CHICAGO, Oct. 19, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Basis (https://basis.com), the leading intelligent operating system for autonomous advertising, today released survey data showing that AI adoption among marketing and advertising professionals jumped significantly with 61.4% saying they use generative or agentic AI in their work every day — up from 33.6% a year ago. The fourth annual edition of the Basis “AI and the Future of Marketing” report surveyed 184 marketing and advertising professionals across agencies, brands, and publishers in August 2026 to track how AI is reshaping the industry. The full report is available at: https://basis.com/reports/ai-and-the-future-of-marketing-2026-edition.
Usage
- AI with marketing and advertising professionals is universal, as 98.4% say they use generative or agentic AI in their work.
- Just 6.5% of marketing organizations measure the ROI of their AI investments against defined benchmarks, and 65.1% either do not measure it at all or are unsure whether anyone at their organization is doing so.
- Use remains concentrated at the front end of the campaign lifecycle — 85.9% use AI for research and 83.2% for ideation.
- Anthropic’s Claude posted the sharpest one-year gain of any platform, used by 72.3% of marketers today, up from just 17.9% in 2025; ChatGPT usage fell to 74.5% from 88.6%.
- 88.6% of organizations now pay for premium AI tools, up from 65.7% last year and 44.0% in 2024; 43.5% use a custom or semi-custom AI model, up from 28.5% a year ago.
Effects
- 96.9% of marketing and advertising leaders say their teams have embraced AI, up from 74.6% two years ago.
- 47.8% of organizations have replaced human tasks with AI solutions within the past 12 months, up from 27.9% a year ago and just 10.4% in 2023.
- Use of AI agents (software that pulls data, makes decisions, and takes action with limited human oversight) surged 155.5% year-over-year, with 51.1% of organizations now deploying them for tasks including reporting and analytics (72.3%), campaign brief creation (56.4%), and content creation (45.7%).
- Half of marketers (50.6%) believe AI will lead to substantial job losses in digital marketing within the next three to five years — down from 58.6% last year.
Concerns
- “Analysis” is the task that is most expected to be impacted at 27.2% (up from 11.3% two years ago); in contrast, 57.4% of marketers expected AI to change content creation in 2024, but just 23.4% say so in 2026.
- 76.6% of marketers say AI-generated content still falls short of their organization’s human-generated work.
- 100% of marketers agree AI poses a brand safety and misinformation risk.
- Concern about AI’s environmental impact has nearly doubled in two years, from 53.2% in 2024 to 81.1% today.
Marketers are deploying AI deeper into the campaign lifecycle than ever, handing data optimization, content production, and even full campaign briefs to autonomous agents. However, this is being conducted without the benchmarks or first-party data infrastructure to confirm whether the results are actually improving, rather than simply arriving faster. Basis’ findings show that the industry has grown highly skilled at using AI, but has not yet built the infrastructure to prove what that skill is worth.
“Marketers have moved well past the question of whether or not AI belongs in their workflow. Yet, more work is needed to justify the investment,” said Katie McAdams, chief marketing and commercial officer, Basis. “Although our industry that has gotten remarkably skilled at using these tools, I believe the next stage in our industry’s AI evolution will come from unified media platforms that are building data foundations to show investment accountability, thus allowing organizations to scale agentic AI with confidence.”
About Basis
Basis is an intelligent operating system for autonomous advertising. Its software connects every channel, every workflow, and every financial system into one governed operating system. With AI-driven strategy creation, media planning and management capabilities, Basis is a unified command center for agencies and brands. Media teams gain capacity through integrated applications specialized in planning, operations, reporting, and financial reconciliation across programmatic, publisher-direct, search, and social channels. Basis empowers leaders with efficiency and productivity — driving financial success for their organizations. Renowned for its dedication to both employees and customers, Basis creates more seamless operations and fosters a happier, more engaged workforce. Learn more at https://basis.com.
Contact:
Anthony Loredo
anthony.loredo@basis.com
917-573-4157
A photo accompanying this announcement is available at https://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/3e96f0b4-6a93-42ed-9520-dab627c31cdf
