Time saved by using AI is spent on output control

Marketers are struggling to use AI. They struggle to make it work.

An Optimizely survey of more than 2,000 B2B marketers worldwide found that nearly half say AI is fully integrated into their daily work. Yet most spend hours each week adjusting AI output, switching between discontinued tools, and compensating for processes that didn’t keep pace with adoption.

The report points to a practical rather than a technical challenge. AI is becoming part of everyday marketing, but the governance, workflow, and technology infrastructure needed to support it is still a work in progress.

The promise of AI was very effective. The truth is more complicated.

Three-quarters of respondents spend at least three hours each week editing, fact-checking, or editing AI-generated content. Manipulations, manual copying and pasting between disconnected tools, and legal or compliance reviews take up a large portion of that time. Only 4% say AI saves time in the entire content creation process.

AI has created new work instead of eliminating it

The burden seems to be much higher outside the US Although only 4% of marketers worldwide said that AI saves time in all stages of the content process, American marketers expressed the greatest confidence in the output of AI. Thirty-nine percent said most AI-generated content is usable without significant editing, compared to 28% globally.

The findings show that AI has not eliminated work as much as it has replaced it. Content production takes less time, but quality control, governance, and communication demand more attention.

Much of that extra work seems to be tied to the technology stack itself.

Only 19% of respondents use a single integrated AI platform. More than 80% are constantly switching between multiple AI applications, creating disconnected workflows that require marketers to manually transfer information between systems.

Different technologies exacerbate the problem

Those disconnects make it difficult to manage the AI ​​consistently. Teams spend more time validating results, maintaining compliance, and making sure information stays consistent across systems instead of building a better customer experience.

The report doesn’t show that fragmentation directly causes those effects, but the findings show that they occur together across organizations that use AI.

The survey also found that AI continues to struggle with one of marketing’s key tasks: maintaining brand identity.

More than half of respondents said AI captures factual information but misses the emotional tone of their brand. Only about one-third expressed high confidence that their AI tools consistently reflect their brand’s voice.

Brand management is always a personal responsibility

American merchants were very optimistic. Forty-five percent said they were very confident AI captured the emotional dynamics of their brand, compared to one-third globally. However, 62% of American respondents still expressed concern about AI impacting the brand’s reputation.

The concern goes beyond individual pieces of content. Fifteen percent of respondents said their AI-generated work would be difficult to distinguish from a competitor’s if the trademark was removed, while two-thirds expressed concern about AI impacting similar brand names.

The findings emphasize that generating content is only part of the workflow. Maintaining differentiation still depends on strategic oversight, management, and well-managed brand initiatives.

Leaders and employees see AI differently

The report also found a noticeable gap between managers and the people who use AI every day.

More than half of marketers say leadership is underestimating the human effort required by AI. C-suite respondents were more likely than analysts to describe themselves as freed by AI and say their organization’s implementation is fully compliant.

The study also found differences in behavior. Forty-four percent of C-suite respondents said they often or always submit AI-generated work without disclosing it, while one-quarter of marketing leaders admit to publishing AI-generated content they know was off-brand to meet deadlines. In the US, that number rises to one in three.

Rather than pointing to a single governance failure, the findings show the operational pressure marketers are facing as AI adoption grows faster than the processes that support it.

Discovery is no longer a challenge

Perhaps the report’s most striking finding is that 65% of marketing leaders would consider pausing their AI rollout for 90 days to rethink their approach. Only 35% believe their current spending is on track.

As with any marketer-sponsored survey, the findings reflect marketers’ opinions rather than independently measured production. However, they point to a consistent topic. Marketing organizations have largely embraced AI. The most difficult challenge is to build the governance, integrated technology, and operating model needed to make AI reliable at scale.

For enterprise marketers, competitive advantage no longer comes from embracing AI. It comes from its performance.