The Australian Centre for AI in Marketing (ACAM) reports marketers are struggling to understand the practical implications of agentic AI, even as a global survey points to high expectations but almost no active use. The findings, drawn from a 2026 Adobe study of 3,000 CX executives and practitioners and due in full via ACAM's July benchmark report, show 63% of organisations anticipate agentic AI will free time for strategic and creative work, and 42% plan to design distinctive AI agent personalities for different audiences.
Intent outruns execution
Despite that stated intent, a majority of respondents have no active agentic AI deployment, and fewer than one in four are running limited pilots, according to coverage by Mumbrella and B&T. The snapshot reveals a gap between leadership enthusiasm and operational reality inside marketing teams. ACAM's data also points to growing consumer comfort: an Adobe consumer study cited by the centre found 20% of Australians have already used agentic AI, and 42% expect to rely on it in daily life this year.
The uptake spans shopping assistants (30%), travel tools (29%), and banking interactions (23%). Those numbers suggest market appetite is building faster than marketers' ability to deploy agentic systems at scale.
Where the friction sits
Shifting from single-user generative AI tools to agentic systems that act on behalf of teams or customers raises hard operational questions. Governance frameworks, integration with existing martech stacks, end-to-end data flows, and clear success metrics all need to be in place, and the survey results imply many organisations have not yet resolved those pieces. Without them, agentic pilots stall or never start.
Comparable industry patterns show that when high intent fails to convert into pilots, the missing links are often stakeholder alignment and the absence of measurable value cases. For marketing practitioners, those are the areas likely to consume project time and budget if left unaddressed.
Why this matters for marketers
The headline is not awareness; it is execution. Agentic AI moves value creation from individual productivity boosts to orchestrated actions that can reshape customer journeys. Teams that wait for vendor toolkits or industry standards to harden risk falling behind while consumer expectations rise. Building internal capability now-whether through small, scoped pilots with clear governance or through targeted skill development-is the practical step that separates strategy from results. Practitioners who need structured learning on agentic workflows can explore resources like AI Agents & Automation training, which address orchestration and integration challenges head-on.
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