Report reveals marketers’ AI trust issues
August 20, 2026



StackAdapt, the AI advertising and orchestration platform, has released The AI Delegation Gap, a global report examining how marketers are redefining the role of artificial intelligence in advertising.

While AI adoption has become mainstream, the findings suggest a gap between ambition and readiness. Advertisers are open to AI recommendations, with 59 per cent acting on platform recommendations often or almost always in EMEA. But, their openness doesn’t mean advertisers are ready to delegate blindly: only 22 per cent in EMEA say they’re very confident evaluating whether AI is making the right campaign decisions and only 50 per cent comfortable using Autonomous AI, leading them to act selectively when recommendations lack campaign-specific rationale, strategic relevance or clear KPI connection.


Based on a survey of 500 marketing and advertising professionals across EMEA, North America and APAC, in addition to insights from 187 global StackAdapt customers, the report found that despite 90 per cent of marketers in EMEA using AI in marketing or advertising, there is a say-versus-do attitude beneath the surface. Globally, 86 per cent use AI regularly or for most tasks and 88 per cent report AI-driven performance improvements, but there is a growing difference between marketers’ willingness to use AI and their willingness to delegate greater authority to it. StackAdapt explains this as The AI Delegation Gap.

Key findings include:

• AI adoption has become mainstream. Adoption of AI in marketing or advertising is consistent across APAC (92 per cent), North America (91 per cent) and EMEA (90 per cent ), underscoring that AI has become a global standard across advertising organisations.

• Marketers want AI to support decisions, not replace them. Ninety per cent of global respondents are comfortable with AI recommending actions and 89 per cent support AI preparing actions for human approval. Comfort declines to 78 per cent when AI acts within human-defined rules and falls to 50 per cent for autonomous AI, even when performance has been proven.

• Trust is earned through transparency and control. Brand risk (63 per cent), data quality concerns (56 per cent) and lack of transparency (36 per cent) are the biggest barriers to delegating more authority to AI globally. Marketers are more likely to act on AI recommendations when they include clear explanations, connect directly to campaign goals and provide confidence that actions can be tested or reversed.

• AI is moving beyond reporting. Reporting and summaries (80 per cent) and performance analysis (74 per cent) are now the most common AI use cases. Rather than simply automating reports, marketers increasingly want AI to identify risks, explain performance changes and recommend what to do next.

• Organisational readiness has become the next challenge. 80 per cent of EMEA respondents feel moderate or strong pressure to increase AI usage, while 53 per cent believe leadership expectations are ahead of their organisation’s current readiness. Only 19 per cent of global respondents say their AI tools are fully integrated into marketing and advertising workflows, highlighting the gap between AI ambition and operational readiness.

Ryan Nelsen, Chief Marketing Officer at StackAdapt said: “AI adoption is no longer the question. Trust is. Marketers already rely on AI to accelerate workflows and surface insights o but they’re also defining where human judgment remains essential, exposing a lack of trust.”

“The EMEA market is hungry for proactive intelligence, but it might be grounded in strategic relevance above all else for advertisers and marketers to hand over the reins. The companies that close The AI Delegation Gap will be the ones that build the governance, confidence and operating models needed to let humans and AI make better decisions together.”