AI in Marketing Statistics 2026: Verified Adoption, Budget, and Productivity Data From McKinsey, Gartner, The CMO Survey, HubSpot, and Salesforce

Executive summary

• Organization-wide AI adoption reached 88% in McKinsey’s 2025 global survey, up from 78% a year earlier. Marketing and sales was among the functions with the most reported AI use.
• 75% of marketing organizations use at least one form of AI (predictive, generative, or agentic) in Salesforce’s 10th edition State of Marketing Report. Individual-marketer adoption was 66% worldwide in HubSpot’s 2025 report.
• Adoption is broad but shallow. The CMO Survey (February 2026) found AI performs a mean 24.2% of marketing optimization and automation efforts, and generative AI is used a mean 22.4% of the time.
• Marketers expect AI to perform a mean 55.9% of marketing efforts within three years, per The CMO Survey, a relative increase of about 131% from the current 24.2%.
• CMOs allocated an average 15.3% of marketing budget to AI in Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey. Organizations judged ready to scale allocated 21.3%.
• Readiness lags spending. Only 30% of CMOs reported mature AI readiness in the Gartner survey, even as 70% called becoming an AI leader a critical 2026 goal.
• Time savings are real but modest. HubSpot marketers reported saving one to two hours per day. Salesforce high performers using AI agents reclaimed about eight hours per week.
• Impact on profit remains limited. Only 39% of McKinsey respondents attributed any enterprise-level EBIT impact to AI, and most of those put the figure below 5%.
• Content creation is the single most common marketing use case in every source that ranks use cases: 73.9% in The CMO Survey and 52% in HubSpot.

Key findings

The strongest verified data points, each with number, timeframe, geography, and citation. All figures are self-reported survey estimates.

1. 88% of organizations used AI in at least one business function in 2025, up from 78% a year earlier. Global, 1,993 respondents across 105 countries. Source: McKinsey, The State of AI, published November 5, 2025.
2. 79% of organizations reported regularly using generative AI in 2025, up from 65% in early 2024. Global. Source: McKinsey, The State of AI, November 5, 2025.
3. Only 39% of respondents attributed any enterprise-level EBIT impact to AI, and most put it below 5%. Global, 2025. Source: McKinsey, The State of AI, November 5, 2025.
4. CMOs allocated an average 15.3% of marketing budget to AI in 2026. North America, United Kingdom, and Europe; 401 leaders, most at organizations above $1 billion revenue. Source: Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey, press release May 11, 2026.
5. AI-ready organizations allocated 21.3% of marketing budget to AI, against 15.3% overall. Same survey. Source: Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey, May 11, 2026.
6. Only 30% of CMOs reported mature or fully developed AI readiness, while 70% called becoming an AI leader a critical 2026 goal. Source: Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey, May 11, 2026.
7. AI performed a mean 24.2% of marketing optimization and automation efforts in early 2026, projected to reach a mean 55.9% within three years. United States, 308 marketing leaders. Source: The CMO Survey, February 2026 (35th edition).
8. Generative AI was used a mean 22.4% of the time in marketing activities. United States, early 2026. Source: The CMO Survey, February 2026.
9. Content creation was the top AI use case at 73.9% of companies, followed by content personalization at 65.4%. United States, early 2026. Source: The CMO Survey, February 2026.
10. Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) was already used by 41.5% of companies, a capability absent from earlier CMO Survey editions. United States, early 2026. Source: The CMO Survey, February 2026.
11. 66% of marketers worldwide used AI in their role, and 91% of marketing leaders said their teams use AI. Worldwide, 1,000-plus marketing and advertising professionals. Source: HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, 2025.
12. Marketers reported saving one to two hours per day with AI. Worldwide, 2025. Source: HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, 2025.
13. 75% of marketing organizations used at least one form of AI, and 13% used agentic AI. 4,450 marketers across 26 countries. Source: Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 10th edition, 2026.
14. Data privacy was the top adoption barrier at 42%, ahead of training and time investment (39%) and tool sprawl (35%). Worldwide, 2025. Source: HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, 2025.
15. AI adopters reported a 20% increase in return on investment and a 19% decrease in costs. 4,450 marketers, 26 countries, 2026. Source: Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 10th edition, 2026.

Key terms

Definitions used throughout, drawn from the source surveys.

• AI (artificial intelligence) adoption: use of any AI technique. Sources measure this differently, either at the organization level (McKinsey, Salesforce) or at the individual-marketer level (HubSpot). The unit of analysis is stated for each figure.
• Generative AI: models that create text, images, audio, or code from prompts.
• Agentic AI: AI systems that plan and take multi-step actions toward a goal with limited human input. Salesforce reports this as a distinct category from predictive and generative AI.
• Generative Engine Optimization (GEO): optimizing content so it appears in AI-generated search results. The CMO Survey added GEO as a use case in its 2026 editions.
• Self-reported estimate: a figure a survey respondent supplied about their own organization or work. Every statistic in this briefing is self-reported and subject to recall and social-desirability bias.

