing content like blogs and emails.
- 44% are using it for content quality assurance such as spellcheck, accessibility review, or writing recommendations.
However, AI isn’t the full answer to content creation. Only 21% of marketers are using AI to write entire pieces of content for them. The large majority are using it for inspiration, or to give them an outline and a few paragraphs to build off of.
Content quality and inaccuracies are still big challenges for marketers. The majority (53%) are still making significant edits to AI-generated text.
And 42% are only somewhat confident that they would know if the information GenAI produces is inaccurate.
Additional GenAI Use Cases
Along with content creation, 40% of marketers use generative AI to learn how to do new things, like learn an Excel function or debug SQL code.
GenAI is also coming in handy for data analysis and reporting, with 35% of marketers are using it to analyze or manipulate marketing data.
For all of these use cases, the majority of marketing professionals say AI is very effective, and they’re saving an average of two or more hours in their work day as a result.
The Future of AI for Marketers
We don’t have a crystal ball, but we do have the top AI predictions from more than a thousand marketing professionals.
Here’s what marketers are saying about the future of AI:
- 48% of marketing managers say their team’s investment in AI and automation tools will stay about the same over the course of 2025. And 41% plan to increase their investment.
- 38% of marketing directors believe that most software they use will have AI or automation capabilities built in by 2030.
- 38% of marketers agree that most people will use a generative AI tool like ChatGPT to assist them in their jobs by 2030.
- 37% of marketers believe that AI will make a significant impact on how they (and other marketers) do their jobs in 2025.
As the AI landscape changes, we’ll continue to keep tabs on how it evolves and the ways it’s being used in the workplace.
Keep an eye out for more insights that will allow you to use AI to unleash your human potential — and leave the busy work to the robots.
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