AI in marketing felt like a shiny new toy for the past two years.
We experimented.
We played with prompts.
We marvelled at how quickly it could write a blog post or draft an email.
But in 2026, something profound has changed.
AI is no longer an experiment. It’s no longer optional. And it’s certainly no longer a novelty.
Welcome back to the Story-Driven Business Podcast!
If you are new to this podcast, my name is Susanna Rantanen, and I’m an entrepreneur, B2B business owner, CEO, and someone who leverages AI in marketing and business daily.
In this episode, I’m taking you through a fresh report on the State of AI in Marketing 2026 by Jasper.ai. If you don’t know what Jasper AI is, it is an AI-powered content platform and marketing co-pilot designed to help teams create, scale, and automate high-quality, on-brand content.
#214 AI in Marketing Has Matured: What 1,400 Marketers Reveal About It?
Find The Story-Driven Business Podcast On Your Favourite Podcast App
Subscribe to this podcast on your favourite app, and you’ll never miss a new episode about modern employer branding!
Better yet, if you love this podcast, make sure you rate it on your favourite podcast app!
Here are some of the platforms where you can find this podcast.
SPOTIFY | APPLE / ITUNES | YOUTUBE | AMAZON MUSIC | IHEARTRADIO | AUDIBLE
According to new research from Jasper.ai, based on a global survey of 1,400 marketers, AI has officially entered its operational era.
The conversation has moved from “Should we use AI?” to the much more serious question:
“How do we run AI as part of modern marketing operations?”
Their report pinpoints these highlights:
#1 AI in Marketing: Adoption is now universal and maturing
Today, 91% of marketing teams use AI. This is a sharp increase compared to 63% of marketers using AI in marketing in 2025. Furthermore, 63% report intermediate or advanced maturity with AI.
#2 ROI is much harder to prove, and therefore, more valuable, when it is
Only 41% of marketers can confidently prove the ROI of AI. This has gone down from the 49% rate last year. However, as AI use matures, this decline reflects rising expectations rather than weaker performance.
Where ROI is measured, most organisations report 2x or even greater returns.
#3 Scale is now the defining AI priority
Scaling high-quality content is now the number 1 AI objective for most marketers. And also the fastest-growing compared to 2025. Respondents report a 2.4x YoY increase as teams move from pilots to repeatable execution.
#4 Governance & quality are now the primary constraints on scale
Legal, compliance, and brand governance concerns have increased 3.4x YoY, becoming the leading blockers to AI scale.
This marks a shift from last year, when constraints centred on internal expertise, budget, and leadership buy-in.
#5 Maturity is the strongest predictor of marketing impact
High-maturity organisations operationalise AI through governed workflows, scalable content pipelines, and outcome-based measurement, focusing on business results rather than activity
#6 AI is changing marketing roles, not just workflows
1 in 3 marketers now have AI responsibilities built into their role, spanning prompt design, workflow development, and AI governance.
97% also say access to AI factors into their job decisions, and 75% say it is critical when considering a role.
That shift changes everything.
AI in Marketing 2026: From Curiosity To Core Infrastructure
Let’s start with the headline statistic.
In just one year, AI adoption in marketing has jumped from 63% to 91%.
Nearly every marketing team on the planet is now using AI in some form.
What felt like a futuristic option in 2024 has become as normal as using email or a CRM.
But here’s the important nuance: structured, official adoption is still surprisingly fresh. Almost half of organisations have only formally sanctioned the use of AI within the last 12 months.
In other words, most marketing teams are still learning to walk, while already being expected to sprint.
The Goal Has Changed with AI in Marketing: From Efficiency to Scale
In the early days (which was no longer than yesterday year!) AI was mainly sold as a productivity booster:
“Look how much time you’ll save!”
And yes, speed and efficiency remain huge benefits. Marketers still report faster time-to-market and reduced operating costs as the most tangible wins.
But the strategic priority has shifted.
The number one reason teams are investing in AI in marketing today is no longer just to work faster. It’s to scale high-quality content production.
This is a massive change in mindset.
AI is now seen as a way to:
- Produce more content across more channels
- Localise messages for multiple markets
- Create multi-asset campaigns at speed
- Personalise communications at scale
Marketers should no longer be asking, “How can AI help me write this one post?”
They’re asking: “How can AI help us run an entire marketing machine?”
The ROI Paradox: Value Up, Confidence Down
One of the most fascinating findings in the report is what’s happening with ROI.
- In 2025, 49% of marketers said they could confidently prove the ROI of AI.
- In 2026, that number dropped to 41%.
At first glance that sounds worrying. But it’s actually a sign of growing maturity.
Early on, ROI was easy to claim. If AI saved a few hours, that counted as a win.
Now expectations are much higher.
Leadership teams no longer accept “time saved” as proof. They want hard evidence of business impact, such as revenue, conversions and pipeline growth.
In employer branding and recruitment marketing, the business impact shows up in a different but equally tangible way.