Marketer AI adoption rate

Adoption is high on every measure, but the numbers are not interchangeable because each survey counts a different population. McKinsey counts organizations across all functions. Salesforce counts marketing organizations. HubSpot counts individual marketers. Read the unit of analysis before comparing.

• 88% of organizations used AI in at least one business function in 2025, up from 78% a year earlier, per McKinsey’s global survey of 1,993 respondents across 105 countries.
• Marketing and sales was among the business functions reporting the most AI use, and adoption in that function more than doubled from 2023, per McKinsey. McKinsey published this as a qualitative finding rather than a single function-level percentage in the material reviewed.
• 75% of marketing organizations used at least one form of AI (predictive, generative, or agentic), per Salesforce’s 10th edition State of Marketing Report of 4,450 marketers across 26 countries. Coverage of the report notes a closely related figure of 76% for use of at least one form of AI; the difference reflects rounding and framing in the source.
• In Salesforce’s prior 9th edition (survey fielded February to March 2024, 4,850 marketers across 29 countries), 75% of marketers were experimenting with or had fully implemented AI, split between 32% fully implemented and 43% experimenting.
• 66% of marketers worldwide used AI in their role, and 91% of marketing leaders said their teams use AI, per the HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, which surveyed more than 1,000 marketing and advertising professionals in 2025.

Context and limitations. Salesforce’s 9th and 10th editions both report roughly three-quarters adoption, but the wording changed from “experimenting with or fully implemented AI” to “use at least one form of AI,” so the two are not a clean year-over-year pair. The gap between McKinsey’s 88% (organizations, any function) and HubSpot’s 66% (individual marketers) is largely a difference in what is being counted, not a contradiction.

Generative AI use in marketing

Generative AI is now the default AI method in marketing, but the share of work it performs is still modest.

• 79% of organizations regularly used generative AI in 2025, up from 65% in early 2024, per McKinsey. This figure spans all functions, not marketing alone.
• Generative AI was used a mean 22.4% of the time in marketing activities in early 2026, with a median of 20%, per The CMO Survey of 308 United States marketing leaders.
• Content creation led generative AI use in the HubSpot report at 52%, with quality assurance (53% of those creating content), copywriting (50%), and image creation (48%) as the leading tasks. Only 4% of marketers used AI to write entire pieces independently.

Context and limitations. The CMO Survey figure measures intensity (share of time), while McKinsey and HubSpot measure incidence (whether the tool is used at all). A team can adopt generative AI and still run most of its work without it, which is what the 22.4% figure shows.

AI share of marketing budget

The clearest budget signal comes from Gartner’s large-enterprise sample.

• CMOs allocated an average 15.3% of marketing budget to AI in 2026, per the Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey of 401 marketing leaders across North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe, most at organizations above $1 billion in revenue. The survey was fielded between January and March 2026.
• Organizations judged ready to scale AI allocated 21.3% of marketing budget to it, about 39% more of their budget than the 15.3% average.
• Only 30% of CMOs reported mature or fully developed AI readiness, even though 70% named becoming an AI leader a critical goal for 2026.

Context and limitations. Gartner’s sample skews to large enterprises, so this AI budget share may run higher than for small and midsize marketing teams. The 15.3% is a share of marketing budget, not of company revenue, and should not be compared directly with overall marketing-budget-to-revenue ratios.

Productivity and time savings

Reported time savings are consistent across sources and land in a similar range.

• Marketers reported saving one to two hours per day with AI, per the HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, 2025.
• High performers using AI agents reclaimed about eight hours per week, per Salesforce’s 10th edition State of Marketing Report, 2026.
• AI adopters reported a 20% increase in return on investment, a 20% increase in customer satisfaction, a 19% increase in conversion rates, and a 19% decrease in costs, per Salesforce’s 10th edition report.

Context and limitations. These are self-reported gains, not measured against a controlled baseline. The Salesforce performance gains describe organizations that deployed AI and may reflect selection effects (stronger teams adopt sooner) rather than AI alone.

Top AI use cases in marketing

The CMO Survey provides the most granular ranking, measured as the share of companies using AI for each task (188 respondents, early 2026). Content work dominates.

Source: The CMO Survey, Topline Report, February 2026, Duke University Fuqua School of Business with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association.

HubSpot’s ranking agrees on the top task: content creation led generative AI use at 52%, followed by research at 48% and conversational marketing at 41%.

ROI, concerns, and governance

Enthusiasm and unease appear side by side in every source.

