In an age defined by automation, data, and algorithmic precision, the strongest advantages a marketer can cultivate may also be the most human.
Amid the excitement (and uncertainty) surrounding AI, many marketing leaders are beginning to recognize that technology alone cannot create differentiation. What will separate the good from the great is the ability to use that technology in authentic and trust-based ways that enhance empathy, creativity, and emotional connection.
That perspective shaped many of the discussions taking place at Advertising Week New York this year. While much of the content detailed ways brands and agencies are beginning to leverage AI for creative and operational benefits, a number of sessions also explored how marketers can balance efficiency with authenticity, and why the next phase of AI-driven innovation will rely as much on people as it does on platforms.
According to a new report, 96% of CMOs say they are prioritizing AI adoption, but just 65 percent of teams have begun making meaningful investments, and a mere 18 percent of marketers said AI has reduced their reliance on developers or data teams. This “optimism/execution gap” captures the reality of where many organizations stand. Leaders are eager to explore the possibilities of AI, but the transition from intent to impact remains slow.
The obstacles are not purely technical. Teams are grappling with unease about how AI will reshape roles, creative processes, and organizational structures. Adoption requires both trust and alignment—qualities that develop only when leaders ensure they have the right tech stacks in place to help minimize fragmentation and complexity and, simultaneously, communicate openly and give their teams room to experiment.
But once people see real results, their fears tend to subside: A 2025 Basis report found that 94.9% of decision-makers say their teams have embraced the use of AI in their marketing/advertising work, up significantly from just last year. Leaders can help build employee confidence in their teams’ AI adoption by celebrating early outcomes and small wins instead of waiting for perfect results and organization-wide transformation.
Many marketing organizations remain tangled in complex, overlapping systems. Elizabeth Maxson, CMO of Contentful, described this phenomenon as “platform purgatory,” a state in which too many tools create more friction than flow. Years of adding technology to fix inefficiencies have often had the opposite effect.
“We’ve all been trying to figure out how to use technology to fill gaps, fill places, do things differently,” Alice McKown, Publisher & CRO of The Atlantic. “But then we have a whole host of technology partners (and) vendors that maybe don’t all speak to each other, much less groups within our organizations that don’t speak to each other. So how can we really think about evaluating and prioritizing those things that work for us, and what can we be doing to mitigate this purgatory?”
Ultimately, the best way to do so begins with clarity of purpose and desired results. Marketers should start by defining the outcomes they hope to achieve and then identify the specific technologies that make those outcomes possible. This mindset shifts attention away from tool acquisition toward business results and collaboration.
Achieving this kind of clarity sometimes requires hard decisions about retiring outdated systems or integrating functions under a single, connected framework. Technology such as unified advertising automation platforms can help reduce complexity and allow teams to devote more energy to creative and strategic work.
Modern marketing demands speed. Campaigns must respond rapidly to trends, market shifts, and customer expectations, yet constant acceleration can also erode quality and authenticity.
The antidote to this conundrum is a strong brand foundation. When a brand’s purpose, tone, and values are clearly defined, teams can create localized and personalized work that still feels cohesive. Those shared guardrails can provide marketers with the confidence they need to experiment without sacrificing their identity.
Leaders should also think carefully about how they use the time AI gives back to them. Automation can streamline production, but the hours it saves should be reinvested in reflection, curiosity, and creative thinking. The human experiences that shape our perspectives ultimately make campaigns resonate.
In earlier eras, data served mainly as a post-campaign scorecard. Today it has become an active partner in creativity.
“This is an infinite loop,” said Maxson. “Data lives at every part of your cycle—from creation to publications, what channels you’re using, what audiences you’re speaking to—and having that data to be able to drive those decisions forward is going to be really important.” By harnessing the power of clean, unified data, marketers can harness new insights to generate new evidence-based creative ideas for specific audiences, then use the findings from the execution of those ideas to generate new data, and then repeat that cycle indefinitely.
