We surveyed marketers about AI after the year we've all had. They're less scared than LinkedIn says, more overwhelmed than they'll admit, and a lot of them have a secret.
Key takeaways
- 40% of marketers have turned in AI-assisted work without mentioning it. Another 18% preferred not to say, which we're choosing to read as a yes.
- Nearly half (48%) say AI makes them better at their job, while only 24% worry it will replace parts of their role.
- 67% say AI search changed how they think about SEO and links, the strongest agreement of anything we asked.
- Only 30%trust AI answers more than they did a year ago. Marketers use it daily and believe it about as far as they can throw it.
- The most common one-word reaction was "overwhelmed", followed by "cautious," "conflicted," and "impressed."
- Optimism wins, barely. 40% feel more optimistic about AI than in January, 32% feel about the same, and 28% feel more worried.
LinkedIn says you're either 10x or doomed
Open LinkedIn on any given Tuesday and you'll learn two things. One: some guy automated his entire marketing department with 14 prompts and a Notion template. Two: marketing is dead, and also you are dead, and the robots are wearing your lanyard.
Neither of those people has ever sent a link building pitch at 4:45 on a Friday.
So we asked the people who actually do the work. Marketers across SEO, content, digital PR, paid, and leadership told us how they really use AI, what it's burned them on, and how they feel about it when nobody's watching. The answer is a lot less dramatic than your feed, and a lot more interesting.
The confession nobody puts on LinkedIn
Here's the stat that made our team go quiet in the Slack channel: 40% of marketers have turned in AI-assisted work without mentioning it. Another 18% chose "prefer not to say," which is the survey equivalent of staring at the ceiling and whistling.
Is that bad? Honestly, it depends. Nobody discloses that spellcheck fixed their typos. But when the "AI-assisted" part is a statistic that doesn't exist, it gets bad fast. Which brings us to the stories.
When we asked marketers whether AI had ever burned them at work, the answers read like a support group:"Cited a study that doesn't exist in a client deck. The client noticed."
- "It summarized a call and invented an action item. We did the action item." "Pasted a draft with 'As an AI language model' still in it. Once. Never again."
The pattern is consistent. AI is great at drafts and terrible at facts, and the marketers who got burned are the ones who forgot which was which.
Better at the job, not scared of it (yet)
For all the doom, most marketers aren't panicking. 48% say AI makes them better at their job. Only 24% worry it'll replace parts of their role, and just 20% say it makes their job less fun.
What are they using it for? The same things over and over: first drafts of outreach emails, summarizing long reports and call transcripts, brainstorming headlines, and turning chaotic notes into a clean brief. In other words, the stuff nobody went to marketing school to do.
What did they take back? Final client-facing copy ("sounds like a robot in a blazer," one respondent wrote, prospecting lists with made-up contacts, and anything that needed a real number from the real world.
SEO people felt it the most
The strongest agreement in the whole survey: 67% say AI search has changed how they think about SEO and links. That tracks with what we hear from clients every week. AI Overviews are eating informational clicks, everyone suddenly wants to know if ChatGPT mentions their brand, and "GEO" went from nobody's acronym to everybody's conference talk in about nine months.
Our take, since we're a link building agency and you knew this part was coming: the fundamentals didn't die, they got stricter. Being cited by real publications was always the goal. Now the AI engines are reading those same publications and deciding who to recommend.
Marketers use AI every day and trust it about as far as they can throw it
41% of marketers use AI daily or "embarrassingly often" in their personal lives. Yet only 30% trust AI answers more than they did a year ago.
That's the weirdest relationship in marketing right now. It's like a coworker who's incredibly fast, never sleeps, and occasionally makes things up with total confidence. You'd keep them on the team. You'd also check their work.
One word: overwhelmed
We asked for one word to describe how marketers feel about AI
That might be the most honest finding in the survey. Not excited, not terrified. Just a lot of people trying to keep up with a tool that changes every six weeks while still hitting the same deadlines they had in 2019.
What this means if you're a marketer
Use AI for the grunt work. Check every fact it gives you. And stop letting LinkedIn convince you that everyone else has figured it out, because according to this survey, nobody has. They're just quieter about it.
If there's one bet worth making, it's this: as AI floods the internet with content, the things AI can't fake (original data, real expertise, coverage in publications people trust) are getting more valuable, not less.
Methodology
Page One Power commissioned a survey of U.S. marketing professionals. The survey was fielded online from September,2026 to October, 2026. To qualify, respondents had to be 18 or older, employed full-time, and work in marketing as their primary job function. Quotas ensured representation across roles (SEO, content, digital PR, paid media, social media, and marketing leadership), agency and in-house teams, seniority levels, and company sizes.
