It’s just one study, but the insights on the relationship between artificial intelligence (AI) and marketing couldn’t speak any louder—depending on which side you stand. According to Ascend2’s “The Evolution of AI in Marketing” survey, 85% of marketing professionals find AI to be at least somewhat successful in achieving their marketing objectives, with 25% considering it best-in-class. Still, 14% struggle to see any success, admitting that while AI adoption is high, optimizing its effectiveness remains challenging for some brands.
Starting as an entrepreneur, Ben Ashworth began in design, coding and website development before transitioning into digital marketing and paid advertising. Today, as the VP of Zeni, a company that utilizes AI to automate the reimbursement process, he is one of those marketers who has fully embraced the opportunities AI offers. He believes that the technology is transforming marketing by automating time-consuming tasks and analyzing massive datasets in real-time, allowing more space to focus on creativity and strategy instead of being weighed down by the process of doing things manually.
“Doing this enables marketers to execute more personalized and impactful campaigns at a higher rate and a faster pace,” Ashworth says. “Brand owners who leverage AI can make decisions based on real-time, data-backed insights rather than guesswork. AI can be used as a support tool, to help you identify trends, optimize campaigns, and predict customer behavior. This level of precision that AI operates on improves marketing performance and maximizes return on investment because it can ensure resources are being directed toward what truly works.”
By leveraging AI-driven insights—and/or at least opening their minds to the possibilities—brands can make more informed, data-backed decisions, boost team productivity through automated processes and unlock innovative approaches to customer engagement. “AI is a powerful tool, but it should enhance human creativity, not replace it,” Ashworth says. “Brand owners should use AI to handle data-heavy tasks while keeping storytelling, emotional intelligence, and brand authenticity at the forefront. The key is to leverage AI for efficiency while ensuring that the customer experience remains personal, engaging, and aligned with the brand’s core values.”
Zeni continues to invest in AI tools that can reinforce Ashworth and his team’s capabilities while providing ongoing training to ensure they stay ahead of the curve. By integrating AI strategically and keeping a human-centered approach, Zeni can future-proof its marketing efforts and continue driving meaningful engagement. Zeni is committed to fostering a culture of learning and adaptability so that AI is seen as an enabler rather than a disruptor. Right now, AI is helping provide deep customer insights that help Ashworth and his team craft highly personalized experiences by enabling real-time customization, predictive recommendations and dynamic content that adapts to individual preferences. “Rather than replacing creativity, AI enhances it by freeing marketers from repetitive tasks and giving them the data they need to develop compelling, emotionally resonant campaigns.”
When he peeks into the future, Ashworth is even more interested in what he sees, as platforms like generative AI, real- time personalization and AI-driven predictive analytics are set to redefine the marketing landscape. “As AI models become more advanced, it will allow more brands to create hyper-personalized customer experiences at scale. Additionally, AI’s ability to analyze and act on data instantly will reshape how companies engage with their audiences in real time.”
Open the Door and Let It In
Dev Nag has had a strong brush with being on the forefront of technological advancements. As part of the founding team at GLMX, he helped develop one of the largest electronic securities trading platforms in the money markets, with more than $3 trillion in daily balances. As founder and CTO at Wavefront and a senior engineer at Google, he helped develop the back-end for all financial processing of Google ad revenue.
So, when the founder of and CEO of his latest venture, QueryPal, says marketers should open the door to the possibilities of AI, people take note. “Marketing teams have undergone an underappreciated, yet dramatic reconfiguration with AI adoption, evolving beyond just automating routine tasks. As apparent from social media, marketers who embrace AI often find themselves freed to pursue higher-level strategic thinking and customer relationship development.”
Nag says the most successful teams have moved away from viewing AI as a direct competitor or threat and, instead foster collaborative workflows where humans set the creative vision and strategic direction while AI handles execution at scale. “This creates a symbiotic relationship that delivers better results than either could achieve independently.”
While opportunities abound, Nag is quick to point out that the integration of AI into marketing workflows presents both technical and cultural challenges. He recommends brand owners consider starting with limited, highly focused AI implementations rather than broad transformation initiatives. This strategy creates opportunities for quick wins while building organizational comfort with the technology.
Examples include using AI to optimize existing email subject lines, implementing small-scale A/B testing with AI-generated ad variations and applying sentiment analysis to customer service interactions before attempting complex personalization. “Many marketers find that these targeted implementations not only deliver immediate ROI, but also organically spread throughout the organization as team members witness tangible results,” Nag says. “By creating grassroots momentum for AI, you can overcome resistance far more effectively than top-down mandates without deep buy-in.”
Looking ahead, Nag says the biggest revolutionary company to hit the AI marketing landscape will be agentic AI. The technology will evolve beyond being a tool that marketers use to become an active collaborator that proposes strategies, identifies opportunities and even questions assumptions. “Agentic AI will create a true human-AI partnership where each contributes their unique strengths to achieve marketing outcomes neither could accomplish alone. Forward-thinking agencies are already experimenting with early versions of this approach, implementing autonomous AI agents that continuously monitor campaign performance, recommend optimizations without being prompted and even debate strategic choices with human team members.”
As AI continues to reshape the marketing landscape, the most successful brands will not view technology as a replacement for human creativity, but as a powerful collaborative tool that amplifies storytelling, emotional intelligence and strategic thinking. The future lies not in choosing between AI and human insight, but in creating the best of both worlds.
