What you need to know: 

• Australian marketers are investing in AI-powered martech at record levels, with AI now topping global martech investment priorities, per Arktic Fox and Six Degree's new Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus 2025 report.
• Despite years of heavy investment, only 19% of organisations report strong or semi-strong utilisation of their martech stacks, with most still struggling to activate features, integrate data and extract value.
• Almost half of brands (49%) are under mounting pressure to demonstrate ROI, but only 23% say they can easily quantify value from their martech investments.
• The era of the all-in-one martech suite is fading fast: 57% of brands now favour best-of-breed, composable solutions that deliver greater flexibility and stronger adoption rates.
• Vendors are shifting focus from feature expansion to customer success and deeper embedment, as brands demand more support to close the utilisation gap.
• Large enterprises ($1bn+ revenue) report slightly better utilisation, but activation challenges persist across all segments; smaller brands fare worse.
• AI and automation are seen as potential saviours to finally unlock martech value, but face the same structural hurdles: disconnected data, under-skilled teams, and organisational silos.
• The sector's next chapter hinges on whether AI delivers transformational value, or becomes yet another under-utilised tool in bloated stacks.

Australian marketers are loading up on AI tools at a record clip. But whether the technology will finally solve martech’s chronic under-utilisation problem remains the $64 billion question.

According to the new Arktic Fox Digital, Marketing & eComm in Focus 2025 report, AI now leads all martech investment priorities, with brands betting heavily that machine intelligence can finally bridge the yawning gap between capability and actual usage.

But here’s the rub: After years of heavy investment, barely one in five organisations report strong or even semi-strong utilisation of their existing martech tools. Nineteen percent, to be precise. The rest are still struggling to activate capabilities, integrate data, or extract meaningful insights,  despite billions spent and vast, complex stacks assembled.

Brands are shifting from martech expansion to optimisation, with value realisation now front and centre, report author Teresa Sperti argues. As pressure mounts to prove ROI, organisations are increasingly focused on sweating the assets they already have, rather than simply adding more technology to already fragile stacks.

ROI reckoning

The shift reflects a broader inflection point. Nearly half (49%) of brands say they’re under intensifying pressure to demonstrate return on their martech investments. Only 23 per cent say they’ve found it easy to quantify value. 

For years, the martech sector’s narrative has been expansionary. Vendors pitched ever-broader platforms, marketers procured heavily, and CFOs largely nodded along. But that changed in the first half of the decade as consumer spending slowed and budgets tightened. Martech entered as age of reckoning, and marketers discovered the limits of CFO patience.

Composability takes over

Another structural shift is playing out in parallel: The collapse of the single-vendor suite model. Fewer than one in five brands still prefer a monolithic martech platform (not that such a model was ever really realised). Instead, 57 per cent are now favouring best-of-breed solutions,  leaning into composability, and prioritising flexibility and fit-for-purpose tools over vendor consolidation, according to the report

Arktic Fox founder, Teresa Sperti writes: “Composability isn’t just a trend - it matters. Brands reporting higher levels of utilisation are significantly more likely to be adopting best-of breed solutions, highlighting the link between flexibility, fit-for-purpose tools, and stronger platform adoption."

The lesson is clear: "For brands struggling to drive martech adoption, having the right tools for the job is critical. While single-vendor solutions are often influenced by technology teams, it’s vital that the end users - the teams who rely on the tools - play a major lead role in defining strategy, success criteria and guiding platform selection in partnership with IT."

Poor utilisation persists

Even so, utilisation remains martech’s biggest unsolved problem. Arktic Fox and Six Degrees Executive's research shows large enterprises are slightly better off with utilisation closely correlated to company size. According to the report, larger organisations are more likely to report stronger utilisation.

"Brands generating over $1 billion are seeing utilisation rates five percentage points higher than the average [but it is still low]. In contrast, brands generating under $100 million report semi-strong or strong utilisation of their martech investments four percentage points lower than the market average," the report states. 

In response, some vendors are finally shifting their focus from feature expansion to customer success, utilisation, and deeper embedment.

“Vendors are becoming increasingly sensitive to both the utilisation gap, slow down in procurement of new tech and the ROI pressures facing brands,” says Sperti. "For brands, this presents a valuable opportunity to engage vendors in new conversations,  focused on how they can better support utilisation, adoption, and value realisation."

Great hope, great unknown

Amidst all this, AI looms as both salvation and risk.

Australian brands are betting heavily on AI and automation to finally activate dormant capabilities, drive personalisation at scale, and reduce reliance on expensive human resources. For enterprise brands with revenue over $100 million, investment in Customer Data Platforms (CDPs) also remains high, reflecting ongoing efforts to unify fragmented data and support AI-powered orchestration.

But as Sperti’s data shows, the promise of AI still confronts the same old structural issues: Disconnected data, under-skilled teams, and organisational silos. Whether AI tools can transcend these operational bottlenecks or simply add another layer of under-utilised capability remains an open question.

For now, marketers have placed their chips. Whether AI finally delivers, or simply joins the long list of under-utilised martech promises, will likely define the sector’s next chapter.