Not long ago, artificial intelligence in marketing was largely a vision of the future—an exciting, but experimental, promise of what might be possible. Marketers dabbled in AI tools (realistically, mostly in silos) kinda unsure of what AI could really do.
Adoption was cautious. Impact was inconsistent. Integration was rare.
⏩ Okay, so now fast forward to mid-2025. What was once a novelty, is now an imperative. AI has moved from the fringes to the core of marketing operations, transforming how teams plan, create, deliver, and optimize across every channel. Capabilities that felt futuristic just 18 months ago are now essential components of the modern marketing stack.
According to McKinsey’s latest State of AI survey, 78% of organizations now use generative AI in at least one business function; a telling sign that the future of marketing has arrived, and it’s reshaping the landscape.
Today’s market has crystallized into three distinct tiers of AI capabilities:
- Basic AI tools: Narrow, single-purpose automations for specific tasks
- Mid-tier platforms: Broader, multi-capability solutions, often lacking seamless integration
- Integrated AI ecosystems: End-to-end platforms that unify the entire marketing lifecycle
Enter: Optimizely Opal
At Optimizely, our position in this evolving ecosystem is pretty unique (no big deal).
While many competitors have treated AI as either a peripheral feature or a standalone platform, Optimizely Opal has been architected as a native capability interwoven throughout our existing product suite. The result is an intelligent system that goes beyond simple content generation or data analysis. Optimizely Opal provides contextual intelligence that comprehensively understands an organization's brand, historical performance, and strategic objectives.
To fully understand the value of where we are now, we're going to take a look at how we got there. But first, how about a TL;DR section of the key stats we'll cover (for any of you that are short on time)?
TL;DR: Your Optimizely Opal highlights 📈
The state of AI
-
Adoption of Optimizely Opal is geographically broad, with the US (42.9%), UK (16%), and AUS (7.6%) leading the charge.
-
Industry adoption is broad as well, spanning Retail (18.1%), Business Services (9.1%), Hospitality & Travel (4.9%), and extending into traditionally cautious sectors like Financial Services (9.2%), Healthcare (2.9%), Education (3.3%), and Transportation & Logistics (2.2%).
-
Significant adoption among all levels of digital maturity—high (46%), medium (39%), low (15%)—challenges the assumption that advanced AI tools only benefit large, mature organizations.
-
Adoption is distributed across several key user profiles: Senior Leadership/Executives, Product Marketing Team, Customer Success, Content Marketing, Digital Marketing, Field Marketing, Data Analysts, Experimentation Managers, Brand & Creative Teams, Events Teams.
-
Power users of Optimizely Opal spread use across a variety of features instead of focusing heavily on limited use cases.
The benefits of AI
- As a Campaign Manager Optimizely Opal has:
👉 Created 20.8% of tasks and 24.1% of campaigns for its users
👉 Contributed to a 74% and 82% increase in volume of tasks and campaigns created
👉 Saved 10%, 75%, and 68% more time in campaigns, tasks, and requests compared to last year - As an Experiment Advisor Optimizely Opal has:
👉 Created 16.2% of experiments
👉 Summarized 3% of experiments
👉 Generated 11% of the variations used in tests
👉 Seen a 50% increase in experimentation volume compared to last year - If the improvements across all Optimizely Opal use cases are aggregated the resulting increase in output for a marketing team is over 50%.
- Across all of the usage detailed in this report Optimizely has done over 32,000 hours of work—at an average blended team rate of $100 Optimizely has delivered over $3.2M in estimated time savings alone
- Between generating test ideas, creating variations, or summarizing results, Optimizely Opal has contributed to 3,000+ tests and influenced over $50M of revenue
Building a culture of AI
- Successful AI adoption requires strong governance, cultural alignment, and clear workflows—not just technology implementation.
- Clean, current, and well-structured data is essential for generating accurate and reliable AI outputs.
- Brand safety depends on defined content parameters, human oversight, and legal/ethical compliance in AI use.
- Marketers must develop AI literacy, especially in prompt design, to fully unlock productivity and creativity gains.
- Embedding AI into daily marketing tools and workflows drives adoption by removing friction and context-switching.
- AI output quality improves through iterative refinement, treating prompts as a dialogue rather than a one-time request.
-
The future of marketing AI is integrated, agent-driven, and optimized for real-time, personalized experiences.
Okay, so with all those stats, you might be wondering: how did we all get to this point? What has the journey been for marketers? Let's dive in.
The evolution of marketing
Marketing has always been about understanding customer needs and demonstrating how products and services meet those needs. At its core, marketing is about building demand and delivering value. While this fundamental purpose remains unchanged, the methods and expectations surrounding marketing have evolved dramatically.
Today’s marketers operate in a landscape shaped by rapid technological innovation, shifting consumer behaviors, and an explosion of digital channels. The result? A role that is more dynamic and more demanding than ever before.
