Insights

McKinsey's latest research, done in collaboration with Google, puts a number on what's been obvious anecdotally: AI could unlock as much as $90 billion in improved marketing returns in the US alone. The catch is that almost nobody is capturing it yet — fewer than 10% of organizations have actually scaled AI across their marketing operations in any meaningful way. Most are still running pilots or one-off experiments instead of rebuilding how work actually gets done. The firms that have made the shift aren't just saving time. McKinsey found two-to-three-times productivity gains, 10–30% in cost savings, and 4–7% growth in revenue and conversion value when insight, creation, personalization, and optimization all run in real time instead of as separate, siloed steps. The report also flags a role we'll be hearing a lot  more about: the "AI Whisperer" — someone whose job is making sure a brand is represented accurately inside AI-driven search and shopping, a channel McKinsey expects to carry $750 billion in consumer spend by 2028. The pattern we keep seeing: the gap isn't access to AI tools, it's the willingness to rebuild workflows around them rather than bolting them onto  the old process. That's exactly the gap we've been closing for our own  clients.