As B2B manufacturers proceed to experiment with synthetic intelligence, might they run into issues when the tech’s capabilities outpace the advertising and marketing skillset?
Based on Advertising Week’s 2025 State of B2B Advertising analysis, three-quarters (75.9%) of the 450 respondents say concentrate on AI has ramped up of their enterprise over the previous 12 months. That is true in 77.6% of SMEs (250 workers and below) and 74% of huge corporates.
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As B2B manufacturers proceed to experiment with synthetic intelligence, might they run into issues when the tech’s capabilities outpace the advertising and marketing skillset?
Based on Advertising Week’s 2025 State of B2B Advertising analysis, three-quarters (75.9%) of the 450 respondents say concentrate on AI has ramped up of their enterprise over the previous 12 months. That is true in 77.6% of SMEs (250 workers and below) and 74% of huge corporates.
Nonetheless, half of the entire pattern (51.5%) say there’s an AI abilities hole of their advertising and marketing division, which is much extra of a priority to B2B entrepreneurs than a scarcity of information and analytics experience (38.9%) or understanding of martech (32.8%).
Some 45.7% of B2B entrepreneurs working in SMEs highlighted an AI abilities hole, rising to nicely over half (58.6%) of their friends in giant organisations.
Regardless of acknowledging a abilities hole exists, B2B entrepreneurs are nonetheless eager to experiment. Half (49.9%) of the entire pattern are at present utilizing generative AI, whereas a much smaller proportion (2.2%) are trialling agentic AI – autonomous synthetic intelligence programs that may independently make selections and carry out duties.
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Below a fifth (15.3%) say their workforce is utilizing a mix of generative and agentic AI, whereas 17.9% declare their workforce use AI, however they’re not sure of what kind.
Over half (52.1%) of SME entrepreneurs are utilizing gen AI and three.2% are experimenting with agentic AI. By comparability, 47.7% of entrepreneurs working in giant organisations are utilising gen AI, whereas 1% are utilizing agentic AI.
When requested what kind of gen AI instruments they’re utilizing, many of the whole pattern (83.4%) are choosing ChatGPT.
Virtually half (47.4%) of the B2B entrepreneurs surveyed are utilizing Microsoft Copilot, whereas over a 3rd (35.7%) are experimenting with Google Gemini. Simply over a fifth (21.1%) are utilizing Anthropic’s AI assistant Claude, whereas a smaller variety of the entire pattern are utilizing Midjourney (13.9%) and OpenAI picture technology device DALL-E (8.6%).
Some 92.1% of SME entrepreneurs are utilizing ChatGPT, with over a 3rd experimenting with Microsoft Copilot (36.3%) and Google Gemini (34.7%).
Most entrepreneurs in giant B2B companies are additionally utilizing ChatGPT (73.1%), whereas Microsoft Copilot (60.2%) and to a lesser extent Google Gemini (36.3%) are additionally proving common.
Compelling use instances
When requested what they’re utilizing this tech for, most B2B companies (79.8%) are utilizing AI to jot down content material, adopted by growing inventive/inventive concepts (70.1%) and market analysis (56.2%).
Over two-fifths (42.7%) of the entire pattern are utilizing AI to assist in the event of inside shows. B2B entrepreneurs are additionally utilizing synthetic intelligence for segmentation and focusing on (21.9%), lead technology (13%) and to pre-test inventive (11.9%).
Below a tenth of these surveyed are utilizing AI to optimise inventive mid-campaign (9.4%), for market combine modelling/econometrics (8.9%) and to plan (7.8%) or optimise (6.9%) media spend.
Virtually eight in 10 SME entrepreneurs (78.4%) are at present utilizing AI to jot down content material, whereas over two-thirds (68.9%) use AI to develop inventive concepts and greater than half are utilizing the tech for market analysis (57.9%).
Content material writing can also be the highest AI use case (81.3%) for entrepreneurs in giant B2B organisations, adopted by inventive ideation (70.8%) and market analysis (54.4%).
Half of entrepreneurs in giant manufacturers (50.9%) and over a 3rd of their SME friends (35.8%) are utilizing AI to develop inside shows.
1 / 4 (25.3%) of entrepreneurs in smaller B2B companies and 18.1% of their counterparts in huge companies are utilizing AI for segmentation and focusing on. Over a tenth of these entrepreneurs in SMEs (14.2%) and huge firms (11.7%) are utilizing AI for lead technology.
B2B entrepreneurs are much less more likely to be utilizing AI as a part of their effectiveness work. Some 10.5% of entrepreneurs in huge B2B manufacturers and seven.4% in smaller companies are utilizing AI for market combine modelling and econometrics.
Some 12.1% of SME entrepreneurs are utilizing AI to pre-test inventive, as are 11.7% of their friends in giant companies.
Advertising Week will proceed its protection of the State of B2B Advertising analysis over the approaching weeks.
