WARC research shows AI is transforming the way that marketing is developed, adapted, and scaled – but it’s not improving quality.
Marketers are using AI to boost their productivity and output – developing, adapting, and scaling their campaigns with genAI in their toolkits.
New research from WARC, in collaboration with TikTok and LIONS, has revealed that 88% of marketers are using AI to increase their output, but only 45% say its improving creative quality.
Over 400 marketers across the UK, US, Australia, and Brazil were surveyed, and 90% agree that AI has become a part of their creative toolkit, which is most commonly (67%) used to help build campaigns according to demographics – yet 59% say that demographic segmentation is no longer effective.
The most important use that marketers have found for AI is within understanding audience behaviour and measuring community signals. The majority of marketers (86%) say this will play a more important role in creative development in the next three years.
Marcos Angelides, managing director L’Oréal Lab and head of AI operations at Publicis Media, said: “Where the advantage comes is the data that you use to train those models, because AI is only as good as the data it’s trained on. You’ve got to have behavioral data. You’ve got to know what people actually do, not just what they say they do.”
This put more emphasis on measurement, with the research identifying an intelligence loop of community participation, reinforced by AI.
The research also sets out a new framework for principles when using AI – with the acronym, S.C.A.L.E, which stands for: select, connect, anchor, lead, and evolve. It is essentially guiding brands through their campaigns as a way to learn from live metrics and apply these findings from one campaign to another.
TikTok’s new resources for spotting AI
As marketers increasingly use the technology, TikTok is introducing new safeguards to help audiences better identify generative AI.
This includes expanding TikTok’s AI literacy efforts with educational resources and investing in expert partnerships, testing detection systems, and strengthening AI transparency technology.
While the majority of legitimate marketers are utilising AI, the technology has also empowered scammers and fraudsters – enabling them to create and build campaigns in much less time and for a lot cheaper.
Spam has been prohibited by the platform, and TikTok uses tech to remove it at scale – having banned over 86 million fake accounts in the first three months of 2026 alone.
However, more transparency and detection tools will be deployed to combat accounts posting spam, which could pose a risk to public trust or wellbeing – including politics, financial advice, and medical content.
