The function is restructuring, not experimenting
Eighty-one percent are past exploring agentic AI: 36 percent building agentic products, 26 piloting, 20 running agents in production across the business. Builders outnumber operators nearly two to one; a third of the marketing rooms are making the agents the other two thirds are deploying.
The new line: a three-way tie
Doing the work of more people 50 percent, knowing the customer better 43, creating content faster 43, nothing measurable 11. Content led the small July cohort at 68 percent and fell to third in August. The value moved from output to people inside a summer.
Builders and buyers value different things
The marketing seat names headcount leverage at 57 percent, the highest of any chair, and nobody in it reports nothing measurable. The technology seat in the same rooms names content speed at 61 and customer knowledge at 52, and headcount at 30. A vendor pitch built on speed is landing in a function measuring itself on people.
What the rooms are asking
Agents lead the asks by a wide margin, 47 of 123 answers about what to walk out with, then playbooks and org design. Attribution is the challenge named first, 20 of 96, and AI search is the reason it is getting harder.
What it means for the CMO
The three-way tie is a decision, not a fact. Pick the value you report to the CFO and measure the other two as secondary, because finance is asking for proof. Buy against the metric you report, not the demo. And treat attribution as a rebuild, because the funnel now starts inside an assistant.
Who should read it
Who should read it: CMOs, VPs of Marketing, and heads of growth who want the peer read on agentic go-to-market and where AI pays, and CFOs who want to know what marketing will say when asked for ROI.
Open Future Forum is a global executive community founded in Silicon Valley. Its network reaches tens of thousands of executives and investors worldwide. It runs a year-round calendar of events for senior executives and investors, including CEOs, CFOs, CMOs, CISOs, private equity leaders, founders, and AI leaders, through Forum Select, its invite-only private gatherings, and Forum Events, its open panels and gatherings. Beyond events, Open Future Forum convenes peer groups and executive boards and publishes original research built on first-party survey and qualitative data from its executive network. The research program draws directly from those rooms.
Read the CMO AI Leverage Report →
Open Future Forum is a global executive community founded in Silicon Valley, whose network reaches tens of thousands of executives and investors worldwide. Its research program, including the Executive AI Leverage Report and the role editions of the Enterprise AI Buying and Budget Index, is built on first-party survey data from executives attending Open Future Forum events.