The theoretical promise of Artificial Intelligence has collided with the practical realities of modern enterprise, giving rise to a new paradigm that many have begun identifying as “Superagency.”
Findings reveal a landscape of radical transformation and while AI investment is becoming a hot trend for many companies, a staggering 99% of companies are still in the early stages of maturity giving rise to a critical readiness gap, where motivated employees are outpacing cautious leadership in AI adoption.
Meanwhile, the pressure on CMOs and marketing professionals like yourself to improve financial ROI has never been more intense, even as AI begins to deliver clear, quantifiable improvements in efficiency and customer satisfaction. This guide tells you all you need to know about the Human-AI collaboration and how it is impacting the marketing sector.
What is the Reality of Economic Headwinds and Advertising?
The push towards an AI-driven future is not happening in a vacuum. It’s set against a backdrop of economic uncertainty and a permanently altered advertising ecosystem. This guide shows that while marketers are navigating these challenges, the momentum is undeniably shifting towards more intelligent, data-driven strategies.
Marketer Optimism in a Volatile Economy
Marketer sentiment provides a crucial lens into strategic planning. Our 2025 survey indicates a cautious outlook on the broader U.S. economy, a factor that influences budget allocation and risk appetite.
- Declining Optimism: Marketers’ optimism has fallen to an index score of 62.2 out of 100, down from 63.8 in late 2024 and a high of 69.6 in 2021.
- Pessimism on the Rise: A significant 48.2% of marketing leaders report being “less optimistic” about the economy compared to the previous quarter, a sharp increase from 29.4% in Fall 2024. Only 31.2% are “more optimistic”.
- Sector-Specific Concerns: The Energy (83.3%) and Education (80.0%) sectors show the least optimism, while Transportation (57.1%) remains the most positive, according to CMOSurvey.
Inflation’s Lingering Impact on Budgets
Inflationary pressures continue to be a primary driver of budget constraints. While the acute pressure may be easing, its effects are still shaping spending decisions.
- Decreased Spending: 43.5% of companies report that inflation is causing a decrease in marketing spending levels. This is an improvement from 48.7% in Fall 2024, but it remains a significant headwind.
- B2C Feels the Pinch: The impact is felt more strongly in the B2C sector, where 47.8% of product companies and 47.1% of services companies have cut back, compared to their B2B counterparts.
The Digital Advertising Landscape in 2025
Analysis shows that the $378.3 billion global advertising agency industry reveals a decisive and permanent consolidation of spending around digital channels. The truth is, marketers who fail to align their budgets with this reality risk becoming invisible.
| Advertising Channel | 2024 Revenue Share | Key Insight |
| Mobile Internet Ads | 37.6% | This has been the undisputed leader, driven by social commerce and in-app engagement. |
| TV and Film Ads | 26.4% | Remains a powerhouse, increasingly powered by data-rich connected TV platforms. |
| Desktop Internet Ads | 17.3% | Still a vital channel for considered B2B and e-commerce purchases. |
| Print Advertising | 7.6% | Now a niche channel for targeted, high-impact campaigns. |
| Out-of-Home (OOH) | 6.1% | Experiencing a digital resurgence with programmatic billboards and displays. |
| Radio Advertising | 5.0% | Adapting through podcasts and streaming audio advertising. |
The AI Investment Mandate: From Experimentation to Enterprise Integration
The mandate is clear, AI is the future. Our research shows that companies are moving aggressively from small-scale experiments to foundational, enterprise-wide AI integration. Here’s what they’ve been up to:
- Near-Unanimous Investment: A staggering 92% of companies plan to increase their AI investments by 2028.
- AI Use in Practice: The use of AI in optimizing marketing efforts has doubled since 2022, now accounting for 17.2% of all marketing activities. Marketers predict this will skyrocket to 44.2% within the next three years, a projected growth of 157%.
Why Has Only 1% Mastered AI
Despite the massive influx of capital, our study reveals a stark reality: almost no one has fully figured it out yet.
“While nearly all companies are investing in AI, only 1 percent of leaders call their companies ‘mature’ on the deployment spectrum, meaning that AI is fully integrated into workflows and drives substantial business outcomes,” as reported by McKinsey & Company.
The gap between investment and maturity is the single greatest strategic opportunity in marketing today. The companies that bridge this gap first will build a competitive moat that will be difficult for laggards to overcome.
What Role Do Humans Play In The AI Revolution
Technology is not a barrier to scaling AI. This research consistently points to a more complex challenge: aligning leadership, strategy, and talent to harness AI’s full potential.
Employees Are Ready to Move Faster
Our study for 2025 uncovered a profound disconnect. Leaders are dramatically underestimating their teams’ readiness and enthusiasm for AI.
- The Usage Gap: Employees are using generative AI for a third or more of their work at a rate 3x higher than their leaders imagine.
