AI adoption surges among marketers, but skills haven't kept pace
Eighty-six percent of brand and agency professionals say their companies invested in AI technology in 2025, up from 44% in 2022. The growth has been steady: 57% in 2023, 71% in 2024, then 86% last year.
Yet adoption is outpacing expertise. Marketers are using AI tools faster than they're learning to use them well, according to interviews with agency leaders and a survey of 142 marketing and agency professionals.
Dan Gardner, co-founder of creative agency Code and Theory, said the problem isn't learning new software. "Anybody can learn a new tool," he said. "Upskilling and reskilling is multiplying the value of your human ingenuity." A designer using AI to speed up design work isn't becoming more skilled-they're just using a new tool. Real upskilling means understanding how to apply AI to deeper work, like improving communication design itself.
Matt Maher, founder of M7 Innovations, said users understand basic AI tools but companies aren't pushing them to their limits. ChatGPT has 800 million weekly active users. Google Gemini reaches 400 million monthly. Yet most organizations use only a fraction of what these tools can do. "There's still a gap," Maher said, "even though, at a baseline, we're all getting used to AI."
The infrastructure cost problem
Companies are adopting AI without fully planning how to use it, creating gaps between investment and return. Marc Maleh, global CTO at design and technology agency Huge, said the issue starts with infrastructure costs.
"You have massive investments in AI and the basics of all of them is the infrastructure layer - TPUs from Google, GPUs at Nvidia," Maleh said. "Every time an agency or brand wants to deploy a model, the Googles and the Amazons of the world need to find a way to monetize the infrastructure layer."
Brands are asking harder questions now. If adding 500 seats of Claude code costs X, but productivity only increases 30%, does the math work? "AI was the shiny object," Maleh said. "Brands thought, 'We want the press release, so let's worry about the GPU and TPU charges and the API calls later.'"
Most marketers stick with off-the-shelf tools
Eighty-five percent of survey respondents use out-of-the-box AI tools rather than building custom solutions. Only 40% build proprietary tools using existing large language models like GPT or Gemini. Just 19% build and train their own models in-house.
Cost and complexity explain the gap. Custom AI development requires dedicated teams and significant spending. Smaller companies can't afford it.
The landscape is shifting, though. Adobe and Google recently integrated Google's Gemini, Imagen and Veo models into Adobe's creative tools. Platforms that were once closed are opening up. Maher said brands are now building stacks of complementary tools instead of relying on a single platform. "There's not gonna be one to rule them all," he said. "I've seen brands say, 'Copilot is our base, and we stack Claude on top with a bunch of really smart APIs.'"
This approach saves money. Brands partner with larger companies but build their own versions. "You're saving a lot of money because you're not having to build it from scratch," Maher said.
Real-world marketing applications
Some brands are already moving beyond experimentation. PetSmart relaunched its member program using AI to customize deals based on purchase history. Guitar Center launched Rig Advisor, a chatbot that helps customers find the right products.
The competitive pressure is real. Wesley ter Haar, recently appointed chief AI officer at digital agency Monks, said the companies that figure AI out will pull ahead. "In every industry there'll be a percentage of companies that figure it out, then a large percentage of companies that don't," he said. "The economic upside makes for such a big competitive gap."
For marketers looking to close the skills gap, structured learning paths focused on AI for marketing managers can help teams move beyond basic tool usage to strategic application. The gap between adoption and expertise won't close on its own.
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