70% of marketers see agentic AI as transformative, but effectiveness remains unclear

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Despite rising adoption of AI tools across marketing functions, a recent global survey reveals a stark disconnect between expectation and clarity. Nearly 70% of marketing decision-makers agree that agentic AI—AI that can take autonomous actions based on goals—will transform the industry. Yet only 27% feel confident that they understand how to evaluate its real-world effectiveness.

The findings, published in a report titled Navigating Agentic AI in Marketing, reflect growing C-suite interest in AI agents that can generate and optimise content, personalise experiences, and even orchestrate campaigns. However, marketers appear to be grappling with implementation barriers, lack of benchmarks, and uncertainty around control, ROI, and brand alignment.

Agentic AI systems go beyond prompts and predictions: they act with minimal supervision, making them both powerful and risky. Respondents cited concerns around brand safety, hallucination risks, and black-box decisions as key blockers to adoption.

The report calls for stronger measurement frameworks, standardised KPIs, and better cross-functional collaboration between marketing, data science, and legal teams. Without these, marketers may fail to convert AI hype into business results.

Still, nearly half the respondents said they are already running pilots or proof-of-concepts, mostly in content automation, performance media, and personalisation at scale. There’s growing consensus that agentic AI is not just another tool—but a shift in how marketing teams work and make decisions.