Marketing Budgets are Shifting: Why Human Expertise Must Close the AI Readiness Gap
While today’s AI conversations often center on automation and the potential replacement of human roles, is highlighting a new challenge for marketing leaders: closing the gap between what they want AI to achieve for their organization, and how ready they are to maximize its potential. Studies and insights released from recent Gartner Marketing Symposium/Xpos in London in May and Denver in June show how organizations can address AI readiness gap using both human expertise and technology.
In May, Gartner Vice President Analyst and Chief of Research in the Gartner Marketing practice, Ewan McIntyre had revealed findings from the 2026 CMO Spend Survey during his “Key Insights to Shape Your Marketing Strategy” at the London Symposium/Xpo. The report revealed that 70% of CMOs say becoming an AI leader is a critical goal for 2026, but just 30% are ready within their organization to effectively implement and scale AI. As marketing budgets remain flat, CMOs are being tasked with doing “more with less.”
The annual survey also revealed that more AI-ready marketing organizations allocated 21.3% of their marketing budgets to AI initiatives, compared to the average of 15.3%.
McIntyre said, “CMOs recognize AI’s potential as a force multiplier for growth, efficiency and transformation, but most marketing organizations are not yet built to capture that value. The risk is that CMOs invest in AI tools faster than they build the data foundations, processes, governance and talent required to scale them.” He also stated that “AI maturity is beginning to separate marketing leaders from laggards. The most advanced CMOs are not simply spending more on AI. They are creating the budget agility, innovation capacity and operating discipline needed to turn AI investment into measurable business impact.”
During one session in Denver titled “Find, Capture and Sustain AI Value,” Vice President Analyst Nicole Greene explained that “AI readiness moves faster than human readiness, and that mismatch is what makes value so hard to capture.” She stressed how people within an organization can influence the success of AI pilots, and that AI agents and employees should work together to “enhance performance and skills.”
Gartner has defined a framework for scaling AI skills within marketing, which incorporates three-points to help organizations close the gap between what teams want to achieve from AI and how ready they are to manage it:
1) Building foundational AI capabilities internally: Gartner recommends marketing leaders should prioritize internal skills development to help teams identify the best AI-use cases, improve AI technology fluency, refine prompts to increase output quality, and to evaluate the accuracy of AI output with brand and regulatory standards.
2) Blend internal and external forces: CMOs should actively remove collaboration barriers working with internal teams and external partners that have AI tools and expertise.
3) Pilot AI use cases with partners: CMO’s should pair highly skilled marketers with external agencies to scale AI programs faster.
It seems that CMOs are already aware of the challenge ahead as the Gartner CMO Spend Report found that labor is claiming a larger share of marketing budgets, growing from 21.9% in 2025 to 24.5% in 2026 and this was explored further in Denver. Speaking of the findings McIntyre said, “AI is not a shortcut around marketing capability. The organizations that will pull ahead are those that pair AI investment with the people, processes and discipline required to turn it into business results.”
Using AI to Enhance Expertise Not Replace It
This Gartner research highlights an important point: AI success depends on people working with technology. And this resonates strongly here at Calysto. We champion AI tools that help streamline PR and marketing activities but believe that AI is most powerful when it enhances human expertise rather than replaces it. For B2B technology companies in particular, human expertise remains critical when developing strategies, building relationships, explaining complex products, services and solutions, and in demonstrating a clear understanding of the industry’s unique challenges.
It’s clear that a company cannot measure AI maturity by how many tools it owns. Even as budgets remain flat, the most effective teams won’t simply adopt AI tools because they are available and adapt them to existing processes. Success will require a more strategic approach leveraging people to pinpoint the technologies that will deliver the greatest value, to determine the processes that must be changed, and to apply expertise to AI-generated output.
Only then, through the experience of marketing professionals can teams then access the full potential of AI to identify market trends and deliver the insights that will capture customer attention. Without this expertise, the AI readiness in marketing will increase and organizations who haven’t addressed the skills gap will fall behind.
In the coming months we’ll explain more how we can assist with those tasks, as well as identifying AI tools that deliver long-term PR and marketing value. Stay connected to PR Vibes to discover more.
For organizations looking to understand where they currently stand, Calysto is currently offering a free analysis of the success of your current PR program as well as a free Share-of-Voice report on your company (or product) vs. its key competitors.