Research from The Future Works finds 86% of marketers are funding AI by cutting production, headcount, agency fees or working media, with only 14% winning net-new budget. Most expect efficiency gains they have no plan to reinvest. It teaches the business that marketing can always do more with less.
If you fund AI by cutting marketing and then pocket the savings, you have not invested in growth. You have just made marketing smaller and called it progress.
A new survey has confirmed how most marketers are paying for their AI experiments. They are taking the money out of their own budgets. Research from The Future Works, covering 36 chief marketing officers and senior budget holders representing a combined $30 billion in annual revenue, found 86% are funding AI by cutting production, headcount, agency fees or working media.
Only 14% managed to make the case for net-new budget. Everyone else is doing AI by quietly defunding something else they used to do.
The return story is just as telling. 78% expect the first gains from AI to come from efficiency, not revenue growth, and five in six expect efficiency as the main return overall. The kicker is that 75% have no plan for what to do with the money they save. They are cutting to fund AI, then planning to bank the efficiency rather than reinvest it.
Why it matters
This is the marketer to finance gap playing out in real time. Marketers could not build the case for fresh investment, so they took the path of least resistance and cannibalised their own spend. The danger is what that signals to the people who hold the purse. Every time marketing does more with less, it teaches the business that marketing can always do more with less.
Share of marketers funding AI ventures by cutting production, headcount, agency fees or working media
There is a curious split too. Bigger businesses, over $1 billion in revenue, are twice as likely to still be stuck in pilot mode, while smaller businesses are further along at actually scaling AI into how they work. Size is not buying speed here.
What to do about it
Marketing keeps proving it can do more with less, and keeps getting handed less as the reward. The teams that turn AI savings into growth, rather than just savings, are the ones that hold their seat at the table.