When teams use insights to inspire creative direction from the beginning, they move from intuition alone to evidence-based storytelling. Each iteration strengthens both the analytical and imaginative muscles of the organization.
This fusion of logic and intuition is at the heart of modern marketing. Data is an indispensable guide, but human judgment is still crucial in determining how to best translate those numbers into meaningful outcomes.
Personalization remains one of marketers’ top priorities, yet only 25% of teams say they are currently using AI for audience segmentation and personalization. AI has made it easier to tailor messages, but personalization without empathy risks feeling mechanical.
Brands need to have a strong foundation, with brand guidelines and a clear idea of what makes you ‘you.’ With those guidelines and that voice at the core of any subsequent AI initiative, brands can then work to discern between what distinguishes their brand across different audience segments.
“From the outset, those guidelines need to be super clear, and then, you can really go off and play,” said McKown. “But you need to have those guidelines.”
The most effective brands are using AI to deepen understanding of their audiences rather than simply expanding their reach, focusing on identifying the right moments to connect with consumers and delivering the right message in those moments while striking a tone that feels genuine. In an AI-driven marketing age, authentic communication depends on knowing when automation and AI can enhance the user experience, and being able to discern them from those moments when technology detracts from it.
Lastly, the entirety of the process must be built on a foundation of trust—which, once lost, is exceedingly difficult (if not outright impossible) to recover. A 2025 Salsify report showed that 87% of shoppers will pay more for a product from a brand they trust, while a Mozilla study found that nearly 90% of marketers believe their brand benefits from a trust halo effect when advertising on trusted platforms.
The brands that capitalize and succeed here will be those that treat personalization as an authentic conversation, rather than treating it as a mere sequence of automated outputs.
“Users trusting a platform is extremely important,” said Suba Vasudevan, Chief Operating Officer at Mozilla. “In my mind, it’s very simple that trust results in conversion, it results in longer value from these users, longer engagement, (and) more lifetime value from those users.”
One of AI’s most promising potential benefits stems from the ways it lowers the cost of experimentation. Teams can now test creative approaches, audience segments, and formats at smaller scale and faster pace. Each experiment, be it big or small, provides learning that sharpens intuition and strategy.
This environment should invite curiosity, rather than fear. Leaders who celebrate incremental progress help their teams gain confidence and see experimentation as part of everyday practice. Progress often comes from trying, observing, and adjusting, and AI can meaningfully shorten that cycle.
One of the most tangible benefits of automation is the time it returns to creative professionals, reducing or outright removing much of the administrative work that has long dominated marketing operations. In a more automated marketing ecosystem, what will grow increasingly important is how teams use that reclaimed time to focus on the things we actually want to be doing.
With the right systems in place and the right guidance from leadership, automation and AI can allow marketers to devote more time to the activities that make them more insightful: listening, observing culture, and living experiences outside the office. Those lived moments fuel the kind of real-world empathy and storytelling that algorithms alone can’t effectively reproduce.
“I think the best marketers are people are out gaining lived experiences—you’re seeing real things come to life, and that fuels those ideas,” said McKown, “And so if we can get more time to be more human, I think we’re going to be more creative and be better marketers.
When taking a long-term view, the rise of AI is not a threat to creativity, but a challenge to use that creativity more intentionally. Technology can enhance speed and scale, but true differentiation and meaningful brand relationships still come from authentic human insight.
Differentiation in the years ahead will depend on how leaders combine automation with imagination and precision with empathy, and successful marketing will stem from using AI as a tool for amplifying human potential, rather than replacing it. The task now is to lead with empathy and to shape a future where technology supports the marketer’s curiosity and gives imagination more room to grow.
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For marketing and advertising leaders, the question is no longer whether to adopt AI, but how to do so responsibly and strategically. Our 2025 AI and the Future of Marketing report is designed to help industry leaders navigate that journey. It contains data-driven insights on adoption patterns, efficiency gains, risks and concerns, and workforce implications of an AI-powered future. Together, the findings highlight how AI is shaping marketing today, while illustrating how it is poised to redefine the industry in the years ahead.
