AI on earnings calls: what marketers need to know now
AI isn't a side project anymore. It's reshaping teams, tools and budgets across marketing.
Entry-level roles are shrinking. In-housing is accelerating. Agencies are partnering with tech giants to keep pace, while brands push self-serve AI to run more work internally.
Consumer behavior is already different
Black Friday showed the shift in plain numbers: AI-driven traffic to U.S. retail sites jumped 805% year over year. Shoppers used chatbots like Amazon's Rufus and Walmart's Sparky to compare prices and make decisions faster.
That isn't a gimmick. It's an early signal that AI is moving into the core of the marketing stack, from discovery to purchase.
Generative AI is changing creative work
One in three digital video ads are now built or enhanced with generative tools, up from 22% in 2024. Projections put that at 39% by 2026.
Consumer sentiment is split. Forty-six percent of people across the U.S., U.K., Canada and Australia say they're not okay with AI-generated models in ads, though that number is trending down. Performance tells a different story: in one A/B test, an AI-generated banner beat a professional stock photo by more than 50% on CTR.
This shift is lowering the barrier to in-house production. T-Mobile moved most creative duties inside. WPP launched Open Pro - a self-serve platform that gives marketers access to the company's AI stack without hiring an agency. Tech platforms are going further, automating production, targeting and optimization so brands can run complex campaigns with minimal setup.
Company spotlights: creative and production
- Meta: Building toward "objective-in, results-out" automation. Advertisers set a goal and budget; AI handles creative, personalization and delivery. Nearly 2 million advertisers have used Meta's AI creative tools, with rapid growth in video-generation features. New additions include Image Animation, Video Expansion and AI-generated music. The company is also rolling out business AIs merchants can embed on their sites to support the full ad-to-purchase flow.
- Google: Generative features are being infused across Asset Studio and Product Studio via Imagen 4 to speed production and expand creative variety. Reported efficiency gains for partners (e.g., WPP up to 70%). Google even used its own tech to produce an AI-generated commercial with Veo 3 for Search's AI Mode.
- Visa: Launching large-scale AI-created campaigns tied to major sponsorships (FIFA World Cup 2026, Milano Cortina Winter Olympics). Over 35 clients are engaged for the Olympics and 70+ for the World Cup, with 100+ in the pipeline. Every leader at the company has AI efficiency targets to reinvest savings into growth.
- Colgate-Palmolive: Calling agentic AI the next frontier, with pilots in key markets. The focus: AI-developed content for better visual storytelling and higher engagement. Ad spend stays roughly flat as a percent of sales, funded by productivity gains - not blunt cuts.
- Adobe: Upgrading Firefly and GenStudio to help brands scale content, automate workflows and improve optimization. Deepening ties with major holding companies and consultancies. Dentsu rolled out Adobe Express to tens of thousands of employees to increase output and maintain brand consistency.
AI is also a force multiplier for efficiency, personalization and performance
The gains aren't just creative. AI is cutting costs, reducing team overhead and improving precision - fast.
Company spotlights: operations, media and measurement
- Omnicom: The IPG deal expands its AI backbone. Assets like Acxiom will power OmniPlus, a new operating system that unifies data, automates workflows and accelerates creative and media execution (debuting at CES 2026). Integrated agents are already used across pitches, pricing models and campaign planning. Efficiency moves, including automation, reduced salary and related costs by 3.7% year over year.
- Verizon: Restructuring to become simpler and leaner, with AI central to personalized marketing that simplifies offers, improves experience and reduces churn. The plan spans multiple years, paired with significant headcount changes.
- Procter & Gamble: "Supply Chain 3.0" ties workforce reduction, automation and digitalization to deliver $1.5B in cost-of-goods savings. Up to 7,000 non-manufacturing roles will be cut over two years to fund innovation and marketing productivity. Smaller, tech-enabled brand teams move faster and stay closer to consumers.
- Netflix: Testing interactive, AI-enhanced ads that respond to viewer behavior and let advertisers mix and match creative templates. Investing through 2027 in machine learning for optimization, advanced measurement and targeting, with a global rollout of interactive formats planned by Q2 2026.
- Keurig Dr Pepper: Using AI-driven analytics to deepen insights, sharpen brand strategy and generate targeted creative. The Fansville series is now supported by a data partnership with Disney Advertising to deliver different ad versions based on a viewer's fandom.
- Target: Rolling out Target Trend Brain, a GenAI platform that scans social and industry signals to surface emerging trends. Teams use it to forecast demand and buy smarter. The company also builds "synthetic audiences" to predict reactions to campaigns, products and promos before launch.
Agentic AI is next
Agentic systems plan, act and learn across tasks. Think of them as tireless assistants that brief, produce, QA and optimize on loop - across creative, media and analytics.
Early pilots from brands like Colgate-Palmolive suggest these systems will push the next wave of in-house transformation and budget reallocation.
Playbook: how to adapt your marketing org in the next 90 days
- Audit the funnel: Map where AI already touches your workflow (creative, media, CRM, measurement). Set a target for cycle-time reduction and cost per asset.
- Standardize creative ops: Stand up an internal "AI studio" with brand-safe prompts, versioning rules and human QA. Test 3 formats per week; promote only what beats control by 20%+.
- Rework media setup: Use AI-led campaign types where signal density is high; run controlled holdouts to validate lift. Shift budget based on incremental gains, not surface metrics.
- Personalization you can prove: Start with 3-5 audience archetypes and 2-3 creative variants each. Kill underperformers quickly; feed learnings back into creative generation.
- Agentic pilots: Assign agents to repetitive workflows (briefing, product copy, localization, reporting). Measure time saved and error rates, then expand.
- Agency contracts: Renegotiate for outcome-based fees or fixed-scope automation deliverables. Clarity on data rights and model outputs is non-negotiable.
- Governance: Set disclosure policies for AI-made assets, approvals for data sharing and guardrails for synthetic audiences. Train marketing and legal together.
- People plan: Reskill your highest-leverage ICs as AI producers and editors. Create a scorecard: speed, quality, cost, and incremental revenue per head.
What this means for your budget
Expect line items to move from pure media and headcount to platforms, agents and data. The teams that win will tie savings directly to reinvestment in testing and new creative supply.
The mandate is simple: spend less time making assets, more time proving what grows the business.
Upskill your team
If you're formalizing AI roles in your org, consider structured training built for marketers. See the AI Certification for Marketing Specialists or browse courses by job function.
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