Observed Signal · Oct 21, 2026 · Market Signal · Source: Demandbase · Impact: 2/5
Nearly Three-Quarters of Marketing Teams Haven’t Grown as Marketers Face Pressure to Move Faster in the AI Era
New Demandbase and G2 research reveals 72% of B2B marketing teams haven't grown in two years, as 70% face pressure to move faster and deliver in the AI era.
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B2B AI: CEOs Push Speed, CMOs Face Readiness Gap
MaryLee Sachs argues in The Drum that the challenge for AI in B2B marketing is less a skills gap and more an organizational readiness gap. CEOs demand rapid AI acceleration while CMOs confront governance, security, procurement, fragmented data, and legal constraints that limit tool choice. Many enterprise marketers default to platforms like Microsoft Copilot because they are pre‑approved within corporate tech ecosystems. Sachs highlights research cited by CNBC from the AI‑Driven Enterprise Institute showing top S&P 500 AI adopters embed AI into core operations rather than just content production. Effective AI adoption, she says, requires cross‑functional alignment and treating AI as an enterprise capability rather than a standalone marketing initiative.
Marketers Struggle to Keep Up with AI-Driven Customer Demands
Salesforce’s State of Marketing report finds a widening gap between customer expectations for two-way, timely conversations and marketers’ ability to deliver them. While roughly three out of four organizations (75%) use some form of AI and 61% are experimenting with or implementing AI agents, many teams lack unified, real-time customer data and struggle with execution: 83% of marketers say customers expect two-way conversations, 69% say they struggle to respond quickly, and 84% say campaigns still feel generic. High-performing teams are more likely to have a unified customer data platform (57%) and clearer revenue-aligned KPIs. The report emphasizes that agentic marketing and generative AI are moving into operational workflows, but meaningful personalization depends on data architecture, governance, and AI fluency.
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).
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