Hi all, a quick final reminder to sign up for the next AI + Marketing Share & Tell on Thursday, June 25 at 12:00pm EST. It’s free: part training session, part roundtable. I ran one earlier this year and it was a lot of fun. I’ll share a few new lessons and tools, and we’ll do a quick round of practical AI uses people have found.
New Video: Baron Manett
Last week I chatted with Baron Manett, founder of Per Se Brand Experience (PSBX). Fun fact: Baron and I met through each other’s newsletters, so it’s fitting we’re chatting here. In the video, Baron shares how his team uses AI in their work, balancing it with human judgment and insight. I like his framing of AI as an instrument in the band, not a replacement for the musician. Baron posts often on LinkedIn, and you can sign up for his excellent Brief Ideas monthly newsletter here.
I have to say, I much prefer doing these videos talking with other people. Less time spent staring at the bald guy talking to his camera.
AI & Marketing Teams
More research keeps surfacing the same problem: marketers are pressured to adopt AI without the budget or the training to make it work. 80% fund AI initiatives from existing budgets; only 14% get incremental funding for AI pilot projects. Savings rarely return to the team, reinforcing the belief that AI’s value is doing the same work with fewer resources. And these teams often aren’t equipped: 56% of marketing leaders name the AI talent gap as their biggest barrier to scaling, and 53% of marketing teams still receive no formal AI training. So, you’re told to use AI, fund it yourself, watch it shrink your budget if it works, but it might not work because your team hasn’t been trained. Not good.
IDEO provides a more useful way for marketers to explore AI: “AI dividend” (Baron mentioned this concept in our conversation). When AI delivers efficiency, the real payoff isn’t doing old work faster, it’s the freed-up time to explore new creative ground. WPP’s head of human-AI strategy and transformation puts it well: “AI gives us speed but, much more importantly, it gives us space.”
Agentic Commerce
Consumers increasingly use AI chat for product research, and brands want to be present when they do. AI search ads are projected to be advertising’s fastest growing channel. New research shows 83% of queries triggering ads inside ChatGPT would never have fired as a Google Shopping ad. The difference: Shopping ads appear on clear, declared product queries, whereas chat sessions run many turns where intent develops gradually, surfacing the moment for a brand to show up. On the organic side, Bain recommends adding more third-party claims to product snippets, since those index higher in AI chat results and can help a product or service stand out when it surfaces.
Agentic commerce takes this further: enabling AI to complete actions, up to and including a purchase. Visa is now integrating with OpenAI to support it. One study found 74% of people would trust a personal AI agent more than their best friend to buy on their behalf, hinting at an opening for agents to close purchases. At the far end of this spectrum is autonomous purchasing, where an agent acts independently within set rules. Only 9% are comfortable with that.
Sounds a lot like when my daughter gets into my Amazon Prime account. Very autonomous. Do not recommend.
Fresh Research
AI Economic Indicators (Stanford Digital Economy Lab): A set of regularly updated dashboards tracking AI’s impact on employment, productivity, and adoption. Highlight: 90% of generative AI users report using these tools every week, but only a quarter of users report using them every day.
Global CMO Survey 2026 (Comviva): Survey of marketing leaders on the gap between AI investment and measurable impact. Highlight: 90% of organizations increased AI marketing investment over the past two years, but only 12% can isolate AI’s incremental revenue impact.
2026 Global AI Jobs Barometer (PwC): Analysis of over one billion job ads across 27 countries on how AI is reshaping skills, wages, and hiring. Highlight: The wage premium for AI skills hit 62%, up from 57% last year, and jobs requiring AI skills are growing roughly eight times faster than the overall market.
Cool Beans
Diary Defender: If you’re a Canadian who wants to block off your calendar to watch the team beat Switzerland in the World Cup on Wednesday, this site lists every match as a calendar event, lets you rename each one to a more meeting-appropriate title, and exports it straight to your work calendar. Genius.