- The Blame Misplacement: C-suite leaders are 2.4 times more likely to cite employee readiness as a barrier to adoption than their own issues with leadership alignment.
- The Unmet Need for Training: 48% of employees rank training as the most important factor for successful AI adoption, yet nearly half feel they receive moderate or less support.
Proving Your Value As a Marketing Professional Value in the AI Era
As marketing becomes more tech-centric, the pressure on you to speak the language of finance and demonstrate ROI has intensified.
Today, being a great marketer is no longer just about being creative or having any sort of campaign execution, it is about proving measurable business impact. As AI reshapes marketing workflows, the expectation is not simply that you adopt these tools, but that you show how they directly translate into financial results.
That means fluently connecting marketing actions to metrics like revenue growth, customer lifetime value, profitability, and cost efficiency. The stats show it,
- The Top Challenge: The #1 challenge for marketers is “Demonstrating the impact of marketing actions on financial outcomes,” cited by 64.0% of leaders.
- Pressure From All Sides: Marketers report feeling increased pressure to prove their value from the CFO (63.3%), the CEO (61.4%), and the Board (50.0%).
To succeed in this environment, we must reposition ourselves as both storytellers and analysts, being able to balance the narrative of brand growth with the hard numbers that executives want to see.
All of these, while leveraging AI-driven analytics, attribution models, and real-time performance dashboards that gives marketers the ability to bridge the gap, turning marketing from a being all about “spending” into a “capital growth engine.”
Frankly, only those who master this shift will not only secure their place at the decision-making table but also redefine what it means to create value in the AI era.
The Marketer of Tomorrow: A New Profile for a New Era
This new environment is reshaping the marketing team itself. The primary challenge has shifted to acquiring and retaining talent that is fluent in both creativity and data.
- Hiring is the Top Challenge: 41.2% of marketing leaders identify “Hiring the best people” as their biggest people-related challenge.
- A Shift to a Blended Workforce: Our analysis shows a clear trend away from a purely full-time workforce. The percentage of planned hires for full-time employees has dropped from 82.5% in 2019 to 77.9% in 2025. This is being offset by a rise in hiring part-time independent contractors (now 9.9%) and full-time independent contractors (now 7.8%).
Benchmarking Performance and Redefining Success
The ultimate measure of this “Superagency” shift is its impact on business outcomes. Across all industries, our survey of marketing leaders reveals solid performance over the prior 12 months:
- Sales Revenue Growth: +8.3%
- Profit Growth: +7.8%
- Brand Value Growth: +8.4%
- Customer Retention Growth: +7.7%
- Customer Acquisition Growth: +7.5%
The Direct Impact of AI on Marketing Outcomes
When we isolate the impact of AI on marketing functions, the benefits become even clearer, showing strong year-over-year improvement:
| Performance Metric | % Improvement (Spring 2024) | % Improvement (2025) |
| Marketing Overhead Costs | -7.0% | -10.8% |
| Sales Productivity | +5.1% | +8.6% |
| Customer Satisfaction | +6.1% | +8.5% |
What Do You Do Next To Build A Superagency Marketing Team?
The evidence is conclusive. The era of AI-powered marketing is here, bringing with it a fundamental rewiring of strategy, talent, and leadership. The “Superagency” model, where human creativity is amplified by intelligent systems, is the new standard for high-performance marketing.
Based on our research for 2025, we recommend the following strategic actions for all C-suite leaders:
- Close the Readiness Gap Immediately: Your employees are ready. Invest heavily in structured AI training programs that move beyond theory to practical, role-specific application. Empower your millennial managers to become catalysts for change.
- Establish an AI Ethics Council: The high level of employee trust and C-suite concern creates a mandate for action. Form a cross-functional team to establish clear ethical guardrails, data governance policies, and transparency standards for all AI marketing activities.
- Upgrade Your Marketing KPIs: Shift from measuring channel metrics to demonstrating enterprise-level financial impact. Equip your CMO with the tools and analytics to connect every marketing dollar to revenue growth, customer lifetime value, and profitability.
- Embrace a Blended Workforce Model: The future marketing team is agile. Redesign your talent strategy to integrate a mix of full-time employees and specialized independent contractors to ensure you have the dynamic skills required to win.
The time for incremental change is over. The companies that act decisively on these insights will not only navigate the complexities of the current landscape but will lead the charge in defining the future of marketing.
This landmark 2025 study by Contentika is the most comprehensive analysis of its kind. Drawing on extensive surveys of thousands of C-level executives, marketing leaders, and employees across the United States and key global markets, this report provides an unparalleled view into the state of AI adoption, its impact on budgets and performance, and the critical human elements—leadership, talent, and trust—that will determine the winners and losers of this new era.
