AI in Marketing Statistics 2026: Adoption, Budgets, Ads and Traffic

HubSpot’s State of Marketing survey found that 86.4% of marketing teams say they use AI in at least a few marketing areas. In the same survey, the percentage of marketers who don’t use AI and don’t plan to stands at just 1.7%. AI in marketing statistics show budgets moving the same way. Gartner found that chief marketing officers (CMOs) are allocating an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives, yet only 30% report mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities.

The clearest results so far show up in ad platforms and web traffic. Adobe Digital Insights measured that AI-referred visitors converted 42% more in March 2026 than other traffic to retail sites. Meta said its AI-powered Advantage+ end-to-end solutions reached over $75 billion in annual revenue run-rate in the second quarter of 2026. The figures below keep marketer surveys, platform-reported results and forecasts apart, because each one measures something different.

Key Takeaways

• 70% of CMOs say becoming an AI leader is a critical goal for 2026, yet 70% also acknowledge that their internal marketing processes are not yet mature enough to effectively implement and scale AI.
• Marketing leaders expect AI-driven automation of marketing work to more than double, from 16% in 2026 to 36% by 2028, per a Gartner survey of CMOs.
• In a Gartner survey of marketing technology (martech) leaders, 45% of martech leaders with AI agents in pilots or production say existing vendor-offered AI agent capabilities do not meet company expectations of promised business performance.
• Over 9 million small businesses are using at least one AI creative tool on Meta’s apps, the company said on its second-quarter 2026 earnings call.
• AI-referred retail visits delivered 37% higher revenue per visit (RPV) than non-AI traffic in March 2026, according to Adobe.
• Adobe expects AI traffic to US retail sites this holiday season to rise 130% year over year.

Editor’s Choice

• Marketing teams using AI in at least a few areas: 86.4%.
• Average share of marketing budgets allocated to AI: 15.3%.
• Meta Advantage+ annual revenue run-rate, Q2 2026: over $75 billion.
• Google AI Mode monthly active users, July 2026: surpassed 1 billion.
• Cyber Week 2025 sales driven by AI and agents: $67 billion.
• Growth in AI-driven retail traffic, Q1 2026: 393% year over year.

AI Adoption in Marketing Statistics

• In Salesforce’s State of Marketing Report, AI adoption continues to accelerate, with 75% of marketing organizations now using it in at least one form, though full integration remains a work in progress for 61% of marketing teams.
• The Salesforce figures come from a survey of nearly 4,450 global marketers.
• In The CMO Survey of US marketing leaders, companies reported, on average, using artificial intelligence or machine learning in 24.17% of their marketing efforts, and 55.91% over the next three years.
• HubSpot found 68.2% of marketers say they understand how to use AI in marketing, compared with 47% in 2025.
• In the same survey, 67.5% know how to measure AI impact, compared with 48% in 2025.

Source: HubSpot (2026), Salesforce (10th edition), Gartner (October 2025 and May 2026), The CMO Survey (2026)

Worth noting: The adoption figures measure different things. HubSpot counts marketing teams using AI in at least a few areas, 86.4%, while The CMO Survey measures the share of marketing efforts AI touches, an average of 24.17%. A team can use AI every day and still run most of its work without it.

About This Data

• Compiled from 14 sources: 6 marketer and CMO surveys, 7 company earnings materials, press releases and analytics reports, and 1 industry association report.
• Survey answers, platform-reported results and forecasts are labeled as such.
• Only releases from the organization that produced each figure qualified, and the page is reviewed on a rolling basis as sources publish new editions.

Top AI Use Cases in Marketing

• The CMO Survey found 73.9% of companies use AI for content creation and 65.4% for content personalization.
• Generative engine optimization (GEO), getting content to appear in AI-generated search results, and predictive AI for customer insights are each AI uses for 41.5% of companies.
• 39.9% use conversational AI for customer service, such as chatbots and virtual assistants.
• 32.4% use AI for programmatic advertising and media buying, where AI buys ad space to target customers in real time.
• Companies use generative AI in their marketing activities a mean 22.42% of the time.
• The use-case shares are based on 188 responding companies, each allowed to check every use that applied.

