As AI takes on more execution, there is more need for marketers who bring judgment, strategy and the skills to direct the technology.
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AI isn’t eliminating the need for marketers as much as it is changing what companies value them for.
The American Marketing Association’s “2026 State of Marketing Careers Report” finds growing demand for AI skills alongside pressure on execution-heavy marketing work. The share of marketing job postings mentioning AI nearly doubled during 2025, rising from 8% in January to 15% in December. The AMA sums up the shift this way: “Companies are not hiring less judgment. They are hiring less execution.”
The shift is happening in an already difficult job market. U.S. marketing jobs remain roughly 27% below March 2020 levels, and total marketing job postings fell more than 8% in 2025. The report provides a picture of which kinds of marketing work will become more or less valuable as AI adoption increases.
Execution-heavy work faces more pressure
The AMA’s AI Disruption Map examines marketing tasks based on how much human involvement AI systems need. Routine reporting, data collection, and campaign monitoring require relatively little. Scheduling, social monitoring, SEO, and paid media optimization also contain significant opportunities for automation.
That analysis measures AI’s capabilities, not how extensively companies are using them today. Many organizations remain in the experimentation stage, with employees using AI independently and pilots that haven’t become standardized workflows.
The hiring data, however, shows that demand for some execution-oriented work is already declining. Roles such as social media coordinator, copywriter, and SEO manager lost ground, while senior leadership held up better than middle management and individual contributor positions.
Analytics illustrates what that means for an individual marketer. If AI can gather data and assemble a routine performance report, producing the report becomes less differentiating. The marketer’s contribution centers on deciding what to measure, assessing whether the data can be trusted, interpreting its meaning, and recommending what the business should do next.
Knowing what to do with the output becomes more important than producing it.
Marketers undervalue the skills AI can’t provide
Marketers clearly recognize the growing importance of technology. Ninety-two percent of respondents expect AI skills to become more important over the next five years. Marketing technology ranked fourth at 87%, data privacy, compliance, and security sixth at 84%, and data literacy and storytelling eighth at 83%.
But the report also reveals a potentially important disconnect.
Critical thinking, communication, collaboration, and adaptability all declined in perceived importance from the previous year’s research. Yet the AMA’s analysis identifies those types of capabilities as among the areas requiring the greatest human involvement.
Using AI to generate an analysis, a campaign, or a piece of content is one thing. Knowing whether the result makes sense, fits the business context, and if it should be acted on requires marketing expertise and judgment.
What happens to the bottom of the career ladder?
The shift away from execution-heavy work creates another problem because much of that work was performed by people early in their careers.
Organizational flattening is reducing junior roles and internships while employers increasingly expect candidates to bring capabilities such as AI fluency and data literacy.
That raises a longer-term talent question. Junior marketers learned by preparing reports, producing drafts, managing campaign details, conducting research, and doing other tactical work. Those provided the experience and context needed to make more consequential decisions.
Companies must find new ways to develop the judgment they need in experienced marketers.
That could mean giving junior marketers responsibility for reviewing AI output, involving them earlier in decisions, and pairing them more closely with experienced marketers. Instead of learning primarily by performing every task manually, they must learn by understanding the work well enough to direct, evaluate, and improve what AI produces.
Start with tasks, not jobs
The report points toward a more useful way to approach AI adoption: Don’t start by deciding which jobs can be automated. Examine the tasks inside those jobs. Determine which tasks AI can perform reliably, which require human review, and which require continuous human involvement. Then use that analysis to reconsider how roles are structured.
Job descriptions dominated by routine reporting, monitoring, or production must put greater emphasis on interpretation, planning, quality control, and decision-making.
Hiring criteria should change as well. Simply having experience with AI tools says relatively little. A more useful test is whether someone can apply AI within a marketing discipline, recognize weak or incorrect output, and connect the work to business objectives.
Training must address the same issue. Access to AI tools teaches employees how to use software. It doesn’t teach them how to supervise the work that software produces. That requires functional expertise, business context, and opportunities to make and evaluate real decisions.
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What companies value is changing
The report doesn’t say marketing expertise is becoming obsolete. It says that some of the work traditionally used to demonstrate that expertise is becoming easier to automate.
That creates challenges for both sides of the labor market. Marketers must develop the judgment and domain knowledge that make AI useful rather than simply learning how to operate AI tools. Employers must ensure that productivity gains don’t eliminate the opportunities through which people develop those capabilities.
The harder challenge is developing people who know enough about marketing to decide what the machines should do.
The report can be downloaded here. (Registration required)
The AMA’s findings are based on a survey of 1,412 marketing practitioners conducted in December 2025 and January 2026, along with interviews, job-market data, and other secondary research. The AMA notes that its survey sample was predominantly North American and that AMA members, and certain industries and job levels, were overrepresented.
MarTech is owned by Semrush. We remain committed to providing high-quality coverage of marketing topics. Unless otherwise noted, this page’s content was written by either an employee or a paid contractor of Semrush Inc.
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