• Only 39% of McKinsey respondents attributed any enterprise-level EBIT impact to AI in 2025, and most of those put the figure below 5%.
• Positive ROI reports in the HubSpot survey were highest for blog and long-form content (68% saw at least somewhat positive ROI), social media (67%), and email (63%).
• The top AI adoption barriers in the HubSpot survey were data privacy concerns (42%), training and time investment (39%), and having too many disconnected tools (35%).
• 82% of Salesforce respondents using or planning to use AI agents expected major or moderate ROI improvement, but 98% of AI-using marketing teams reported at least one data-related barrier to personalization.

Context and limitations. The McKinsey EBIT figure is the strongest available signal that broad adoption has not yet translated to measured profit at most companies. It is self-reported and measured at the enterprise level, so it can understate gains that are real but confined to specific teams.

How fast adoption grew year over year

Growth is clearest where a source repeats the same question across editions.

• Organization-wide AI use rose from 78% to 88% in one year in McKinsey’s survey, a gain of 10 percentage points.
• Regular generative AI use rose from 65% in early 2024 to 79% in 2025 in McKinsey’s survey, a gain of 14 percentage points.
• The CMO Survey reports AI usage in marketing has more than doubled over two years, and projects AI will perform a mean 55.9% of marketing efforts within three years, up from a mean 24.2% now, a relative increase of about 131%.
• Salesforce marketing AI adoption sat near 75% in both its 9th (2024) and 10th (2026) editions, suggesting the “any adoption” measure is approaching a ceiling and that growth has moved to newer categories such as agentic AI, used by 13% in the 10th edition.

Context and limitations. These growth figures use different metrics (organization adoption, generative AI use, share of marketing effort, and marketing-org adoption) and cannot be added or averaged together. The three-year CMO Survey projection is an expectation, not a measured outcome.

Original synthesis

Three derived insights, each with its logic, all input sources, and limitations.

1. The adoption-to-depth gap

Insight. Broad AI adoption is near a ceiling, but the depth of use and the measured impact are far lower. Headline adoption runs 66% to 88% across sources, yet AI performs only a mean 24.2% of marketing efforts and only 39% of organizations see any profit impact.

Logic. Compare incidence metrics (whether AI is used at all: McKinsey 88%, Salesforce 75%, HubSpot 66%) against intensity and impact metrics (share of work done by AI: CMO Survey 24.2%; any EBIT impact: McKinsey 39%).

Input sources. McKinsey The State of AI (2025); Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 10th edition (2026); HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report (2025); The CMO Survey (February 2026).

Limitations. The metrics measure different things and different populations. The comparison is directional, not a like-for-like ratio.

2. The budget-readiness gap

Insight. Spending is running ahead of capability. CMOs put 15.3% of marketing budget into AI while only 30% report mature readiness. Organizations that are ready spend about 39% more of their budget on AI (21.3% versus 15.3%), which suggests spending follows capability rather than substituting for it.

Logic. Divide the ready-organization allocation (21.3%) by the overall allocation (15.3%) to get a 1.39 ratio; compare against the 30% readiness share.

Input sources. Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey (all figures from one survey, so the comparison is internally consistent).

Limitations. Single-source and large-enterprise only. Readiness is self-assessed.

3. The frontier has moved from “whether” to “how deep”

Insight. The competitive question has shifted from adopting AI at all to how much of the work it does and whether it acts autonomously. Basic adoption is flat near 75% at Salesforce across two editions, while newer measures show headroom: agentic AI at 13%, and AI’s projected share of marketing effort rising from 24.2% to 55.9% over three years.

Logic. Contrast a saturating incidence metric (Salesforce adoption steady near 75%) with rising depth and capability metrics (agentic AI 13%; CMO Survey three-year projection).

Input sources. Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 9th and 10th editions; The CMO Survey (February 2026).

Limitations. The Salesforce editions changed question wording, and the CMO Survey three-year figure is a projection.

Cross-source comparison

Sources listed in the Source Quality Ranking below. All figures are self-reported survey estimates and measure different populations and quantities.

Methodology

Source selection. Priority went to the primary survey publishers named in each finding: McKinsey, Gartner, Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business (The CMO Survey), HubSpot, and Salesforce. The CMO Survey figures were read directly from the survey’s own Topline Report PDF. Gartner figures were taken from Gartner’s official press release. McKinsey figures were taken from McKinsey’s State of AI publication; where the McKinsey site was intermittently unreachable, the same primary figures were cross-checked against contemporaneous reporting that quotes the survey directly.

Inclusion rules. A statistic was included only if it carried a specific number tied to a named survey edition, a field date or publication date, a stated population, and a source URL. Every figure is labeled as a self-reported survey estimate.

