Report: Many Marketers Have Yet to Unlock the Full Potential of Artificial Intelligence

Marketers have adopted artificial intelligence (AI) and begun to integrate it into their overall strategies. However, new research suggests that they are not harnessing the full power of this form of martech.

A new report from Albert and Forrester titled “Harnessing AI’s Potential” found that only 26 percent of marketers who have adopted an AI-driven marketing solution describe it as AI-autonomous, or collaborative in practice. This means that they collaborate with the technology instead of operating it.

Ideally, marketers should be utilizing assistive AI — the authors of the report describe this as using AI to surface insights for marketers to consider during manual decision-making.

In addition, only 39 percent of marketers say that AI can play a role in creative development, and just 34 percent believe that it can provide insights into additional business functions.

Marketers Still Hesitant to Embrace AI

Although AI holds numerous benefits, previous research has shown that not all marketers are keen to integrate it into their strategies.

The Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA) and Forrester Research published the “Global Digital Outlook” report for 2018-19, and statistics indicated that only 16 percent of marketers are actively working on AI-related projects at the moment, and 27 percent have no plans to tackle AI in 2019.

That being said, many marketers are aware of the fact that AI is shaping the way they do business. The majority of respondents (56 percent) said “AI technology will significantly impact the way we plan for and design customer interactions.”