Observed Signal · Mar 24, 2025 · Market Research · Source: CMSWire · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Neutral
Survey Reveals What Brands Want From Generative AI in Marketing
An industry survey of 283 marketing professionals reveals how generative AI is being adopted across marketing. Content-related use cases dominate, with copy ideation (50.7%) and copy production (43.9%) leading, followed by content optimization. Data tasks such as knowledge management and competitor research are also gaining traction. However, advertising-related generative AI adoption remains low, with the highest-ranking ad use case at position #28, partly due to reliance on agencies, embedded AI in platforms like Google Performance Max and Meta Advantage+, and hesitancy to delegate creative decisions. Monthly use of AI tends to be strategic, while daily and weekly use is operational. The article also identifies an untapped wishlist including audio/podcast production, compliance, lead scoring, and talent management. In 2024, generative AI tools accounted for 77% of martech landscape growth, with 2,324 new solutions.
Provides actionable survey data on generative AI adoption in marketing and highlights a notable lag in AdTech use cases, relevant for martech strategy but not an industry-shifting event.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- A survey of 283 marketing professionals found copy ideation (50.7%) and copy production (43.9%) are the most adopted generative AI use cases.
- In 2024, generative AI tools accounted for 77% of growth in the marketing technology landscape, with 2,324 generative AI solutions emerging.
- Ad-related generative AI use cases lag behind other categories, with the highest-ranked ad use case at position #28 and seven of the bottom 23 use cases in AdTech.
- High-interest untapped generative AI use cases include audio/podcast production, compliance and risk, social media management, lead scoring, and talent management.
Connected Companies & Entities
2 Entities mapped“platforms with embedded AI like Google's Performance Max and Facebook's Advantage+ automate ad optimization without marketers actively reali...”
“platforms with embedded AI like Google's Performance Max and Facebook's Advantage+ automate ad optimization without marketers actively reali...”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
AWNY, Jupiter Fest Spotlight Agentic Ads and Open Web
Advertising Week New York and the inaugural Jupiter Festival Miami highlighted the industry's shift toward agentic advertising and anxieties about the open web's future. Major announcements included TikTok's off-platform ad expansion and a new AI shopping agent, Meta's AI campaign assistant testing, and OpenAI's visual ads introduction. Paramount's $110 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery closed, forming Skydance. Key themes were the threat of AI to publisher traffic, the rise of AI visibility tools, the early stage of agentic media buying, unsolved cross-platform measurement, and the booming sports and retail media sectors. Deals included PubX's acquisition of Compliant and a $5 million Series A, and OpenAI's reported $30 billion round talks with BlackRock and UAE investors.
ICANN Receives 1,615 New Top-Level Domain Applications
The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) has accepted applications for new generic top-level domains (gTLDs) for the first time since 2012. A total of 1,615 applications were submitted by 481 applicants, with a strong focus on AI-related domains. Ten companies, including Meta and OpenAI, applied for .agent, seven for .agi, and six for .asi. Meta filed 21 applications, including .instagram and .threads, while OpenAI filed 15, including .chatgpt and .codex. German entities like Adidas, Biontech, and Allianz also applied for brand-specific domains. The application fee can be up to $227,000 per domain. The article also highlights the financial success of country-code TLDs like .ai, which earned Anguilla about €59 million by November 2025.
Musk's Grok Bot to Use Rival AI Models Like Claude
Elon Musk announced that Grok Bot, an agent app from his AI unit (formerly xAI, now part of SpaceX and recently renamed SpaceXAI/SpaceXSI), will no longer rely solely on its own Grok models. Instead, it will pick 'the best back-end model for the respective task,' citing examples such as Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5, Midjourney, and Suno. The announcement, first reported by The Information, follows user complaints about access issues. This strategic shift acknowledges that xAI's models don't lead in all areas—for instance, Claude Opus 5.5 outperforms competitors on the Artificial Analysis ranking. The move mirrors a broader industry trend of multi-model routing, as seen with Microsoft's Copilot and Perplexity, and comes despite reports of SpaceX planning $40 billion in debt for Nvidia chips.
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