In recruitment, we expect marketing to push the awareness of the job opening wider into relevant audiences, remind this audience of the opportunity to grow their willingness to consider, followed by conversions into applicants for the specific opening.
And these are all much harder to measure in connection with AI.
Employer Branding as Change Infrastructure in the AI Era
However, if we stop the conversation at recruitment efficiency, we are still thinking too small.
Because employer branding impact goes far beyond hiring metrics.
And, when connected with the major AI transformation hitting us all during the next couple of years, we should expect employer branding to also impact:
- Faster change acceptance
- Systematic change communication
- Business storytelling to fight resistance
- Building internal confidence and excitement, not just in our employees but also in our middle management and leadership
- Cross-organisational AI contribution driven by curiosity, a willingness to develop one’s own AI capabilities, understanding, and a culture that welcomes contribution.
- Cultural alignment
Yet here’s the encouraging part: among companies that do measure ROI properly, the results are impressive.
Most report at least 2x returns on their AI investments. In large enterprises, that figure is even higher.
So the value is there. The challenge is learning how to demonstrate it in grown-up, CFO-friendly language.
The New Enemy of Progress: Governance
Last year, marketers said their biggest challenges with AI in marketing were:
- Lack of expertise
- Limited budget
- Leadership scepticism
Not anymore.
In 2026, the number one barrier to scaling AI in marketing is something far less sexy:
Governance.
- Legal reviews.
- Compliance processes.
- Brand approval loops.
These are now the main bottlenecks holding AI back.
Teams can generate content at lightning speed.
But getting that content approved, aligned with brand standards, and cleared for publication is a whole different story.
AI has made creation easy. It has made coordination harder.
And that means the winners of the next few years won’t be the fastest prompt engineers. They’ll be the best organisational designers, and I want to add here, also the best strategists.
Marketing Roles Are Being Quietly Reinvented
Another major shift: AI is changing jobs, not just workflows.
One in three marketers now has formal AI responsibilities baked into their role.
New tasks include:
- Designing AI prompts and templates
- Building AI workflows
- Overseeing AI governance
- Training models
- Ensuring brand consistency
Marketing is becoming part creative craft, part technology operation. But the transformation doesn’t stop at marketing.
AI is not a marketing shift.
It is an organisational shift. And talent expectations are evolving fast.
AI Maturity Will Reshape Hiring and Employer Attractiveness
AI may be changing software development and marketing jobs, but it will impact all roles and responsibilities.
We will be seeing:
- Job descriptions changing
- New competence frameworks
- Hiring managers lacking evaluation capability
- HR struggling to assess AI competence
- AI literacy becoming part of employer attractiveness
And I want to add here that AI transformation will impact your business processes, your customer audience, your competitive advantage.
Not just in the talent segment, but also in the customer and other stakeholder segments.
This means AI will change how you lead your business.
AI will have a drastic impact on your leadership culture. And with that, I mean the way that you lead your business and your people.
How the AI Era Will Impact Your Ability to Attract and Retain All Talent
During digitalisation, we witnessed a major war for talent.
Those ’talents of the digital era’ were not limited to those who could apply digital tools in their roles.
And I’m saying that neither will it be this time.
The talents that you want to hire in the AI era will not be limited to those who are able to apply AI technology and tools in their roles.
[10-15 years ago] Organisations also needed talent that was pro-digitalisation with the capabilities and aptitudes to work as internal change agents, regardless of their actual role.
Talents, who shared their digital awareness within organisations and supported the official digital transformation in organisations.
Leadership really needed them badly because they had their hands full of operational change management while making sure cash flow was working and goals were being met.
My prediction is that it will be the same for the AI era.
My prediction is that it will be the same for the AI era.
Susanna Rantanen
You are not just looking for marketers who can use AI to create content.
You are looking for the same breed as your organisation was seeking 10 years ago: those riding the new waves, with excitement, sharing AI possibilities, insights, news, case studies, rabbit holes, and the overall AI transformation-related wisdom.
This calls for openness to change, adaptability and leading with vision.
It demands inspiring the entire organisation at all levels to take the necessary steps, supported by a new leadership culture, goals, processes and ways of working.
There will be multiple expectations and opportunities to learn and develop skills and understanding powered by AI, along with lots of discussions about the transformation, to make sure even the slowest adaptors feel confident moving forward.
From a talent acquisition and employer branding perspective, I can assure you that these kinds of AI change-makers are not abundant.
And the more companies realise they need these transformers, the more intense the war for AI-era talent becomes. I’ve seen this happening 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And, it’s about to happen very soon again.
And the more companies realise they need these transformers, the more intense the war for AI-era talent becomes. I’ve seen this happening 10 years ago, 15 years ago. And, it’s about to happen very soon again.
Susanna Rantanen
That’s where your employer attractiveness is everything.
It takes a good few years to change market perceptions and position.
It is NOT something a sudden marketing campaign will do. That won’t change perceptions or how your target audience evaluates, assesses, or understands you.
