Marketers are automating everything they can measure and holding tight to everything they can’t.
The advertising industry has developed a complicated relationship with artificial intelligence: eager to use it, reluctant to trust it. New research from TripleLift, an advertising technology company, finds that while 60 percent of advertising professionals say their organizations have a centralized AI strategy, fewer than 30 percent express high confidence in it.
The findings, drawn from a survey of 200 global advertising professionals, expose what TripleLift calls an industry-wide standoff — organizations that recognize AI’s potential to improve campaign efficiency but cannot bring themselves to relinquish control over creative quality, brand safety and execution decisions.
The divide is sharpest when broken down by function. AI has become standard practice for data-heavy, repeatable tasks: 73 percent of respondents use it for campaign optimization, including bidding and audience adjustments, and 59 percent use it for audience targeting and segmentation. Creative work is a different matter. Only 25 percent use AI for creative production at all, and most of those limit its role to testing and iteration rather than generating finished assets.
Fully autonomous campaigns remain rare. Only 19 percent of respondents report using AI to completely automate campaign execution, while 40 percent say they still maintain manual control over the entire process.
Part of the problem is what the report calls the “review tax.” Whatever time AI saves in execution, much of it is clawed back by the human oversight it requires. Nearly three-quarters of respondents say they spend several hours a week validating AI-generated work — checking for technical errors, brand safety risks and inconsistent creative quality. Automation, in other words, has not reduced the workload as much as it has relocated it.
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“When AI systems work in sync across media, measurement and audience, the opportunity is clear: faster, always-on campaign execution,” said Rob Deichert, TripleLift’s chief operating officer. “The missing piece is creative. Bridging that gap — without losing the human spark — is what will define the next era of advertising.”
The report’s broader conclusion is that the industry’s AI hesitancy is not irrational. It reflects a genuine tension between the efficiency gains AI can deliver and the brand risks that come with reducing human judgment in creative and editorial decisions. Until that trust gap narrows, the gap between AI ambition and AI execution is likely to persist.