Marketers fail to grasp public’s nuanced feelings over AI

Marketers are ramping up their tech investments, with almost two-thirds expecting GenAI to play a pivotal role in brand recommendations and three-quarters planning to increase AI assistant spend in 2027, even though most consumers remain cautious about the recommendations they provide.

That is according to Kantar’s Media Reactions 2026 study, based on interviews with over 800 senior marketers and 23,000 consumers.

It reveals that, while the majority of consumers feel positive about GenAI’s possibilities and most already use AI assistants, less than a third (32%) are using them to research brands and products and less than a quarter (23%) actually trust their recommendations.

Kantar reckons many factors could be influencing this lack of trust, including how people feel about AI technology, what they already think about specific brands, the source of AI-generated answers or the way these answers are presented.

Understanding and measuring these concerns is critical for marketing investment to pay off, the company said.

Kantar global director of media Gonca Bubani commented: “There’s a lot of money moving towards AI on the assumption people will use it the way the industry expects.

“The reality is that marketers don’t yet have a firm grasp of the nuanced feelings people have about AI environments or how they work within their wider media mix. That shouldn’t stop them from experimenting with AI, but it does mean they need to carefully test, measure and learn as they invest.”

As channels like AI and creator content mature, it seems marketers have become less confident over the past 12 months about navigating the ever-fragmenting media mix and growing volumes of data.

In fact, only half of advertisers are confident they have the right balance between brand-building and performance marketing (2025: 60%), while just 57% feel confident their organisation has the right media mix (2025: 64%).

Meanwhile, only 51% feel they are extracting actionable intelligence from their data to support their marketing goals.

But this lack of confidence is not all justified. Bubani explained: “Despite their insecurity, marketers are actually getting better at making fragmented channels perform in their favour. Kantar LIFT+ data shows that between 2020 and 2025, 43% of campaign performance came from channels working together, compared with only 18% pre-2014.”

Kantar chief executive Paul Zwillenberg added: “Marketing has never been harder to navigate, right when businesses need every dollar of investment to work harder.

“AI now shapes how people discover and choose brands, so strong brands have to earn the right to be recommended – by people, and by the machines guiding them. CMOs are investing more in the future, yet growing less certain about the decisions in front of them today. The answer is better intelligence, not more data.”

For the first time, Kantar’s ad equity measure combines consumers’ attitudes to advertising on different brand platforms with exposure.

This new ranking shows where people are both open to advertising and likely to encounter it, helping advertisers understand which brands offer the strongest mix of consumer acceptance, attention and reach according to consumers.

Interestingly, the top two platforms for consumers are Google and Amazon, while marketers go for YouTube and Instagram.

Bubani said: “Marketer trust is only one side of the picture. Effective media planning also depends on understanding where consumers are receptive to ads. Comparing those perspectives can reveal if marketers are putting too much stock in their own views, or if they are adequately reflecting consumer demand. This is particularly relevant as investment shifts into AI, creators, commerce media and streaming.”

Planned investment in the creator economy continues to grow, and marketers are looking to shift strategies away from celebrity-level fame to local community depth.

Micro-creators (66%) and nano-creators (61%) are the creator types most marketers plan to invest in, ahead of macro- (48%) and mega-influencers (42%).

This is a positive step. Kantar’s Creator Game Plan (June 2026) found that when using creators, platform engagement and brand building potential only align one third of the time, and predicating creator choice on engagement stats had become a common trap for marketers.

Bubani concluded: “Two-thirds of marketers plan to increase their investment in creator content, where success is now less about reach and more about relevance: who opens up the best access to audiences, in a credible context and through stronger creative collaboration.

“We’ve shown that follower count doesn’t guarantee effective reach: more important is how creators help brands to communicate their meaningful difference to their audience.”

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