A new global study, Marketers and GenAI: Diving Into the Shallow End from SAS and Coleman Parkes Research, reveals that while 90% of organisations plan to invest in generative AI for marketing in 2025, 90% of CMOs admit that they do not fully understand GenAI or its potential impact on business processes.

This lack of detailed understanding of GenAI among senior decision makers in marketing may be hindering the eventual adoption of more sophisticated uses of GenAI – uses that could translate to improved organisational efficiencies, sustained marketing effectiveness and ultimately a sustained competitive advantage.

While 75% of marketers are currently using GenAI in their day-to-day work – in fact, marketing is ahead of other business functions, including IT, in the adoption of GenAI – many marketers are using GenAI for simplistic tasks like copywriting, editing and content creation, which only scratches the surface of what’s possible. When it comes to more sophisticated marketing use cases, only:

    18% are using the technology to build audiences
    16% are using GenAI for customer journey mapping
    14% are using it for price optimisation
    19% are using GenAI for audience targeting

This is not optimal as marketers report that when they do embrace GenAI, they are seeing strong return on their investment, particularly in terms of personalisation (92%), customer satisfaction and retention (89%), processing large data sets (88%), and accuracy in predictive analytics (88%).

“It isn’t surprising that marketers lead the way in GenAI adoption, as it lends itself to experimentation and creativity – both hallmarks of the marketing profession,” said Jenn Chase, Chief Marketing Officer and Executive Vice President at SAS. “However, it is disappointing that a lack of understanding of GenAI at the CMO and senior management level is holding organisations back from experiencing the full potential of this exciting new technology. Education and training are critical to overcome this obstacle as GenAI usage not only increases productivity, but it can also improve customer experience and drive business growth.”

The good news is this looks set to change as marketers predict that they will expand their use of GenAI within the next one-to-two years in the hope of saving time and costs (63%), improving risk management and compliance (62%), and enabling more efficient processing of large data sets (60%). One in five anticipate immersive applications such as adaptive virtual reality, rising to three in ten among those who have already fully adopted GenAI.

While lack of strategic direction from CMOs is an obstacle to successful utilisation of GenAI, so too is concern over privacy and trust. Six in ten (61%) marketers reveal their main concern about GenAI usage is data security, and 61% also cite data privacy. These are the top two concerns across all respondents and with good cause. While one-third of organisations have a well-established and comprehensive governance framework for data management, this falls to less than one in ten for GenAI. Those who have fully implemented GenAI for marketing are more likely to have a well-established and comprehensive governance framework, but four in ten do not.

“A significant gap exists between the art of what is possible with GenAI for MarTech, and what is being accomplished today,” said Jonathan Moran, Head of MarTech Solutions Marketing at SAS. “The research highlights that most organisations across industries have significant work to do around GenAI education and enablement as well as data governance and compliance - and performing that work will aid in fostering trust between brand and consumer when it comes to the application of AI for marketing and customer experience pursuits.”

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