The state of AI in content marketing
In short Nearly every content team now uses AI. Far fewer can show it has improved results. Drafting, design and ad variants are cheap and fast, and the tools that do them, from Canva to Google's Pomelli, increasingly start from your own website and brand. Distribution is where the real change has happened. Google's AI Overviews and AI Mode take a large share of clicks from top-ranking pages, and chatbot referrals are growing from a small base without replacing the traffic lost. The money has followed: AI-visibility trackers are attracting large funding rounds and acquisitions. In the UK, regulators have not written AI-specific content rules. The ASA treats AI output like any other ad, the government has dropped its preferred copyright opt-out without choosing a replacement, and the CMA is forcing Google to give publishers an AI opt-out. What still lacks evidence is that AI-made content performs better, as opposed to simply being produced in greater volume.
What it found
- AI use in content production is close to universal, but proven benefit is not: around 9 in 10 B2B marketers use AI to produce content, yet fewer than 4 in 10 say it has improved performance, and UK businesses that have adopted AI use on average only 1.6 AI technologies.
- Google's AI answers are cutting organic clicks sharply: Ahrefs estimates position-one click-through is about 58% lower on queries that show an AI Overview, and Pew found people clicked a result on 8% of visits with an AI summary against 15% without.
- Chatbots are being added on top of Google, not replacing it: 95% of ChatGPT users also used Google, only 6.8% of US ChatGPT answers included an external link, and just 4% of Britons use chatbots for news each week.
- UK regulators are applying existing rules rather than writing new ones: the ASA holds advertisers fully responsible for AI-made ads, and the government has set no UK obligation to label AI-generated content.
- Investors are backing measurement of AI visibility over content generation: Profound raised $180m at a $1.8bn valuation, Peec AI raised $21m, and Adobe completed its acquisition of Semrush to add generative engine optimisation.
- Audiences are tolerant of AI in general but penalise heavy or undisclosed use: 53% of consumers in one 2026 survey said they were less likely to buy from brands they know use AI in social content, and nearly 90% want it disclosed.
How it was made
Every development in the report comes from a public source dated from May 2025 to September 2026: trade press, regulators, journals and company announcements. Each one is dated and names its source, so you can read the original, and every link was checked when this edition was put together. It is a record of what happened, not advice.
A new edition replaces this one as things move. The latest is always on this page.