Recent Developments

• September 28, 2026: Adobe forecast US online sales of $275.1 billion this holiday season, growing 6.7% year-over-year, with AI traffic to US retail sites expected to rise 130%.
• July 29, 2026: Meta reported revenue of $60.80 billion, an increase of 28% year-over-year, as ad impressions increased by 14% and average price per ad by 12%.
• July 29, 2026: Meta said its AI-powered Advantage+ end-to-end solutions reached over $75 billion in annual revenue run-rate in the quarter.
• July 22, 2026: Google said AI Max is out of beta, and half a million advertisers have already adopted it.
• July 22, 2026: Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai said AI Mode has surpassed 1 billion monthly active users since expanding globally last October.

AI Marketing Budget Statistics

• Gartner’s 2026 CMO Spend Survey found CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives, and while 70% of CMOs say becoming an AI leader is a critical goal for 2026, only 30% report mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities.
• More AI-ready marketing organizations allocate 21.3% of their marketing budgets to AI initiatives, 6 percentage points above the survey average.
• AI-ready organizations also report average marketing budgets of 8.9% of company revenue.
• 56% of CMOs say their marketing organization lacks the budget required to deliver their 2026 strategy, while 54% report insufficient resources.
• The survey covered 401 CMOs and other marketing leaders in North America, the United Kingdom and Europe.

Total budgets barely moved: marketing budgets rose only slightly to 7.8% of company revenue in 2026 from 7.7% in 2025, Gartner said. With the total flat as a share of revenue, added AI spending is likely to come out of other lines in the marketing plan. HubSpot’s survey shows where marketers expect to add digital marketing spend:

• Marketers plan to increase investment most in AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, Claude (37.7%), narrowly ahead of paid social media at 37.4%.
• Website, blog and search engine optimization (SEO) spending is set to rise for 35.4% of marketers.

AI Automation of Marketing Work

• Marketing leaders expect AI-driven automation of marketing work to more than double, from 16% in 2026 to 36% by 2028, a rise of 20 percentage points.
• The forecast comes from the Gartner survey of 402 CMOs, conducted from August through October 2025.
• Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone, VP Analyst in the Gartner Marketing Practice, said: “AI experimentation has become table stakes for CMOs.”
• Gartner warns that CMOs who fail to move beyond early AI use cases risk getting stuck in costly “AI competency traps”.

Source: Gartner (May 2026), The CMO Survey (2026)

Generative AI in Marketing Statistics

• Content creation is where marketers lean on generative AI most, with 42.5% using AI extensively for it and 38% occasionally, according to HubSpot.
• 26.5% say AI has significantly increased productivity, while 66.2% say it’s slightly or moderately increased productivity.
• The vast majority of marketers (73.4%) say that they see AI working in conjunction with marketers, assisting them in performing most of their job duties.
• Expectations are higher because of AI: 83.5% of marketers say they’re expected to produce more content, and 35.7% say they’re expected to produce much more content.

AI Agents in Marketing Statistics

• 81% of marketing technology leaders are either piloting AI agents, or have already implemented AI agent initiatives across their organizations, Gartner found.
• Among leaders who are piloting or implementing AI agents, 89% expect their AI agent initiatives to deliver significant business performance benefits for their enterprise.
• 45% of martech leaders with AI agents in pilots or production say existing vendor-offered AI agent capabilities do not meet company expectations of promised business performance, and half of leaders say their organizations lack the technical and data stack readiness required for AI agent deployment.
• The top pilot use case is content or marketing asset production, cited by 52% of leaders piloting these tools.
• Salesforce reports that of the 75% of marketing organizations using AI for things like personalization, campaign prediction, or content generation, only 13% are tapping into the power of self-directed agents.
• The Gartner survey covered 413 marketing technology leaders, conducted in June through August 2025.

Why it matters: Gartner’s data points to spending outrunning readiness. CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives, but only 30% report mature or fully developed AI readiness capabilities. Agent pilots launched before the data foundations are ready risk the same disappointment.

AI Advertising Statistics on Meta and Google

• On Facebook ads, Meta said advances in its user understanding models, combined with its GEM ads ranking model, generated an 8.3% increase in ad clicks and a 15.7% uplift in conversions on Facebook in Q2 2026.
• Over 9 million small businesses are using at least one AI creative tool, and image generation saw adoption more than double this quarter, Meta said.
• Google said that among Google Ads users, those who adopt AI-powered campaigns like AI Max or PMax see an average of 15% more conversions or value on Search at a similar ROAS, where PMax is Performance Max and ROAS is return on ad spend.
• Google also reported a 20% improvement in showing highly relevant ads with Shopping ads in the quarter.
• Among small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), over half of Google’s SMB customers globally use AI to create or optimize their creatives.

