All marketers are now using AI in their daily jobs and 36% are saying AI is infused into their daily workflows, with 15% claiming they can't live without AI today, a new report has found.

The fourth annual State of Marketing AI Report from Drift, a Salesloft company and the Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute found 61% of marketing respondents now claim intermediate level understanding of AI, up from 54% a year prior, and 16% even boast an advanced understanding, up from 11% last year. This was further reinforced by a drop in those considering themselves beginners - 35% in 2023 to 23% in 2024.

When asked which stage of marketing AI transformation best describes their marketing teams, the majority now say they are either piloting or scaling AI - another significant difference from last year. Fifty-one percent say they're either piloting or scaling AI, compared to 42% last year.

This is accompanied by a commensurate drop in the percentage of people simply experimenting this year (26%) from last year (45%), indicating that marketers and business leaders are expanding their use of AI in their work.

Additionally, confidence in purchasing AI technology is rising, though less quickly. Forty-eight percent of respondents rate their confidence in evaluating AI-powered marketing technology at a medium level, a slight rise over 2023 (46%).

Fewer people this year also rated themselves as low confidence (16% this year vs. 21% last year), and slightly more rated their confidence as high or very high (35% in 2024 vs.32% in 2023).

ChatGPT was the most popular AI platform licenced in organisations, with 55% saying their organisation had provided them with such a licence. More than three in 10 are provided with Microsoft Copilot and 17% have Geminis for Google Workspace licences.

When asked about the top outcomes their organisations were looking to achieve with AI, respondents overwhelmingly answered "reduce time spent on repetitive, data-driven tasks," with 80% of respondents citing this outcome. This was the most popular response by a wide margin.

The next most common response was "get more actionable insights from marketing data," which was cited by 64% of respondents.

This year is no different. Two-thirds of respondents said a lack of education and training was the top barrier to AI adoption in their marketing-and this number actually rose slightly this year versus last year, when 64% had the same response.

Respondents were also asked outright if their organization offered AI-focused education and training for the marketing team. Collectively, 75% either said no (47%), that it's in development (24%), or they're not sure training exists (4%).

"While these numbers have improved a bit from last year, they're still concerning," the report authors stated.

Only 34% Of Companies Have Generative AI Policies - although that's Up 55% from 2023. Respondents were also asked if their organization had any type of AI ethics policy or responsible AI principles, either publicly or internally facing. Thirty-six percent said they did, a jump of 15 percentage points from 21% in 2023.

The Drift / Marketing Artificial Intelligence Institute report was based on a survey of 1800 marketers and business leaders from all company sizes.