---
title: "Only 6% of Marketers Say AI Delivers Significant Gains, Bain Says"
description: "A Bain survey of 1,397 marketing and finance executives finds 95% of marketers have adopted AI, but few report major performance gains"
author: "rews desk"
published: 2026-09-30T11:30:01Z
modified: 2026-09-30T13:17:42Z
url: https://rews.cc/a/only-6-of-marketers-say-ai-delivers-significant-gains-bain-s-7fa146
language: en
tags: ["ai", "marketing", "productivity", "bain", "dentsu", "business"]
publisher: "Rews (https://rews.cc)"
---

# Only 6% of Marketers Say AI Delivers Significant Gains, Bain Says

*A Bain survey of 1,397 marketing and finance executives finds 95% of marketers have adopted AI, but few report major performance gains*

By rews desk · September 30, 2026 · https://rews.cc/a/only-6-of-marketers-say-ai-delivers-significant-gains-bain-s-7fa146

## In brief

- Only 6% of marketing organizations report significant AI performance impact, despite 95% adoption, Bain found
- Fast-growing “leader” companies were twice as likely as “laggards” to credit AI with double-digit gains
- A Dentsu Creative survey found 70% of senior marketers had not seen major cost efficiencies from AI
- One CMO told Bain teams of 5 to 10 people can now produce work that once required up to 50
- Indeed data shows marketing job postings are 25% below pre-pandemic levels

Only 6% of marketing organizations say artificial intelligence is delivering significant performance gains, even though 95% have adopted AI tools, according to a survey of 1,397 senior marketing and finance executives by management consulting firm Bain.

The findings, shared with CMO Insider on Tuesday, suggest a wide gap between companies’ spending on AI and the returns they have seen from it.

“It just speaks to the fact that transformation is hard, and it takes time,” said Laura Beaudin, a partner at Bain.

The survey found a divide between fast-growing companies and the rest. Bain defined “leaders” as companies with annual revenue growth of more than 11% and annual market share growth of more than 7%, and “laggards” as companies with flat or declining revenue or market share.

Leaders were twice as likely as laggards to say AI initiatives had generated double-digit revenue growth or cost savings, though they made up only a small portion of respondents.

Bain said leading companies were centralising their AI strategies to remove divisions between functions, rebuilding workflows, restructuring teams and directing AI at customer-focused uses, such as drawing on first-party data to produce insights and personalise marketing.

> “We’re just at the tip of the iceberg where people can really see that things are changing,” Beaudin said. “But it’s the knitting of it all together that is both harder, and where I think the big value will come from.”

Separate research released on Wednesday by advertising agency group Dentsu Creative found a similar pattern. Of 1,950 senior marketing decision-makers surveyed worldwide, 70% said they had not yet seen major cost efficiencies from AI.

“People were very bullish on it 12 months ago, that I’m going to be able to create millions of assets for a fraction of the cost, and I’ll buy the software, and magic will happen,” Patricia McDonald, global chief strategy officer at Dentsu Creative, told CMO Insider. “Now, what people are realizing is that the promise is still extraordinary, but buying the software is a fraction of the job.”

The pattern extends beyond marketing. A PwC survey of 4,454 chief executives published in January found that 56% said their companies had seen neither higher revenue nor lower costs from AI in the previous 12 months. Uber’s chief operating officer recently said the company was seeing productivity gains from AI but that converting them into measurable bottom-line returns was proving more difficult.

## Teams are being reorganised around AI

Beaudin said AI would push marketing organisations towards fewer narrow specialists and more generalists able to coordinate across functions. Wix chief marketing officer Omer Shai told CMO Insider he is hiring what he calls “full-stack marketers” instead of staff with titles such as content writer or product writer.

One chief marketing officer told Bain that teams of five to 10 people can now produce work that once required up to 50. Beaudin said some employees freed up by efficiency gains can be moved into other roles, but that some marketers are having to make difficult decisions about team size. Leaders in the Bain survey were twice as likely as laggards to restructure teams and job descriptions around AI capabilities.

The shift is taking place as the marketing labour market contracts. Job postings for marketers are 25% below pre-pandemic levels and have fallen faster than in almost any other white-collar sector over the past five years, according to research published this month by the hiring platform Indeed.

“Companies aren’t hiring fewer marketers because marketing matters less,” Indeed chief marketing officer James Whitemore wrote for CMO Insider. “They’re hiring differently because the role itself is changing.”

Beaudin said companies were likely to begin seeing returns as their reorganisations take effect. “We are optimistic that we will see more organizations seeing value in the next year,” she said, adding that many companies’ transformations remain “work in progress.”