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Research note · Bain & Company

Bain: nearly every marketing team uses AI, but only 6% see real results

Bain & Company’s 2026 research found that while nearly every marketing team now uses AI, only 6% see significant performance impact. The leaders aren’t using better tools – they redesign how work gets done, set a clear AI roadmap and build AI into the marketing platforms they already run.

By the Tonic The Agency team

Key findings

  • 6%of marketing organisations say AI delivers significant performance impact today.
  • 3.7×Leaders are 3.7 times more likely than laggards to fully redesign workflows.
  • 2×Leaders are twice as likely as laggards to attribute double-digit revenue growth or cost savings to AI.
  • 2.4×Leaders are 2.4 times more likely to embed AI directly into their marketing tools.

What it means

This matches what we see with Australian marketing teams. Buying licences is easy; the results come from changing the work around them – who briefs, who reviews, which steps disappear – and connecting AI to the CRM, content and data the team already uses.

Bain also found leaders are 1.8 times more likely to follow a central AI roadmap, with priorities set from the top. A short list of use cases, each with an owner and a measure, beats a long list of experiments nobody scales.

What to do next

  1. Pick one workflow that costs the most time, such as campaign reporting or content variations, and redesign it end to end.
  2. Connect AI to the platforms you already run (Salesforce Marketing Cloud, Marketo, HubSpot, AEM) rather than adding stand-alone tools.
  3. Set a measure before you start – hours saved, cost per asset or conversion rate – and review it after a month.

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