Marketers have lots of AI, but not enough direction

Despite the increasing adoption of AI, 64% of marketing teams don’t have an AI roadmap or strategy, according to a new study from the AI Marketing Institute. That reflects an enterprise-wide problem. More than half the companies implementing AI haven’t instituted the policies, procedures and oversight to operate the technology safely.

According to the 2025 State of Marketing AI Report:

• 55% of respondents say their company doesn’t have policies guiding the use of AI.
• 51% don’t have an AI ethics policy or responsible AI principles.
• 59% don’t have AI councils charged with developing policies and practices. 

However, it is important to note the positive trend: All these numbers are rising. For example, 25% of marketers said they have a roadmap, up six percentage points from the previous year. Similarly, the number of companies with an AI ethics policy nearly doubled, from 23% in 2023 to 41% this year. Also, 29% of companies have an AI council, up from 25% in 2024.

Signs of improvement

Marketers increasingly understand how important AI is to them and marketing as a whole. Three-quarters say AI will be “very important” for the next 12 months, an eight-point jump from the previous year. People seeing it as “critically important” increased by 20 percentage points since 2021. 

Those numbers reflect the growing integration of AI in marketing. This year, 40% of respondents say they’re actively testing out AI tools. Another 26% are building AI into their day-to-day work. At the most advanced end of this spectrum, 17% say they’re at the point where AI is reshaping how they approach their jobs. The same percentage reports being in the early curiosity or understanding phases.

For marketing teams as a whole, 46% say they’re running initial AI projects. Fourteen percent are scaling AI use more widely across the team. The 60% total is an 18-point increase from 2023, when just 42% said the same.

Dig deeper: If your teams aren’t ready for AI, then your tools won’t matter

With marketers constantly asked to do more with less, it’s no surprise that 82% say what they want the most from AI is saving them time on repetitive, data-driven tasks. Getting more actionable insights from data (65%) and accelerating revenue growth (63%) were next on the priority list. 

Lack of AI training remains the biggest problem

Marketers would be further along in adopting AI if they had more education and training. The lack of those was cited by 62% as the biggest hurdle they face, the fifth consecutive year it led the list. Sixty-eight percent said they have received no AI training from their companies. The situation seems unlikely to change, as 51% of CEOs/founders/presidents say the lack of training isn’t a problem.

The importance of AI skills is likely weighing heavily on marketers, with 53% of them believe the technology will eliminate more jobs than it creates, up from 40% only two years ago.

What do you believe the net effect of AI will be on marketing jobs over the next 3 years?

Paul Roetzer, AI Marketing Institute’s CEO, called out this issue in his introduction to the report.

“We are now seeing increasing signals that wide-scale job disruption from AI is on the horizon,” he wrote. “We’ve already been seeing ‘quiet AI layoffs’ for the past six to 12 months … where companies replace staff with AI or, at minimum, refrain from hiring new staff due to AI. … They have masked these moves under things like return-to-work policies to avoid bad PR.”

It’s clear that the most innovative companies will be the ones that offer AI training. Not only will they increase their expertise on vital technology, but they will also avoid the high costs and lost opportunities that come with employee churn.

Methodology

The report surveyed nearly 1,900 marketing and business leaders in core digital marketing areas like content marketing, social media marketing, email marketing, analytics, advertising and SEO. It was conducted from February to April 2025. The full report can be found here. (Registration required.)