I saw so many organisations totally ignore this during digitalisation, and guess what happened? Not many of them exist anymore.
Story-Driven Employer Branding in the AI Era
Story-driven employer branding in the AI era is not about creating content with AI.
It’s a narrative communication system (The Magnetic Employer Branding Method™) that starts from within your organisation.
- Making sure your organisational AI maturity and internal confidence grow beyond tools and technology.
- Helps you provide your B2B clients greater value, as your AI maturity supports their AI transformation beyond tools and tech.
- Recognises how to match your leadership style (= culture) to your AI-driven business strategy to prevent weaknesses and threats and focus on your strengths and opportunities.
- Making sure the vital AI talk spreads throughout your organisation and helps your people grow their AI-era understanding and adaptability at their own pace.
As your organisation’s AI transformation progresses so well, it starts to leak outside, too.
This then starts to impact the perceptions your external audiences, from clients to job seekers and from investors to other stakeholders, place on you.
As you continue to manage those perceptions, you can integrate your B2B brand with your employer brand, because the competitive advantage in B2B is not in your products and services but in your people: how your people build and nurture trust and relationships with your stakeholders over time.
That is the value that you can actually grow the most. That is your competitive advantage.
From AI in Marketing To Organisational AI Maturity and Confidence
Imagine if your people lacked confidence in AI. Your business will appear weak, seriously damaging your competitive advantage.
It doesn’t take a genius to acknowledge that when the entire business world and work life are riddled with insecurities, fear, and stress, each of us will be attracted only to those who seem capable and willing to take away our pain and provide us with guidance, inspiration, and opportunities to help us survive and thrive.
Random content created with AI for marketing and sales purposes is unlikely to achieve that.
Going back to Jasper.ai’s study focusing only on the state of AI in marketing:
- A staggering 97% of respondents say that access to AI influences their job decisions.
- Three-quarters call it “critical” when considering a role.
For many professionals, joining a company that bans AI now feels like accepting a job without Internet access.
Professionals who want to thrive in the AI era are looking for employers and business partners with a reputation as forerunners in the AI era and capable of providing the environment to lead AI transformation.
Marketing Budgets Follow Belief
What else does this report tell us?
Well, it tells us none of this is just talk.
Real money is moving.
Most organisations now dedicate 11–15 % of their marketing budgets to AI. Large enterprises often allocate over 20 %.
And almost every marketer surveyed plans to increase AI investment in the next year.
AI is no longer a line item experiment. It’s becoming a foundational layer of the marketing stack.
Why AI Mindset Matters More Than Tools and Technology
Perhaps the most important insight of the entire report is this:
Overall, success with AI in marketing or elsewhere in the organisation has very little to do with the tools and technology.
It has everything to do with how mature your organisation is in its use of them.
Based on the study, high-maturity marketing teams consistently outperform others because they have:
- clear ownership of AI strategy
- defined workflows
- built-in governance
- proper ROI measurement
- marketing-specific AI systems
- the ideal atmosphere (as in leadership culture) that drives the development of an AI mindset
They don’t just “use AI.”
These organisations have redesigned how their operations, from tools and tech to leadership and organisational behaviour, from processes and practises to goals and rewards, function in the AI era, not with AI apps.
And those organisations see better results, higher impact, and even improved job satisfaction and decreased resistance to change.
The Real Lesson For All B2B Leaders
The era of casual AI dabbling is officially over.
In 2026, AI success isn’t about clever prompts or flashy tools.
It’s about:
- operational discipline
- governance structures
- process integration
- outcome-based measurement
- leadership culture and organisational behaviour that support and leverage the AI mindset
- updating your B2B brand to match what your customers, employees and relevant job seekers are desperately seeking
Every person your business needs to influence and impact is desperately looking for someone who can help them survive and thrive in this major transformation.
That’s why what you represent and how your business and people are perceived becomes a core competitive advantage for you.
But it must start internally as a system that helps build the AI mindset, develop your leadership culture, beliefs and internal adaptability so that when you start talking about it externally, your organisation backs you up.
And for that, business storytelling applied with the systematic method I’ve developed is the perfect aid.
Before I let you go, I want to finish with this thought:
AI has become part of the plumbing of modern marketing. And just like any critical infrastructure, it needs strategy, ownership, and standards.
The report puts it bluntly:
Leadership vision alone is no longer enough.
Impact depends on whether teams are equipped to use AI responsibly, consistently, and at scale.
The Bottom Line
AI doesn’t replace humans.
But it will replace the old way of doing business.
Whether we talk about marketing, hiring, selling, or developing our products and services, roles, processes, and leadership requirements will change. And, the expectations for key skills and capabilities will change.
The organisations that treat AI as a serious operating capability, not a creative shortcut, are the ones that will win the next decade. Because they take into account the new requirements for leading both people and business in the AI era.
Everyone else will be stuck wondering why their brilliant prompts didn’t magically turn into brilliant results.
And that, my friends, is the real state of AI in marketing.