AI adoption is skyrocketing, and marketers are at the center of it.
In a new survey conducted by Webflow, over 100 marketing leaders and 300+ practitioners shared how they’re adopting AI, where they feel pressure, and what’s standing in the way of long-term success.
The picture that emerges is one of momentum and tension: marketers are experimenting boldly, but many are still finding their footing when it comes to training, trust, and evolving search dynamics.
The adoption wave
Adoption has come quickly and AI tools are reshaping marketing work almost daily, and teams are moving fast to keep pace. The survey highlights a few key dynamics:
- Roughly one third (30%) of marketing practitioners use AI daily. Another third (34%) use AI less than weekly.
- 28% of marketing practitioners say they're fully leveraging AI in their daily work
- More than half (55%) say they feel empowered or excited by the push to adopt these tools.
- One in three practitioners feel pressured to adopt tools without adequate support, skeptical that the tools are ready for prime time, or overwhelmed by the number of options.
The motivation for adoption from leaders indicates a mutual push for better leveraging the tools and creating a more empowering environment. Marketing leaders see the most benefit for their teams to use AI to increase speed and efficiency, better personalize and target, and enhance creativity and idea generation, in that order.
Meanwhile, with concerns around budgets and resources rising, leaders actually saw cost savings as one of the three least important benefits of AI in marketing today.
To make the most of these benefits, teams need to prioritize training and overall AI fluency. This will lead to better and more highly trusted outputs from AI tools.
- Marketing leaders see lack of AI training and lack of trust in outputs (both #1 at 15%) as the top impediments to using AI tools effectively
- For marketing practitioners, the top reasons they've stopped using AI are the tools not working as expected (#1 at 21%), not trusting the output (#2 at 18%), and lack of support or documentation (#3 at 17%)
The good news is most companies offer AI training at a higher rate than common wisdom. Almost two-thirds of marketing leaders (63%) and 57% of marketing practitioners cite their organization as having some form of AI training.
This tension reflects the dual reality of rapid adoption: marketers are energized by new possibilities while navigating the frictions that come with building fluency in real time.
Where the pressure comes from
Many assume the push for AI adoption comes from the top.
Instead, the biggest source of pressure is the market itself. The number one source of pressure is the market, cited by 30% of practitioners and 28% of leaders. With AI dominating conversations, many feel that if they’re not operationalizing, they’re already behind.
The result: teams are integrating AI into use cases like content creation, data analysis, market research, and web development, even as 40% of practitioners say they haven’t received training, and 37% of leaders acknowledge training isn’t yet on the roadmap.
Adoption meets reality
AI is designed to boost efficiency, but trust is still a hurdle. Leaders cite security, safety, and confidence in outputs as their biggest barriers (#1 at 15%). Practitioners echo those concerns, pointing to bottlenecks created by over-automation, content that feels generic and requires heavy editing, or tools that provide inaccurate information.
Surprisingly, content creation was not the #1 use for AI among marketing leaders surveyed about their teams. Data analysis and reporting was #1 (38%), content creation was #2 (35%), and market or audience research was #3 (34%).
Practitioners look to AI for these tasks regularly, but appear to encounter challenges in their workflows. One respondent said, “AI sometimes creates friction in data accuracy and content quality, requiring extra time for review and correction.”
These challenges highlight where progress needs to happen next. Turning experimentation into fluency for better prompting and integration of AI tools into workflows is what will unlock efficiency, personalization, and creativity at scale.
The moving target: Answer Engine Optimization (AEO)
There is a growing contradiction about AEO.
Marketing leaders (93%) and marketing practitioners (91%) both agree that AEO will be somewhat or extremely important to their company's success in the next two years. Yet, only 25% of marketing practitioners say they fully understand what AEO is. That’s a huge disconnect.
AI is changing how teams work together and how audiences find brands. Declining traffic from traditional search has put pressure on teams to adapt to a new reality: answer engine optimization (AEO).
The opportunity is real, but so is the uncertainty. Forty-two percent of practitioners describe AEO as “a moving target,” where the rules keep changing. AEO has led to a shift in how marketers approach content discoverability. Marketers are taking action, with 48% of marketing leaders already testing AEO tactics while another 20% have a defined AEO strategy and roadmap.
When prompted to share current AEO tactics, practitioners consistently highlighted content strategies that emphasize clarity, direct answers, and structured data.
And this has changed the metrics teams are tracking. Traffic from AI engines (#1 at 42%), engagement or conversion rates from AI traffic (#2 at 39%), increases in brand mentions or citations in AI search (#3 at 33%) top the list of AEO-related metrics added to marketing leaders’ KPIs.
AEO adoption is happening quickly, and fluency will need to follow.
Creativity in the age of AI
Marketers repeatedly point to creativity as their most valuable asset. The survey reveals a tension: AI can accelerate production, but it can also flatten originality when used without clear strategy.
Practitioners call out the risks: some describe AI outputs as “generic content” that needs heavy editing to meet brand standards. Others worry about over reliance, where employees “become dependent instead of brainstorming using their own thoughts and ideas.” A few note that when AI is used without guidance, it “takes the human resources out of the job.”
These signals aren’t rejections of AI.
Instead, they’re reminders from teams who understand that creativity and human judgment can’t be automated. When asked what creates the most friction, one practitioner summarized it clearly: “AI creates more friction when people don’t know how to use it and for what tasks. We definitely need more AI education.”
The takeaway is that creativity matters more than ever.
Organizations that invest in fluency will give their teams the ability to use AI for efficiency and scale, while protecting the originality that makes brands stand out. With thoughtful adoption, AI can clear the clutter of routine tasks and create more space for the imaginative, brand-defining work that only people can do.
The next phase of adoption
This survey shows a profession in motion.
Marketers are adopting AI at remarkable speed, using it daily, experimenting broadly, and confronting real pressure along the way. The next breakthroughs will come from closing the gaps in training, building trust in outputs, and adapting to fast-moving standards like AEO.
AI is no longer a question of if, but how. The marketers who master fluency, protect creativity, and learn to harness AI with purpose will set the pace for the industry, while those who hesitate to adopt it will struggle to keep up.aeoo
