Almost half of marketers now spend a quarter of their week on admin

LONDON, August 18th, 2026 – Almost half (45%) of UK marketers spend at least a quarter of their working week on low-value admin tasks. That’s according to new research from Optimizely, which reveals how inefficient processes are taking marketers away from creative and strategic work. 

For some, admin takes up the majority of their working week. One in seven marketers (14%) say they spend more than half their time on these low-value tasks, leaving significantly less time to develop campaigns, understand customers and improve performance. 

Slow approval processes are the biggest source of unnecessary work, cited by 38% of marketers. Poor or incomplete data follows at 34%, while a third (33%) point to meetings for the sake of meetings, managing too many tools and platforms, and having to justify budgets and spending. 

This pressure is also starting to affect the quality and creativity of campaigns now reaching customers. 60% of marketers say they often have to launch campaigns without the time or data needed to optimize them. At the same time, Optimizely data also shows that 59% of UK shoppers believe the quality of the marketing content they see has declined in recent years. 

To address this problem, marketers are increasingly turning to AI. 41% have invested in AI assistants for marketing during the past 12 months, with a further 38% planning to do so over the coming year. Businesses are also focusing on the skills needed to use these tools effectively: 42% have invested in training to improve AI outputs, while 44% plan to make that investment within the next 12 months. 

However, marketers recognize that adding more standalone tools will not solve the underlying problem. Better integration between AI and existing marketing technology is ranked as the number one way to improve efficiency.  

“Most marketers didn’t get into the profession to spend their days chasing approvals or jumping between platforms,” said Tara Corey, SVP, Marketing at Optimizely. “When admin takes up a quarter of the week, there is simply less time to think about what customers want and produce work they will actually value. 

“AI can help, but adding another standalone tool is not automatically going to save anyone time. If it sits on top of the same disconnected systems and slow processes, it can easily become another thing to manage. It needs to be built into the way marketers already work and remove admin from their day, rather than add to it.” 

Read the full research here: https://www.optimizely.com/field-notes/guides/the-marketers-survival-guide