Despite Promise of AI and Growing Pressure to Perform, Only 1 in 5 Marketers See Fast Growth

New Study Reveals What High-Performing Organizations Are Doing Differently to Pull Ahead

A new study from GrowthLoop, a pioneer in AI-driven marketing acceleration, reveals a growing disconnect between the hype around AI and the lived experiences of marketing leaders. The research, based on responses from over 300 senior marketers across North America, shows that while AI adoption is on the rise, performance and speed are lagging far behind.

The rise of AI brings incredible opportunities for marketers to work faster and smarter. But data shows that marketers still face bottlenecks in their marketing cycle, all while facing growing pressure to increase output and improve outcomes. 89% report that the pressure to perform has significantly increased in the last two years, yet just 22% believe their current strategies are driving fast growth. And only 10% say their teams are executing at the speed needed to succeed.

“This research is a reality check,” said Chris O’Neill, CEO of GrowthLoop. “There’s enormous promise around AI, but marketing teams continue to struggle to deliver real business impact when they are drowning in complexity. Unless AI helps tame this complexity and is deeply embedded into workflows and execution, it won’t deliver the speed, precision, or results marketers need.”

But some teams are pulling ahead. The report highlights a growing cohort of high-performing marketing organizations that have moved beyond surface-level tools and are integrating AI into their marketing workflows. By automating critical tasks like targeting, segmentation, and performance optimization, these teams can free up marketers to focus on strategy and driving measurable business outcomes at scale.

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GrowthLoop’s inaugural report, The 2025 AI and Marketing Performance Index—conducted in partnership with Ascend2—benchmarks where marketing teams are feeling stuck, and how the top performers are breaking through.

Key Report Findings
The data paints a clear picture: AI is viewed as a critical growth lever, but many teams still face bottlenecks in their marketing cycle. High-performing organizations are starting to break through this plateau by embedding AI more deeply, laying the groundwork for agentic systems that can drive scale, speed, and smarter decision-making.

The 2025 AI and Marketing Performance Index reveals the widening disconnect between marketers’ expectations for AI and the day-to-day challenges of adoption and execution, while also highlighting how top performers are closing the gap. Some key findings include:

• Marketing speed is directly tied to business growth. Only 34% of marketers describe their campaign cycles as fast or highly efficient. Yet those with faster cycles are twice as likely to achieve significant revenue growth, underscoring the link between agility and performance.
• High-growth teams are getting more out of AI. Companies that saw significant revenue growth in the past year are more likely to use AI to drive key outcomes when compared to other companies surveyed. These teams are beginning to adopt more embedded, agent-like applications of AI, such as predicting customer behavior (48% vs. 37%), automating segmentation (37% vs. 25%), and improving SEO performance (34% vs. 25%).
• Marketers see AI as a true growth accelerator. Most marketers view AI as a driver of business outcomes, not just productivity. 74% believe AI can accelerate marketing growth by at least 10%, and more than one-third expect gains exceeding 30%.
• Marketers want AI to complement, not replace, the human touch. As AI adoption grows, teams aren’t using it to replace human input, but to enhance it. The majority of marketers (86%) say AI is most effective when paired with human oversight, including areas like content creation, personalization, and behavioral prediction, where context and creativity are key.
• Barriers to AI adoption remain, especially around infrastructure and expertise. When it comes to integrating AI technology into their daily workflows, marketers cite data security (45%) and system integration challenges (37%) as top concerns. Meanwhile, 32% say a lack of internal AI expertise is holding them back. Companies investing in secure, self-serve infrastructure and team upskilling are best positioned to lead.

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Industry Experts Weigh In
The report findings echo what martech experts and marketing leaders have observed across the industry: AI’s potential is massive, but unlocking it requires a shift from using isolated, one-off tools to deploying systems that are embedded, intelligent, and fully connected to data and daily workflows.

“The marketers winning with AI are experimenting, curious and thinking of it as an accelerator, but being thoughtful about getting the underlying data right first,” said Humans of Martech Founder Phil Gamache. “Nearly every expert I interview says the same thing: get your house in order first; clean up your data, fix your processes, then pour AI fuel on the fire. AI can absolutely 10x your marketing speed, but only when you have the infrastructure and skills to handle that speed. In 2025, not using AI is hardly an option, but using it without a solid foundation isn’t going to get you where you want.”

That shift is already underway. Top-performing teams in the report are turning to AI to automate everything from audience segmentation to content iteration and performance testing in real time.

“These findings in the AI and Marketing Performance Index validate what we hear from enterprise marketers every day. They want AI that actually drives real business impact like top-line revenue growth and customer lifetime value, not just AI that pumps out more content,” added O’Neill. “Marketing has moved past the hype of generative AI into a new phase, where agentic AI can drive real results by giving teams the power to iterate, experiment, and compound learnings faster. We’re excited to be at the cutting edge of these developments with our Compound Marketing Engine, offering the cloud-native tools and seamless integrations that marketers and technology leaders need to stay ahead of the competition.”