{"id":904513,"date":"2026-05-09T03:12:21","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:12:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/09\/digiday-research-marketers-ai-use-rises-but-tech-skills-stall\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T03:12:21","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:12:21","slug":"digiday-research-marketers-ai-use-rises-but-tech-skills-stall","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/09\/digiday-research-marketers-ai-use-rises-but-tech-skills-stall\/","title":{"rendered":"Digiday+ Research: Marketers\u2019 AI use rises, but tech skills stall"},"content":{"rendered":"

This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It\u2019s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series \u2192<\/a><\/p>\n

This is an excerpt from our Digiday+ Research report \u201cThe marketer\u2019s guide to AI applications, agentic AI, AI search and GEO\/AEO in 2026<\/a>,\u201d which explores how marketers are navigating the opportunities and challenges AI brings as it becomes an indispensable part of marketing. The report is based on a survey of 142 brand and agency professionals, as well as individual interviews with marketing and technology executives responsible for AI investments and applications development<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Digiday\u2019s survey \u2014 which has been conducted annually since 2022 \u2014 found that marketers\u2019 adoption of AI technology has risen significantly. In 2022, 44% of brand and agency pros said their companies were investing in AI technology. That percentage rose to 57% in 2023 and 71% in 2024, before hitting 86% in 2025.<\/p>\n

AI\u2019s growing importance for marketers has also become evident in the number of companies that have created chief AI officer positions over the past two years. In 2024 and 2025, brands General Motors, Mastercard and ZocDoc appointed AI chiefs, as did agencies Golin, Luckie & Co. and Horizon Media.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn every industry there\u2019ll be a percentage of companies that figure [AI] out, then a large percentage of companies that don\u2019t. And I think the economic upside to figuring it out makes for such a big competitive gap,\u201d Wesley ter Haar, co-founder and recently appointed chief AI officer of digital agency Monks, told Digiday in April.<\/p>\n

Consumer adoption of AI has seen significant growth, as well, and, as a result, many brands are now regularly using AI in consumer-facing applications. PetSmart, for example, relaunched its member program using AI to tailor deals for customers based on their past purchases, and Guitar Center launched a chatbot called Rig Advisor to help customers select the right products to suit their needs.<\/p>\n

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However, as AI technology evolves and becomes more complex, many of the marketers Digiday spoke with for this report said that training employees on how to best use AI tools lags behind overall adoption.<\/p>\n

Dan Gardner, co-founder of creative agency Code and Theory, said that\u2019s particularly apparent when it comes to upskilling and reskilling team members. \u201cAnybody can learn a new tool. Upskilling and reskilling is multiplying the value of your human ingenuity,\u201d Gardner said. \u201cFor example, a designer is trained in communicating design. Using an AI tool to design a little easier is not making them more skilled. They\u2019re just using a new tool. The way to upskill is to multiply the value by which they understand communication design. There has not been enough emphasis on the new way to work versus implementing tools.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Matt Maher, founder of independent research and development firm M7 Innovations, said that, while individual users may be comfortable with AI tools, companies generally aren\u2019t using the tools to their full capacity. \u201cUsers are definitely more knowledgeable at a baseline level, but there is a delta between understanding tools like ChatGPT, which has 800 million weekly active users, and Gemini, which has 400 million a month, and then using them to their utmost potential,\u201d Maher said.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen a company adopts [Anthropic\u2019s] Claude and uses APIs for all of its internal software, and [Microsoft] Copilot for essentially everyone, it feels like a big machine,\u201d Maher added. \u201cIt\u2019s almost a failure of imagination of how much you can actually use these tools if you push them to their limits. \u2026 Big tech isn\u2019t great at showing people the amazing things they can do. \u2026 There\u2019s still a gap, even though, at a baseline, we\u2019re all getting used to AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

