98% of CMOs Say They're Using AI. Less Than a Third Are Getting Results.

Almost every CMO is experimenting with AI. Very few are seeing the returns they expected. Gartner’s latest data puts the split in stark terms: 98% of CMOs say they’re using or piloting AI solutions. Less than 33% say those investments are generating the returns they expected.

ClickZ spoke with Kristina LaRocca-Cerrone, VP Analyst at Gartner, ahead of her upcoming keynote at the Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpo™ in Denver this June, where she’ll present new research on AI maturity alongside Jay Wilson, VP Analyst. The session, “Accelerating Marketing’s AI Advantage: The Path to 2030,” will outline the pitfalls that stall progress and the accelerators that break through them.

Here’s what she told us.

The gap between using AI and getting value from it

The 98% figure sounds like universal adoption. It isn’t. LaRocca-Cerrone was clear that the number masks a much messier reality underneath.

“When we ask them what’s driving this gap, what’s living in between your aspirations and your reality, we’re hearing things like challenges with integrating AI into operations and strategies so that it improves performance and not just efficiency,” she said. “Moving generally from productivity gains to transformative results is a challenge.”

She also pointed to a factor that gets less attention than it should: internal resistance from marketers themselves. “One of my big areas of research for 2026 is focused on helping CMOs erode AI resistance in marketing. That’s one of the top three reasons that AI pilots get held back.”

Three stages of AI maturity, and where most teams actually sit

LaRocca-Cerrone walked through Gartner’s three-stage framework: AI Curious, AI Competent, and AI Confident.

At the Curious stage, teams have bought some tools and run some pilots, but AI isn’t central to strategy. “This is what people would describe as AI lets us do what we were already doing a little faster,” she said. The internal question at this stage tends to be: what could we start doing?

At the Competent stage, teams are running more pilots, squeezing more from their tech stack, and beginning to build custom models and agents. They’re making more informed assessments about where AI should and shouldn’t be used. “Culturally or at a leadership level, these marketers are past the point of trying to sell AI internally, or they’re past the point of needing to be sold on the value of AI themselves.”

The Confident stage is where things get genuinely interesting. LaRocca-Cerrone described it not as technical mastery but almost the opposite. “When you achieve confidence in a skill, it tends to be characterized not by technical prowess but by maneuverability. Discernment. It’s about linking fundamental skills together to create something new and knowing where to apply AI.”

In a marketing context, this means using AI to power creativity, shape strategy, and change operations. Teams at this stage ask different questions entirely: “How could AI help us solve this business problem in a new way?”

And candidly, most teams aren’t there. “Most CMOs are in the curious stage. Maybe they’re in between curious and competent,” she said.

Why organizations get stuck: complacency and the equipment trap

Two pitfalls stood out.

The first is like a false sense that the middle stage of AI competence is “good enough”. Complacency about competence being sufficient.

Reaching the competent stage feels like progress, and it is, but it can breed a sense of “good enough” that prevents teams from pushing further. LaRocca-Cerrone used an analogy her colleague Jay Wilson, a photographer, often returns to: once you learn how to frame a shot correctly and understand your equipment, it’s easy to settle there. You start to believe the results you’re getting are fine.

“We see the same thing in AI. The same belief that achieving competence is going to be fine. But we don’t really believe that it will. We think that will prevent you from achieving truly transformative results.”

The second pitfall is the belief that buying more technology is what gets you to the next stage. “You might imagine that a photographer believes that the thing that’s going to make them the next Ansel Adams is buying a different lens, a different tripod. If they buy the right tech, they have the right equipment, that’s what’s going to get them there.” The same trap plays out with AI tooling. “If we just buy this piece of technology, if we build our own model, if we use something that’s more custom, that will get us from competence to confidence. And I just, across all types of learning journeys, you see that that is not true.”

What does get you there is harder to buy. LaRocca-Cerrone pointed to culture, change management, and leadership modeling as the real drivers. “It is how the CMO understands the impact of AI on their own role and changes their own leadership profile and changes their own approach to marketing so that leadership modeling can filter down through the rest of the organization.”

Or, as she put it more bluntly: “It is definitely not becoming comfortable with good enough and kind of swimming in this warm bath of mediocrity along with every other brand that has all the same tools and all the same inputs that you have.”

What AI-ready data actually looks like

On the question of data infrastructure, LaRocca-Cerrone laid out the requirements in practical terms.

Clean data remains the baseline: aligned, accessible, consistent in structure, accurate. Beyond that, data needs to be continually qualified through regression testing, auditing, and monitoring for change signals. And it needs to be governed, adhering to AI standards, data sharing policies, and regulatory directives, with transparent labelling, documented processes, and feedback handling in place.

But she also pushed the conversation beyond data hygiene into something more useful: “I think you need to ask for every AI use case, what level of data readiness is required for the use case that we’re pursuing and what level of risk does not having this data pose to us. And then how will we manage that risk?”

The single most impactful move a CMO can make in 90 days

For marketing leaders somewhere in the middle of the journey, past experiments but not yet scaled, LaRocca-Cerrone’s advice was direct and personal.

“Boost your own AI literacy. Do not assume that the impact of AI will only be felt at the team, practitioner, or individual contributor level.” She said CMOs need to be familiar with the LLMs their organizations are using and invest in their own personal development around AI.

“CMOs tend to wildly undervalue the impact and import of personal development. It tends to be amongst the lowest priorities,” she said. “It’s very common amongst marketing leaders to fall into that trap, the idea that the impact of AI will be felt at an individual contributor level and that leadership actions will stay the same.”

The payoff is both internal and political. “If you start to evaluate how AI could change the way you do your job and the kind of value that the marketing function brings, we believe you will be better set up to steward your function.” And in the C-suite, she noted, demonstrating AI fluency matters — especially given that only 15% of CEOs and CFOs believe their CMO is AI-savvy today, according to Gartner. “Those are the kinds of actions that are going to help ensure that your CEO and your CFO believe in your AI savviness, which is vital.”

What you won’t get from a recap deck

At the Denver Symposium in June, LaRocca-Cerrone and Wilson will present pitfalls to AI maturity, each paired with a corresponding accelerator. But she was honest about what the keynote alone can deliver versus what attending in person provides.

“You’ll get the list of those things on the slide, but you’re not going to get the step-by-step implementation plan. You’re not going to be able to see the exact talent profile of an AI-enabled marketing organization.”

She’s also running two workshops: one on creating an AI-enabled marketing organization and another on building team change resilience and culture. “I can tell you right now that those workshops, 50% of the value probably comes from people being able to do real work in a room with their peers, where they discuss how to apply best practices, and they swap their own tips and tricks, and they problem solve together at their table.”

And then there’s the thing that’s hardest to quantify but easy to underestimate.There’s a lot of inspiration, comfort and camaraderie by being able to sit in a room with 2,000 other CMOs and marketing leaders and see them sharing similar experiences, to be able to get that real, concrete proof that you’re progressing alongside your peers and moving forward together.