AI in marketing statistics 2026

How many marketers use AI?

Almost all of them. 86.4% of marketing teams use AI in at least a few areas of their work, and only 1.7% don't and have no plans to (HubSpot).

HubSpot asked more than 1,500 B2B and B2C marketers around the world for its 2026 report.

What do marketers use AI for?

Content first, then almost everything else. 80.5% use AI to create content, and about three in four use it for admin work, images and video, and learning new skills (HubSpot).

What marketers use AI for (%)

1Content creation

80.5%

2Administrative tasks

76.1%

3Images and video

74.9%

4Learning new skills

74.7%

5Brainstorming

73.7%

6Strategic planning

70.9%

7Ad automation

70.6%

HubSpot, 2026 State of Marketing · used extensively or occasionally

Write better prompts for each of these with my free AI prompt generator.

Does AI save marketers time?

Yes, many hours a week. About a third of marketing teams say AI saves them 10 to 14 hours a week, and another third say it saves them more than 15 (HubSpot).

26.5% say AI has significantly increased their productivity, and 66.2% say it has increased it slightly or moderately.

But speed isn't everything. 62.7% of marketers say we need more unique, human-centered content to stand out from AI content. Check your own drafts with my free AI slop checker.

How big is AI advertising?

Huge. Meta's AI-powered Advantage+ ad tools passed $75 billion in yearly revenue in the quarter to June 30, 2026 (Meta).

It's paying off for Meta too: its ad impressions grew 14% and its average price per ad 12% in a year, for $60.8 billion in quarterly revenue (Meta).

How many people use AI search?

More than a billion. Google's AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly users in the year since it went global, and Google says it sends billions of clicks to websites every week through AI features in Search (Alphabet).

ChatGPT alone reaches 1.2 billion people a week (OpenAI). And search is still growing for Google: its Search revenue rose 17% in a year, to $63.3 billion in the quarter (Alphabet).

See how fast AI is spreading overall in my AI statistics.

Where are marketers spending more?

On AI chatbots, more than anything else. 37.7% of marketers plan to invest more in AI chatbots like ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini and Claude, just ahead of paid social (37.4%) and video (37.1%) (HubSpot).

Search is changing with it: 40.6% of marketers say updating their SEO for AI search is one of their top trends this year.

Which websites block AI crawlers?

More block the crawlers that train AI models than the ones that bring visitors. {{cr\_gpt}} of the most-visited websites block OpenAI's GPTBot in their robots.txt, but only {{cr\_oai}} block OAI-SearchBot, which finds pages for ChatGPT's answers (Tranco top {{cr\_n}}, robots.txt).

That's of the {{cr\_answered}} websites in the Tranco list's top {{cr\_n}} that answered. Most of the rest are network and cloud domains with no website.

The AI crawlers the most-visited websites block (% of sites)

1CCBot (Common Crawl, training)

15%

2Bytespider (ByteDance, training)

14.2%

3GPTBot (OpenAI, training)

14.1%

4ClaudeBot (Anthropic, training)

13.1%

5Meta-ExternalAgent (Meta, training)

11.5%

6Google-Extended (Google, training)

11.4%

7cohere-ai (Cohere, training)

11%

8Applebot-Extended (Apple, training)

10.9%

9Amazonbot (Amazon, training)

10.8%

10Diffbot (Diffbot, training)

10.8%

Tranco top 10,000, robots.txt files · 6,354 websites, read September 30, 2026

The biggest sites block the most. Among the top 1,000, {{cr\_t\_gpt}} block GPTBot. In all, {{cr\_any}} of these websites block at least one AI crawler.

That's a choice between two kinds of bots. Training crawlers take your pages into a model, with no link back. Search and answer crawlers fetch a page because someone asked a question just now, and they link to you. Block those, and you vanish from AI answers.

See which ones your own site lets in with my free AI crawler checker.

How many websites have an llms.txt?

Few so far. {{cr\_llms}} of the most-visited websites publish an llms.txt, a plain-text guide to their site for AI tools, {{cr\_llms\_n}} sites in all (Tranco top {{cr\_n}}, llms.txt).

Among the top 1,000, it's {{cr\_t\_llms}}. Check what AI agents see on your site with my free AI agent readiness checker.

How to use these numbers

Before you plan your next campaign:

• Use AI for the first draft, and make the final one yours
• Let AI search crawlers in, so AI answers can cite and link to you
• Decide on training crawlers on purpose, not by default
• Test AI ad tools against your own campaigns
• Check your robots.txt and llms.txt every few months: the bots change fast

Then pick one task AI can take off your plate this week, and measure the hours it saves.

Key takeaways

Here's what the AI in marketing statistics say:

• Almost every team uses AI – 86.4% of marketing teams, mostly to create content.
• It saves real time – about two-thirds of teams save 10 hours or more a week.
• AI ads are huge – Meta's AI ad tools bring in more than $75 billion a year.
• AI search is mainstream – Google's AI Mode passed 1 billion monthly users.
• Sites block training more than search – 14.1% of top sites block GPTBot, 7.4% its search crawler.

For more, see my AI statistics and email marketing statistics, and check your site with my free AI crawler checker.