AI Marketing: Everyone's Making a Splash. Nobody's Winning.

If you work in marketing, you've probably felt it lately: the news won't stop coming.

I've been scrolling through the industry headlines of the past few days, and they all start to blur together. AI talking about marketing, marketers talking about AI, ads squeezing their way into AI assistants, AI agents racing into the enterprise faster than anyone can keep count. There's so much of it you can barely keep up.

But the more I read, the more something burrows at me.

It's genuinely lively out there. But after everything you've read, can you tell me: this war, who's actually winning?

The honest answer is probably: no one. Not yet.

What Does "AI Marketing" Even Mean? Don't Ask How First. Ask: Does the Math Add Up?

Let's start with the sorest spot.

The whole industry can't even measure how much AI truly contributes to the business. When a consumer completes a conversion, which exact step is it, and how much of the credit belongs to AI? Nobody can say.

That's no small problem. If they can't measure it, vendors can't afford to pour in big budgets, and they definitely can't claim "we're doing better than everyone else."

So even an industry body like IAB has had to step in, pulling together a framework to measure just how big a role AI plays in a conversion.

Put bluntly: nobody has even built the measuring stick yet.

Here's the Subtler Part: On the Consumer Side, Nobody Has Won Either.

There's one number you can't get around: 61%.

Meaning: more than half of consumers can't name even one brand they'd say "uses AI well."

61%. Let that sink in.

In other words, after all these years of AI shouting about itself in marketing, in the average consumer's mind not a single memorable name has taken root. This is a war on open ground — everyone has entered the arena, and nobody has planted a flag on a hill.

Whoever plants that flag first wins.

But Brands Are Already Starting to Move.

Some are using AI for personalization, turning "selling stuff" into "building a brand." Zara is the example — using personalization, it has pulled ahead of Nike.

That line of thinking is worth chewing on. In the past, we assumed AI was a cost-saving, efficiency play; now, people are using it as a channel for building a brand. The role has changed.

Others have gone all in on "conversational commerce." Albertsons says consumers who chat with an AI and get what they need end up spending more.

What does conversational commerce actually mean? It means the consumer stops searching, stops browsing — they just tell an AI their need, and the AI helps place the order.

Think about it: from scanning a full-screen grid to a couple of sentences with the AI and a completed purchase — a whole new transaction logic sits between those two moments.

McDonald's is another case in point: it reached a global top-ten brand, powered by nothing more than its app. Get the entry point right, and brand and sales can rise together.

Next, Advertising Is Pushing Its Way Into AI Assistants.

Ask an AI "what should I do this weekend," and the little recommendation buried in its answer — that's an ad.

It's just that the form has gone soft. You're guarded against a pushy ad; a friendly assistant-style recommendation, you tend to trust.

So people are building services to "feed real-time news into AI assistants," getting brand content to show up in conversations on ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini at just the right moment. The entry point has moved from the search engine to the AI assistant.

Webflow and Google Ads are working toward the same thing: closing the gap between "the ad" and "the landing result on your site." Where that link breaks, business leaks.

And There's Something Even Faster: Agents Are Entering Enterprises Faster Than Governance Can Keep Up.

The tools work fine; the rules lag far, far behind. It's a familiar script — and it's playing out again on the marketing stage.

The industry also has a new buzzword: GEO — Generative Engine Optimization.

In the past, you did SEO to rank in search results; from now on you'll also need GEO, making AI mention you and recommend you. A brand's voice has gained a whole new frontier.

I've been watching this thread of news for a long time, and I've realized they all follow a single line:

AI isn't a small upgrade on the side — it has thrown the entire chain of "discover, decide, purchase, pass it on, discover again" up in the air and rearranged it. And along that chain, nobody holds a single link firmly yet.

To be blunt, I don't know who'll win this round.

But here's a verdict I can hand you: move now and you might not win the best position; move too late — after someone else has grabbed the hill and defined what "better demos" look like — and you really will be late to the game.

The winner isn't decided.

So everyone still has an opportunity.

I'm genuinely curious to see how this war plays out.