The expanding scope of marketing
Modern marketing is no longer confined to crafting compelling messages or managing campaigns. It’s about creating seamless, personalized experiences across every touchpoint. Marketers must harness data and insights to anticipate customer needs, stay ahead of trends, and deliver content that resonates, at scale, on every channel.
Gartner's 2024 Senior Executive Views of CMO Leadership survey states that CMOs remit has grown from driving 5 different initiatives on average, to 8 initiatives.
To succeed, marketers are expected to be:
- Data analysts who interpret complex insights
- Creative storytellers who craft compelling narratives
- Project managers who coordinate across teams and timelines
- Technologists who navigate Martech and Adtech ecosystems
- Strategists who align marketing with business growth
So, it’s no surprise that 66% of CMOs report struggling to exceed mounting executive expectations.
The challenge: Doing more with less
Despite expanding responsibilities, marketing budgets have been stagnant at 7.7% of total revenue over the past year and are not expected to go back to pre-COVID levels of 10-12% anytime soon (CMO Survey, Gartner, 2024).
To add to that, marketers are asked to work within fragmented systems. A typical day might involve switching between spreadsheets, email threads, campaign tools, content management systems, and file-sharing platforms, just to get a single campaign out the door. With the advent of AI, and increased pressure to adopt it, this has also led to an 'AI fragmentation' problem—more disparate tooling that needs to be managed.
They must:
-
Manage multiple stakeholders and approval workflows
-
Personalize campaigns for diverse audiences
-
Increase campaign velocity without sacrificing quality
-
Cut through digital noise to capture attention
-
Continuously report on performance and ROI
All of this takes place in an environment where marketing’s value is frequently scrutinized, with just 34% of executives aligned with CMOs on marketing’s role in supporting growth (CMO Survey, Gartner, 2024).
The cost of complexity
This complexity comes at a cost. Marketers are stretched thin, tools are disconnected, creativity is stifled by operational burdens, and innovation is often sidelined by the need to “just get things done.” The pressure to perform faster, better, and more efficiently can lead to burnout and missed opportunities.
A better way forward with Optimizely Opal
At Optimizely, we believe it doesn’t have to be this way.
Times are changing and companies need more than just tools—they need intelligent, integrated systems that evolve with them. That’s where the infinite workforce powered by Optimizely Opal comes in.
Optimizely Opal is designed to simplify the marketer’s world. It brings together the tools, workflows, and insights marketers need into a single, intuitive platform. This enables them to focus on what they do best: creating value.
With Optimizely Opal, marketers can:
-
Streamline campaign planning and execution with centralized intelligence
-
Collaborate seamlessly across teams and stakeholders
-
Deliver personalized experiences at unlimited scale
-
Accelerate time-to-market with intelligent automation
-
Measure and optimize performance with real-time insights
Optimizely Opal isn’t just another AI tool: it’s an extension of your workforce. By reducing complexity and increasing efficiency, it empowers marketers to reclaim their time, amplify their creativity, and drive measurable business outcomes.
Our early results show that our customers agree.
Since launching in Q2 2025, Optimizely Opal has seen rapid adoption, outpacing both early expectations and beta testing benchmarks. This surge reflects a strong market appetite for effective tools that can power experimentation, content optimization, and strategic decision-making at scale.
This report provides a first look at the results: who’s using Optimizely Opal, how they’re using it, the impact it’s making. It also shares insights on how to position your organization as a leader in AI adoption, and what’s ahead in the evolving AI landscape.
The whos, whats, whens, wheres and hows
Firmographic data: Who’s using the infinite workforce?
Together, companies using Optimizely Opal generate over $100 billion in annual revenue—from household names like DoorDash, Nestlé, and Shell to innovative players across every industry. Its broad adoption across such a diverse customer base tells a clear story: AI is no longer a niche tool reserved for a select few.
Organizations of all sizes and sectors are using it to rethink how they plan, create, and deliver marketing. Optimizely Opal’s capabilities aren’t confined to specific roles, verticals, or enterprise tiers—they’re being embraced across the board, signaling a fundamental shift in how modern companies approach digital marketing.
Geographic distribution: Where is Optimizely Opal being used?
The infinite workforce has now been adopted in over 50 countries worldwide, with especially strong traction in the United States (42.9%), the United Kingdom (16%), and Australia (7.6%). The remaining 33% spans a diverse tapestry of users across Europe, Asia, and emerging markets—underscoring the global resonance and universal value of AI-powered marketing solutions.
Industry uptake: What are the main industries adopting AI?
The cross-sector uptake of Optimizely Opal highlights AI’s impact across a wide range of industries:
- Retail leads with 18.1% adoption
- Software follows at 12.4%
- Financial Services account for 9.2%
- Business Services hold 9.1%
- Hospitality, Travel & Recreation represent 4.9%
Notably, traditionally cautious sectors such as Financial Services (above), Healthcare & Medical (2.9%), Education (3.3%), and Transportation & Logistics (2.2%) are beginning to integrate AI-driven marketing technologies. This shows an interesting shift in how these industries are investing in and leveraging marketing innovation.