Observed Signal · Apr 21, 2026 · Research Report · Source: Digiday · Impact: 3/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Marketers See AI Benefits; Trust Limits Agentic AI
Digiday+ Research (excerpt) summarizes a survey of 142 brand and agency professionals (conducted Q4 2025) showing widespread embedding of AI across marketing workflows but persistent barriers to broader adoption. Generative AI has higher adoption than predictive AI, with generative tools most used for creative production (82%), marketing (81%) and external/internal communications (75%/56%). Predictive AI is most commonly applied to measurement and KPI analysis (48%). More than half of respondents (54%) said their companies do not use agentic AI; interviewees and case studies (Unilever, Kroger, Monks) illustrate benefits but highlight trust, governance, data access and technical complexity as obstacles to agentic AI adoption.
Survey-based industry research quantifies AI adoption patterns and highlights practical barriers (trust, governance, complexity) affecting marketer decisions and MarTech implementations.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Survey of 142 brand and agency professionals conducted in Q4 2025.
- 82% of respondents said they use generative AI for creative production.
- 48% of respondents reported using predictive AI for measurement and KPI analysis.
- 54% of respondents said their companies do not use agentic AI.
- Unilever’s in-house Beauty AI studio reportedly created roughly 400 creative assets per product on average.
Connected Companies & Entities
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Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Marketers Increase AI Use; Technical Skills Lag
Digiday+ Research, based on a survey of 142 brand and agency professionals and interviews with marketing and tech executives, finds marketers’ adoption of AI has climbed sharply (from 44% in 2022 to 86% in 2025) but organizational tech skills, upskilling and strategic use lag behind tool adoption. The report notes many companies favor out-of-the-box AI tools (85% of respondents), while fewer build on existing LLMs (40%) or train proprietary LLMs (19%). Firms have appointed chief AI officers (brands such as General Motors, Mastercard and ZocDoc; agencies including Golin, Luckie & Co. and Horizon Media). Interviewees flagged economic concerns about GPU/TPU infrastructure costs, gaps between baseline user familiarity and advanced internal usage, and growing platform interoperability (e.g., Adobe integrating Google models and Google Vertex AI).
Agentic AI Reshapes Marketing Workflows, McKinsey Says
A McKinsey & Company analysis finds agentic AI — AI agents that execute multi-step marketing tasks under human supervision — is gaining traction and could support as much as two‑thirds of current marketing activities. The report says agentic systems, built on foundation models, can accelerate campaign processes (10–15x) and speed content cycles (up to 4x), and that organisations piloting integrated agentic workflows have seen potential revenue uplifts of 10–30%. Widespread experimentation has produced fragmented, isolated deployments; the primary barriers to scale are systems interoperability, unified data layers, identity frameworks and API-driven activation rather than model capability. Vendors such as Adobe and HubSpot are embedding AI agents into marketing platforms, but McKinsey notes fewer than 10% of firms have deployed end-to-end workflows that generate measurable value.
Marketers Embrace AI, Avoid AI for Media Buying
A Digiday survey of more than 100 marketers shows widespread adoption of AI for low-stakes tasks—data analysis and content creation—while few marketers trust AI to make media-buying decisions. Among marketers using AI for social campaigns, about two-thirds use it for data analysis, 57% for content creation, and only 32% to buy ad placements. The roundup also highlights agency M&A activity aimed at creator and youth marketing: Havas acquired Archrival (folding it into Havas Play) and Accenture Song bought creator-focused agency Whalar. LinkedIn is planning creator monetization tools in its 2027 fiscal year roadmap. Separately, OpenAI announced a data partnership with LiveRamp around LiveRamp’s conversion API hub and is reported to be in talks with NVIDIA about a very large Ohio data center. Disney promoted Brette Lipari to VP of advertising sales.
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