Week of July 13, 2026
Marketing leads every function in AI adoption
Marketing is already the leading business function for AI adoption
52%
52% of AI-adopting firms use AI in sales and marketing, ahead of strategy and business development at 45% and IT operations at 41%.
Source: US Census Bureau BTOS study - The Microstructure of AI Diffusion
“Being first resets the expectations for speed, personalization, and measurable output around what marketing can now do, and planning has to account for a baseline that keeps moving. That advantage only holds for teams that build AI into how the work gets designed rather than reaching for it occasionally.”
Marissa Prince, Director of Marketing Strategy & Planning, ActiveCampaign
Analysis
What the numbers actually mean.
Marketing is the most AI-saturated function in the business.
More than half of AI-adopting firms put AI to work in sales and marketing, ahead of every other function. Across eight years of McKinsey's State of AI research, marketing and sales have consistently ranked among the functions most likely to be using AI, and marketing and sales saw the biggest adoption surge of the past two years, more than doubling since 2023.
Adoption thins out the further you get from the customer.
The functions closest to revenue show the highest usage, while finance, recruiting, and legal all sit at less than half the rate of marketing. The pattern says something about where AI earns its keep fastest: work that is high volume, creative, and constantly measured gives AI the most room to help and gives the person using it the quickest read on whether it worked.
Leading on adoption raises the bar for everyone in marketing.
When marketing is the function most saturated with AI, the baseline expectation for output, speed, and personalization climbs with it, and standing still starts to read as falling behind. The advantage now belongs to marketers who move past drafting with AI and start planning, executing, and measuring with it across the full campaign.
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