Exclusion rules. Figures from stat-aggregator blogs that did not trace to a primary publisher were excluded. Specifically, the claim that “87% of marketers use generative AI, up from 51% in 2024,” widely attributed to Salesforce, was excluded because it does not appear in Salesforce’s State of Marketing Report and could not be verified. Boston Consulting Group publications were reviewed as a candidate source, but the specific figures were behind access controls that could not be verified against a primary page, so no BCG numbers are reported here.

Handling conflicts. Where sources report different adoption rates, the difference is attributed to the unit of analysis (organizations versus marketing functions versus individual marketers) and the wording of the question, and both figures are shown rather than averaged.

Limitations. All figures are self-reported and subject to recall and social-desirability bias. Sample sizes range from about 188 to 4,850, and several CMO Survey items carry confidence intervals of several percentage points. Geographies differ (global, United States, and North America plus Europe). None of the cross-source figures should be combined arithmetically.

Date of last update. July 26, 2026.

Source quality ranking

Tier 1 (primary survey publishers and academic bodies): The CMO Survey, February 2026 (35th edition), Duke University Fuqua School of Business with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association, read from the Topline Report PDF; Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey, official press release, May 11, 2026; McKinsey Global Survey on AI, The State of AI, November 5, 2025.

Tier 2 (credible commercial research from named publishers): Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 9th and 10th editions; HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, 2025.

Tier 3 (reputable journalism used only to cross-check primary figures): Diginomica coverage of the Salesforce 10th edition; Silicon Canals coverage of the McKinsey survey. These were used to confirm primary numbers, not as originators of any statistic.

For journalists and analysts

Most quotable statistics

• 88% of organizations used AI in at least one business function in 2025, up from 78% a year earlier (McKinsey, The State of AI, 2025).
• Only 39% of organizations attributed any enterprise-level profit impact to AI, and most put it below 5% (McKinsey, The State of AI, 2025).
• CMOs allocated an average 15.3% of marketing budget to AI in 2026, but only 30% reported mature AI readiness (Gartner 2026 CMO Spend Survey).
• AI performed a mean 24.2% of marketing efforts in early 2026, and marketers expect that to reach a mean 55.9% within three years (The CMO Survey, February 2026).
• 75% of marketing organizations used at least one form of AI, but only 13% used agentic AI (Salesforce State of Marketing Report, 10th edition, 2026).
• 66% of marketers worldwide used AI in their role in 2025 (HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report).
• Data privacy was the top barrier to AI adoption, cited by 42% of marketers (HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, 2025).

Data limitations

Every figure is a self-reported survey estimate. Populations differ (whole organizations, marketing functions, and individual marketers), so adoption rates are not directly comparable. Samples range from about 188 to 4,850 respondents. Geographies differ (global, United States, and North America plus Europe). The McKinsey EBIT figure and the Salesforce performance gains are self-assessed and not measured against a controlled baseline. The CMO Survey three-year figure is a projection.

Downloadable dataset: recommended fields

metric_name; value; unit (percent, hours, count); population_unit (organization, marketing_org, individual_marketer); geography; sample_size; survey_name; survey_edition; field_dates; publication_date; source_url; self_reported_flag; notes.

Press summary

AI is now standard in marketing, but the numbers show adoption has outrun impact. In McKinsey’s 2025 global survey, 88% of organizations used AI in at least one function, up from 78% a year earlier, yet only 39% could point to any effect on profit. In marketing specifically, The CMO Survey found in February 2026 that AI performs only a mean 24.2% of marketing work, with generative AI used a mean 22.4% of the time, even as marketers expect AI to handle a mean 55.9% of the work within three years. Budgets are moving: Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey put average AI allocation at 15.3% of marketing budget, rising to 21.3% at organizations ready to scale, though only 30% called themselves AI-ready. Time savings are real but modest, at one to two hours a day per HubSpot. All figures are self-reported and measure different populations, so headline adoption rates should not be compared directly.

Suggested headlines

1. AI Reaches 88% of Organizations, but Only 39% See Any Profit From It
2. Marketers Say AI Does Just a Quarter of the Work, and Expect It to Do Half by 2029
3. CMOs Put 15.3% of Budget Into AI While Only 30% Say They Are Ready
4. Content Creation Is Still AI’s Number One Job in Marketing, Used by 74% of Companies
5. Three-Quarters of Marketing Teams Use AI, but Just 13% Have Reached Agents

Frequently asked questions

See the FAQ section below, answered with verified statistics.

FAQ

About this briefing

Compiled by Christoph Olivier Consulting from the most recent editions of the McKinsey Global Survey on AI, the Gartner CMO Spend Survey, The CMO Survey (Duke University Fuqua School of Business with Deloitte and the American Marketing Association), the HubSpot AI Trends for Marketers Report, and the Salesforce State of Marketing Report. Every figure is a self-reported survey estimate carrying its source, edition, date, geography, and sample size. Last updated July 26, 2026.