Marketers Commit US$16 Billion to AI Search—But Doubt the ROI

Enterprise marketing is undergoing one of its fastest budget reallocations ever. A new Branch survey of 300 senior marketing executives shows 65% are directing at least a quarter of their 2026 budgets to AI search. With the global digital advertising market projected to exceed US$100 billion this year, that translates to a floor of US$16 billion flowing into a channel that barely existed in measurable form 24 months ago.

The results so far are positive. Over the past year, marketing leaders collectively saw traditional SEO grow website traffic share by 8% while AI search traffic grew by 15%. AI is not cannibalizing existing channels. It is adding a new layer on top.

But beneath the confident budget moves, a more complicated picture is emerging.

The Paradox: Bullish Spending, Private Doubt

When the same survey respondents were given room to speak freely, 60% chose not to describe opportunities. They described concerns. Long-term data gaps. Questions about whether the economics will actually work. Real anxiety about ROI.

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"We are investing in what we believe to be the best, but we lack long-term data and experience to guide us," said one VP of Marketing in the health and wellness sector.

A second respondent was blunter: "Will everything maintain without turning into a disaster? Can we really count on this data to drive cost-focused initiatives?"

The responses reflect executives who have already committed to the channel and are now waiting to see whether the bet pays off.

Organizational Speed Cannot Match Budget Speed

The more structural problem is not the technology. It is the gap between how fast organizations can actually move and how fast their leaders expect them to.

Enterprise buying cycles average more than 11 months. Internal alignment, vendor evaluation, budget reallocation, and change management take time. Yet 87% of the senior leaders surveyed expect their organizations to be selling via AI by the end of 2026. There is no AI shopping product that even exists at scale yet.

As Scott Brinker, editor at chiefmartec.com, put it plainly: "Technology changes exponentially. Organizations change logarithmically."

That tension is playing out in marketing departments right now, as executives with ambitious timelines run into the ordinary friction of organizational change.

The Measurement Gap Nobody Talks About

There is a second structural problem that gets less attention: nobody can clearly measure what they are spending.

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Nearly 70% of enterprise marketers report struggling with the basics of measuring AI search performance. Just over a quarter cannot track the customer journey from AI discovery to conversion at all. This is a significant blind spot for a channel absorbing 25% or more of some organizations' total marketing budgets.

Traditional marketing measurement was already imperfect. AI search introduces new complexity. When a user asks an AI assistant a question and the answer includes a brand recommendation, did that recommendation lead to a sale? Which part of which campaign drove the AI citation? These are not solved problems.

For now, 89% of respondents say AI search improved their overall marketing performance. That is a strong signal. But "improved performance" is different from "we can demonstrate clear revenue impact," and the latter is what finance teams and boards will eventually require.

What This Means for Marketing Leaders

The Branch data points to a market at an inflection point. The performance signals are real. The budget commitments are real. The doubt is equally real, and increasingly, so is the organizational strain.

According to a May 2026 Gartner survey, CMOs are averaging 15.3% of total marketing budgets on AI. Yet only 30% of organizations are ready to scale their AI capabilities effectively. The gap between ambition and operational readiness is wide.

For marketing leaders in Asia Pacific, this picture carries an added layer. The region runs on a fragmented search ecosystem: Google AI Overviews, Baidu ERNIE, Naver in Korea, and LINE-integrated search in Southeast Asia. The same strategic pressure applies across all of them, with less consolidated guidance to draw from.

Organizations investing as seriously in measurement infrastructure and internal readiness as they are in the channel itself are best positioned to convert early spending into durable returns. Right now, most are not.