Supermetrics, the Marketing Intelligence Platform trusted by thousands of marketing teams worldwide, released new findings from its Marketing Data Report 2026, highlighting how retail, e-commerce, and CPG/FMCG marketers apply artificial intelligence. The data reveals a clear disconnect between stated priorities and actual usage, especially in campaign optimization.
Results amongst respondents showed only 17% use AI for campaign analysis and optimization, making it the least-adopted AI use case across the segment. That sharply contrasts with business priorities, as 70% of the same organizations identify optimizing marketing spend as a top short-term goal.
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Consumer-focused industries report much higher AI use in areas such as content creation (38%) or automation workflows (27%). Far fewer apply it to identify which campaigns, channels and audiences drive results.
The report also found variation across sectors. Retail reported the highest adoption of campaign optimization AI at 22%, followed by CPG/FMCG at 14%. E-commerce ranked lowest at 8%, despite operating in one of the most data-rich marketing environments.
The findings point to an execution gap rather than a priority gap. Respondents cite limited in-house expertise (38%), insufficient technical infrastructure (30%), and unclear AI business value or ROI (27%) as key barriers.
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“Marketers are running more campaigns across more channels than ever before, yet many still lack the real-time visibility needed to act on performance when it matters,” said Anssi Rusi, CEO at Supermetrics.
“Marketers know real-time optimization drives results, but fragmented data keeps them reactive,” said Zach Bricker, Head of Solutions Engineering & Data Activation at Supermetrics. “Teams need to move from simply having data to activating it. AI and automation remove technical friction and allow experts to focus on strategy and revenue impact.”
Trusted by brands including BBC, Heineken, Levi’s and L’Oréal, Supermetrics enables marketers to turn fragmented insights into revenue-driving decisions and real-time activation.