When organizations \u2014 including marketing teams \u2014 make moves to adopt AI technology before they\u2019ve fully developed a plan on how that technology should be used, a gap often results between how much is being invested in AI tools and the return on that investment, according to Marc Maleh, global CTO at design and technology agency, Huge.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou have massive investments on AI and the basics of all of them is the infrastructure layer \u2014 TPUs [tensor processing units] from Google, GPUs [graphics processing units] at Nvidia \u2014 somebody has to pay for that,\u201d Maleh said. \u201cEvery 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, and all of the layers within the AI ecosystem.\u201d Paying to use that infrastructure is becoming a greater concern for brands, Maleh explained. \u201cWhat if I want to turn on 500 more seats of Claude code? What does that look like financially? Am I going to get that money back if I\u2019m only getting a 30% productivity increase?\u201d Maleh asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a realization about the economics of GPUs and TPUs because money is going into those things,\u201d he added. \u201cAll of a sudden, those models have to get monetized in a real way. AI was the shiny object and continues to be that. Brands thought, \u2018We want the press release, so let\u2019s worry about the GPU and TPU charges and the API calls later.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Digiday\u2019s survey found that the majority of marketers continue to implement AI technology into their workflows by using out-of-the-box AI tools, rather than building tools in conjunction with existing large language models such as Google\u2019s Gemini or OpenAI\u2019s GPT, or building and training their own LLM in-house.<\/p>\n

Eighty-five percent of survey respondents said their company is using out-of-the-box AI tools. Less than half of respondents (40%) said their company is building proprietary tools with an existing LLM, and only 19% said they\u2019re building and training their own LLMs.<\/p>\n

The expense of building customized AI tools through an existing LLM or building and training a proprietary LLM, along with the learning curve associated with implementing either of these options, are the likely reasons why most marketers are choosing to use out-of-the-box AI tools. Smaller companies also may not be able to afford an AI team dedicated to creating custom tools.<\/p>\n

Huge\u2019s Maleh noted that several new out-of-the-box AI tools have become available to marketing teams within the past year. \u201cWhat\u2019s actually happened is there\u2019s more available out-of-the-box models now,\u201d Maleh said. \u201cWhether it\u2019s an Adobe or a Google, you can start with a base model that somebody else has already invested time in creating, and then customize it to your needs. That\u2019s a lot of what Google\u2019s Cloud Platform has with out-of-the-box tools like Vertex.\u201d<\/p>\n

Google Vertex AI is an AI development platform that uses Google Cloud\u2019s infrastructure to let users build their own custom AI or machine learning models. The platform offers pre-built models that serve as a base for users to build custom tools and capabilities.<\/p>\n

Maleh said another change to the AI landscape that has taken shape over the past year is a democratization of AI models and collaboration among some of the big industry players, such as Adobe and Google\u2019s recent partnership in which Google\u2019s Gemini, Imagen and Veo models are integrated into Adobe\u2019s creative tools. \u201cNow, if I\u2019m using Adobe\u2019s Firefly but I want to use Google\u2019s Nano Banana as my asset generation model, I can do it within the Firefly console,\u201d Maleh explained. \u201cA year ago that wasn\u2019t the case. It was Firefly or nothing. \u2026 We went from a place where a lot of platforms were walled gardens to where it\u2019s more opened up.\u201d<\/p>\n

M7 Innovations\u2019 Maher said that some tech companies are lowering the barriers around their AI services and allowing brands to build on top of existing features. \u201cWhat I\u2019m starting to see now is a tech stack,\u201d Maher said. \u201cThere\u2019s not gonna be one to rule them all. I\u2019ve seen brands say, \u2018Copilot is our base, and we stack Claude on top with a bunch of really smart APIs.\u2019 Or, \u2018We use Adobe Firefly to create and we have Canva to complement.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

This can result in significant savings for brands, Maher added. \u201cI\u2019m starting to see cost efficiency gains \u2014 partnering with the bigger companies, but creating their own version or sandbox. \u2026 And you\u2019re saving a lot of money because you\u2019re not having to build it from scratch,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a>
\n Catherine Wolf<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This research is based on unique data collected from our proprietary audience of publisher, agency, brand and tech insiders. It\u2019s available to Digiday+ members. More from the series \u2192 This is an excerpt from our Digiday+ Research report \u201cThe marketer\u2019s guide to AI applications, agentic AI, AI search and GEO\/AEO in 2026,\u201d which explores how<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":904514,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66553,3801,46],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-904513","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-digiday","8":"category-research","9":"category-technology"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904513","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=904513"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/904513\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/904514"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=904513"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=904513"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=904513"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}