Report: Marketers Remain Slow to Integrate AI into Their Strategies

Artificial intelligence (AI) has become a prominent tool among marketers, but new research suggests that many are still hesitant to incorporate it into their existing strategies.

Recently, Econsultancy and Adobe teamed up to conduct the “Digital Intelligence Briefing: 2018 Digital Trends” report to gauge how AI is being used by marketers globally. The statistics showed that many of top-performing companies (43 percent) do not have plans to use AI within the next 12 months. About 29 percent of top performers said they intended to use it, while 28 percent stated that they were already using it.

“The slow adoption could be put down to confusion or lack of knowledge around AI’s applications, amid widespread concerns over the societal impact of automation in general,” wrote the authors of the report.

The majority of agency respondents (61 percent) said that their company or clients are not planning to use AI because they have a lack of knowledge on how they can use it. Forty-four percent believe that they have no perceived need for AI at the moment.

Marketers and the Use for Artificial Intelligence

Previous research has hinted at marketers’ skepticism of AI. ICUC Social conducted the “Artificial Intelligence Survey” in 2017 to determine how marketers felt about AI and its usefulness in the workplace.

Respondents were asked to rate the importance of AI on a scale of one to ten, with ten being “extremely important.” In terms of impact, marketers gave AI a 6/10. They indicated that it was not “a game changer.” Approximately 68 percent said they were not using AI in any capacity at their company.