Marketing leaders expect artificial intelligence to automate 36 percent of marketing work by 2028, more than double the 16 percent they report today, according to a Gartner survey of marketing executives released in May 2026. The projection points to a rapid shift in how marketing departments staff, budget, and structure their operations over the next two years.

The spending behind that shift is substantial. Gartner forecasts agentic AI spending will reach $201.9 billion in 2026 as enterprises move from pilot projects to production deployments. The firm also projects that 40 percent of enterprise applications will embed AI agents by the end of 2026, up from less than 5 percent in 2025, a pace of integration that puts autonomous software directly inside the tools marketing teams already use.

The figures land amid a broader wave of agent launches from marketing platform vendors, including campaign agents that qualify leads, generate content, and optimize performance without human intervention at each step. Survey data from Gartner and other research firms consistently shows the gap between AI investment and realized returns remains the central challenge, making measured adoption and clear use case selection the dividing line between programs that scale and programs that stall.

Source: Gartner - https://www.gartner.com/en/newsroom/press-releases/2026-05-11-gartner-survey-reveals-marketing-leaders-expect-ai-automation-of-marketing-work-to-double-to-36-percent-by-2028