Dentsu Creative has warned that the accelerating AI content boom may be creating a difficult trade-off for marketers, with 76 per cent of chief marketing officers (CMOs) concerned that their teams are producing more content without achieving greater impact.
The finding comes from Dentsu Creative’s 2026 CMO Report, “Making It Real”, based on responses from 1,950 senior marketing decision-makers across 14 international markets.
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The research examines how marketing leaders are reassessing artificial intelligence, creativity, production and brand investment as AI becomes increasingly embedded in everyday marketing operations.
The concern is emerging at a time when the demand for content continues to grow.
Some 81 per cent of CMOs expect their organisations will need to produce significantly more content in the future, while 74 per cent agree that producing more assets does not automatically translate into greater impact.
That creates a growing challenge for marketing teams: increasing production without allowing quality, relevance and effectiveness to suffer.
The report found that 71 per cent of CMOs believe AI is improving their speed to market.
However, 70 per cent said they have yet to experience significant cost savings from the technology.
The gap between expectations and results is also becoming clearer.
The proportion of CMOs who believe generative AI will greatly help them produce assets quickly and cheaply has fallen from 89 per cent in 2025 to 82 per cent in 2026.
Rather than simply pocketing the gains from faster production, many companies are redirecting those efficiencies towards other areas of marketing.
According to the report, 82 per cent of CMOs said AI-enabled production efficiencies are allowing greater investment in upfront creative craft, while 80 per cent said savings are helping to fund real-world experiences.
The findings suggest that marketers are becoming more measured about AI.
Instead of viewing the technology primarily as a tool for producing more material at lower cost, they are increasingly asking whether additional content is actually helping brands become more distinctive and effective.
That concern extends beyond production.
Research cited by Dentsu from WARC and CreativeX indicates that creative output has increased by an average of 30 per cent, while media spending per asset has fallen by 15 per cent. More than 90 per cent of assets receive less than $10,000 in media support.
The imbalance raises a practical question for brands: if more creative assets are being produced but fewer are receiving meaningful media investment, how effectively can those assets compete for consumers’ attention?
Organisational structure is another area under scrutiny. Some 77 per cent of CMOs surveyed believe agency structures that separate creative, media, data and production prevent content from performing as effectively as it could.
The report therefore points towards a broader rethink of how marketing teams work, with technology, creative development, media planning, data and production needing to operate more closely around a shared brand objective.
Yasuharu “Yasu” Sasaki, Global Chief Creative Officer at Dentsu, said marketers are increasingly looking beyond automation for its own sake.
“Today’s CMOs want to use technology to craft more human experiences,” Sasaki said, according to the report’s findings.
Sasaki has previously argued that the expansion of AI makes originality and human creativity more valuable rather than less important.
Dentsu’s 2025 CMO research similarly found that 78 per cent of CMOs believed generative AI would never replace human imagination, while 87 per cent said modern marketing strategy would require greater creativity, empathy and humanity.
The 2026 report reflects a related shift from potential to proof.
Dentsu says marketers are moving beyond the early excitement around AI and increasingly evaluating whether technology investments are producing stronger brands, deeper customer relationships and measurable business results.
The findings do not suggest that CMOs are turning away from AI.
Instead, they point to a more pragmatic phase in which speed and efficiency are no longer sufficient measures of success.
For an advertising industry facing an unprecedented ability to generate images, videos, copy and other marketing assets at scale, the challenge is becoming less about whether brands can produce enough content and more about whether audiences have a reason to care about it.
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Dentsu’s research ultimately places human creativity and differentiation at the centre of that challenge, suggesting that the most valuable use of AI may not be producing an endless stream of content, but helping marketers create work that is more relevant, distinctive and capable of making a genuine impact.