Source: Meta Platforms Q2 2026 results release and earnings call, Alphabet Q2 2026 earnings call (July 2026)

Platform numbers carry a different weight from survey answers. They count what advertisers actually ran through AI tools, though each company picks which metrics to disclose.

Generative AI in Video Advertising Statistics

• Generative AI (GenAI) has reached video ad production: nearly two-in-three buyers now use GenAI for digital video creative, up from half in 2025, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB).
• One-third of their ad assets will leverage GenAI this year, up from one-fourth in 2025.
• Among smaller buyers, 96% are not satisfied with their current level of GenAI use for creative ad production.
• The IAB found nearly everyone (96%) agrees there’s a role for agentic AI, but there’s no consensus on what that role will be.

Source: IAB Digital Video Ad Spend and Strategy Full Report (2026)

The GenAI share of buyers’ ad assets is projected to reach 43% by 2027, the IAB reported. Smaller buyers are the group furthest behind that curve.

AI Search and Generative Engine Optimization Statistics

• Salesforce found 85% of marketers say AI is reshaping their SEO strategy, with 88% having already started optimizing for AI-generated answers.
• HubSpot found updating SEO for search changes is one of the top trends brands are tackling this year (cited by 40.6% of marketers).
• Of marketers, 70.2% believe they’re able to adapt their marketing strategy to the changes in organic search, such as AI Overviews.
• Google says AI Mode is driving an incremental increase in Search queries overall and that it is sending billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search.
• The Gemini app now has 950 million monthly active users, with daily active users tripling in the last year.

Source: Salesforce (10th edition), HubSpot (2026), The CMO Survey (2026), Alphabet (July 2026)

AI Referral Traffic Statistics

• Adobe reported GenAI-driven retail traffic continued its growth in the first quarter of 2026, increasing 393% year over year.
• Every industry saw an AI traffic boost during the first quarter of 2026, with travel at +233% year over year.
• 39% of consumers have used AI assistants for online shopping, and 85% of those who use AI for shopping agree that AI assistants have improved their online shopping experience, per Adobe’s survey of more than 5,000 US respondents in March 2026.
• Half of consumers (50%) report that when using AI for online shopping, they click on the links provided by the AI assistant, and 27% report they make their purchases directly through those links.

AI Shopper Conversion and Engagement Statistics

• AI-referred visitors to retail sites converted 42% more in March 2026, after converting at nearly half the rate of non-AI traffic a year earlier.
• Time per AI visit was 48% longer than visits from other channels in March 2026.
• Bounce rates were 32% lower than non-AI traffic in March 2026.
• AI-driven revenue per visit was 37% higher than non-AI traffic in the same month.

By the numbers: In March 2026, AI-referred visitors to US retail sites delivered 37% higher RPV than non-AI traffic, according to Adobe Digital Insights. A year earlier, non-AI-driven visits were worth 128% more than AI visits. AI referrals went from lagging other traffic to leading it inside a year.

AI in Holiday Shopping Statistics

• Adobe expects AI traffic to US retail sites this holiday season, measured by shoppers clicking on a link, to rise 130% year over year.
• The biggest uptick is expected on Thanksgiving (up 159% year over year), Adobe’s forecast shows.
• In an Adobe survey of 5,000 consumers, 77% of respondents who have used AI for online shopping report feeling more confident in their purchase, and 69% say they are less likely to return an item they bought.
• Salesforce data for Cyber Week 2025, November 25 to December 1, shows AI and agents drove $67 billion in sales, influencing 20% of all purchases.
• Retailers who utilized Salesforce’s Agentforce 360 and their own branded agents saw sales grow 32% faster than those without.

Conclusion

86.4% of marketing teams now use AI in at least a few marketing areas. Gartner found CMOs are allocating an average of 15.3% of marketing budgets to AI initiatives. The harder numbers sit underneath: the share of marketing work AI actually does is still a minority, readiness trails spending, and the clearest returns so far come from platform-reported ad results and from how AI-referred shoppers behave.

For marketers, the useful benchmark has moved past whether a team uses AI. It is how much of the work runs through AI, and whether that work shows up in conversions. Gartner’s CMOs expect AI-driven automation of marketing work to more than double within two years, so the gap between adoption and results is the number to watch.